Lana Del Rey

I love this song, and the video is pretty good too.  Here is the beautiful girl who sings it...she describes herself as "gangster Nancy Sinatra", but I think she's selling herself short.  She's my new girl crush for sure!

A little summery song...

Man Bunting (munting!)

My man turned 30 last week and I wanted to make some decorations for his party that weren't too twee or too girly.  I ended up going for 'Man Bunting' or 'Munting' as it has become known in the family. 

I used his old clothes - t-shirts, shirts, old boxers (washed of course!) and hankies (again, washed of course!).  I love that the bunting is made out of his old clothes as it's really personal to him.  I also think it is  pretty funny that his old undies are strung up and looking pretty.  It was also a lot cheaper than buying material from a shop.

Here are the old pile of clothes ready for cutting....

 To begin with I made a cardboard triangle template - it measured 19cm across the top and was an equilateral triangle, with both sloping edges measuring 27cm.  Your own bunting can be any size of course.  I cut the triangles with pinking shears, as this meant I didn't have to tidy up any of the edges of the triangles - no frays.  But, if i'm honest, the whole bunting isn't exactly neat and tidy.  I figure it can't really be seen in great detail when it's hung up, and also the messy factor adds to the manly feel. 

After I had cut out all the triangles I arranged them in a line along the length of the cotton ribbon.  I bought this cotton ribbon from a craft shop which i just folded over and pinned, ready for sewing on the machine...

i had some help with the pinning from the birthday boy...

I used a zig-zag stitch to sew the triangles on, a nice little snazzy touch!

And here is the end result hanging up in the house....

(i  wanted to have a photo from the party, but i enjoyed myself a little too much that night, and with all the merriment I forgot to take a photo!)  

I'm really delighted with the end result.  Bunting makes everything a little nicer in my opinion.  I'm also happy that I have bunting in the cupboard now - ready for any occasion.

I got really into the idea of bunting when I was making the 'munting' and thought about using net curtains for a pretty girlie bunting, or some paper bunting with some old books/maps/newspaper.  The possibilities are endless!

Here are some nice bunting ideas....

and a nice little drawing that could be an invite to a party... 

Pigeon x

Lemons, lemons everywhere!

I was amazed when I saw this basket of gigantic lemons on the porch of Karen & Phil's house - they are most definitely the biggest I have ever seen!  Even better still, these babies come from the lemon tree in the back garden!  Coming from freezing cold Scotland, I have never come across so many lemon trees in people's back gardens.  Walking around the suburbs of Melbourne it seems like nearly everyone has a lemon tree with fantastic lemons - how lucky!  One charity shop I went into last week there was even a basket of free lemons - they are in abundance at the moment.  I thought I should make something 'lemony' with these guys so I thought about what I'd like to eat and that was cupcakes!  I got the recipe from BBC Good Food website for Lemon and Poppyseed Cupcakes...delicious in my opinion!  I found that the icing was more than enough for one batch of 12 cakes, and in the end I made 24 cupcakes, the icing was more than enough. 

Here are my cakes, looking all delicious....