Wednesday 27 March 2013

Bloglovin

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

With the news of the imminent demise of Google reader I've started using Bloglovin, I'm not really sure what I'm doing with it
If you'd like to follow me, that'd be great, I've put up a followy thingy

Wednesday Remembering

This is a regular post featuring an old picture of mine, usually from former travels, with a short description of the story behind the photo.

Egypt.
I always think about Egypt at this time of year. In 2006 I spent several weeks travelling around Egypt during Easter break. I have three friends from uni who are Egyptian, it was lovely to get to see their homes and cities and to see parts of Cairo and Alexandria that we wouldn't have done otherwise. The Coptic Church celebrates Easter later than western Christians and it is traditional for Copts to fast for 40 days before Easter, this is done by having a vegan diet.
The hostel where we stayed in Cairo was very close to Tahrir Square and the National Museum, we crossed the square most days we were in town and ate at cafes and restaurants around the edges regularly. It has been amazing to see the streets we walked down feature so largely on the worlds stage and all of hte transformation over the past couple of years.
I'm hopeful that change will be for the better.
 

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Around Paris

 In Paris we stayed in the Latin Quarter very close to the Sorbonne. I arrived later than my friends and got to the hotel as they were going to bed. The next morning, peeking out of the window I was met with this fantastic sight, it's not easy to see but the shop on the corner there is a boulangerie, we had coffee and orange juice and croissants for breakfast. We had to really.


 I had lived with Nadia and Fiona for two years while we were at uni, we are all Peace Studies alums.We are now all over England and arrived in Paris from three different cities. It was really lovely to be able to spend time hanging out together, catching up and having fun. Fiona got married last September and apart from us all being there, it had been some time since we'd all been together and I really appreciated seeing them.

 
 We ate a lot of good things( and some so-so things) but the only thing I photographed was this fantastic crepe. Mine had pears, Chantilly cream, chocolate and almonds. Yum!


Paris is a really nice city, I'm sure I'll be there again.

Monday 25 March 2013

Banana Bread


 I love banana bread. I've been making a variation of this bread for about 6 years every time I have slightly old bananas, its an incredibly forgiving recipe. I tend to make it with a mixture of pecans and walnuts and also a combination of white and wholemeal flour. I've also made this recipe as muffins and as biscuits. Basically it's foolproof.

 
 All my ingredients are pretty vague
180g butter
200-250g sugar (I used a combination of muscovado, demerara and cane)*
2 egg,beaten
500g (ish) of flour, any type of plain flour, this loaf pictured had plain white, spelt bread and strong white bread flour, use less flour if it's bread type*
4 tsp baking powder
grating of nutmeg
2 tsp of any other spice or flavouring (cinnamon, allspice, ginger, vanilla, almond)*
4 or 5 large ripe bananas
120g of chopped nuts or chocolate or dried fruit*

*  just whack in whatever you've got

Heat up your oven to gas mark 4/ 200C/ 400F.
Mix together the butter and whatever sugar you're using, then add in the beaten eggs, don't worry if it looks a bit split. In another bowl sift the flour, baking powder and any spices. Mash up all the bananas. Add the bananas and dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture alternately; a bit of the flour then a bit of banana till it's all mixed together. Fold in the nuts or chocolate and put the whole lot into a loaf tin or muffin cases and place it all in the oven. Check after an hour (less time if making muffins) if it's one big loaf it'll probably take an hour and a half .I had the heat up a little high so I burnt this loaf a little but it still tastes really good.




Friday 22 March 2013

Le Louvre

 

 This weekend, Paris was rather cold and grey and windy, so we felt a few hours wondering around staring at works of art inside the Louvre would be preferable to doing wondering around outside activities.


 
 Neither of the friends I went with had been to the Louvre before so we headed for the most obvious main attractions first; the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa etc. and wondered through galleries of ancient Egyptian artefacts, Roman statues and ornate displays of French grandeur on our way there.

 
 
 



 
There is so much to see inside the museum, we started flagging after a couple of hours and left to find food and a proper sit down, but you could spend days studying and admiring the many, many different types of art from the ancient to the very recent.We caught the last weekend of a display by Enki Bilal entitled Ghosts of the Louvre in which the artist had photographed art around the Louvre and then drawn ghosts on to the photographs, showing perhaps the person who had owned an ancient object or the sitter of a painting. A very interesting way of combining old and new aspects of art.


Tuesday 19 March 2013

Home from Paris

Paris was lovely; cold, windy, a bit rainy, but lovely all the same.
We walked for miles, ate lots of pastries and crepes, stared confusedly at art and statues, admired cute animals, discussed lots of important issues, drank lots of coffee, climbed all the way to the top of Notre Dame, wondered around jardin du Luxembourg in the rain and took lots of pictures.
I'll be splitting my recount up so as to not bombard you with hundreds of pictures at once

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Wednesday Rembering

This is a regular post featuring an old picture of mine, usually from former travels, with a short description of the story behind the photo.





Back in 2010 I spent a few weeks in August working as an au pair for a French family. I met up with them at their Paris apartment and then after a few days we all travelled down to their Grandfather's house in the Cevanne mountains. I didn't have a fantastic time with them. I think this was largely due to differing expectations and communication difficulties. The days I spent in Paris were rather nice though, my cousin was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne for the summer and we met up one day at the Louvre. As I was then under 25, entrance to the Louvre was free, I very much enjoyed wondering around and admiring all the art even though it was incredibly crowded.

I'm particularly remembering being in Paris this week as I'm off there to meet up with friends this weekend! We've all been at least once before so we've not got any big touristy plans and will probably spend time eating, drinking coffee, walking around and chatting. We'll be staying very near to the Sorbonne on the south bank, if anyone has any recommendations for places to eat or fun places to go, they'd be greatly appreciated!


Monday 11 March 2013

Decorating the neighbourhood

Taking inspiration from one of my new favourite bloggers Ally and her lovely messages for international compliment day and recently yarnbombing for love, *someone* has been putting pretty and encouraging messages around the streets with shiny tape, stick on gems and glittery stickers.
The cards came from yesandyes  3 whole years ago!






 

I hope people see these and are inspired to do the things they've always wanted.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Outfit post; Big haircut!

I've been making the move to shorter and shorter hair recently and I'm loving it.
I took these pictures the day after I got it cut, I did have a tiny little worry about looking like a boy so I of course decided that wearing a lot of pink was the way to combat that.
This cannon is in my local park, I'm not entirely  sure why it's there but it makes a pretty funny prop



My cardi was from asda quite a while ago. The star double ring came from accesorize, star earrings from TU. Black skirt from H+M, pink long sleeved t shirt from primark and ancient florescent tights of unknown origin. This was a very supermarket/ high street outfit.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Wednesday remembering

This is a regular post featuring an old picture of mine, usually from former travels, with a short description of the story behind the photo.

For Christmas 2009, my parents and I flew out to Canada to join my brother as he studied at University of Ottawa. We spent Christmas with him in his student house, visited Montreal and then moved on to Toronto where we spent New Year. New Year's day 2010 was spent in Niagara Falls.
It was cold and snowy and dark and beautiful. I've never really experienced having a lot of snow before, having big blizzards that last for hours, snow so deep that building forts was worthwhile and seeing back yard ice rinks as part of everyday life. Seeing all the snow was pretty incredible
This picture is from a tunnel behind Niagara Falls, that white at the end is a combination of mist and hundreds of tonnes of water hurtling past. It's a noisy place to be and also a little scary.

Saturday 2 March 2013

Undersea knitted and crocheted tunnel for RNLI

I've been meaning to share these pictures for awhile.
This amazing creation is the collaborative work of woollen art called Above and Below the Waves, made by knitters and crocheters from around the world to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. I saw it a few weeks ago at the Stitch and Craft show in Manchester. It truly is amazing; so detailed and interesting, full of quirky features. I could write more about it but I think the pictures really speak for themselves. If you possibly can I would recommend getting to see this in person, there's so much more than my pictures
I'd accidentally turned my camera into Av mode when I was taking these pictures and hadn't realised so they're not all as good as I'd hoped and needed some editing




























This is probably the most pictures I've ever put into one post before, I couldn't help it, there are so many amazing details. That large mermaid with all the hair was human sized and absolutely fantastic, I loved her eyelashes. The yellow submarine was super and so like the Beatles. The little mermaid and diver together were so clever, the diver had all sorts of details like oxygen written on the tanks and snorkel and flippers, I wish I'd been able to take a clearer picture. Really, really go and see it.