Olive Fascinator

This fascinator is made with olive coloured sinamay which has be hand rolled and twisted into large bow shapes.
At the centre is a large amethyst coloured glass stone which is multi-faceted and sparkles in the light.
Around the amethyst stone is an array of black/dark purple feathers.

A new sewing assistant

I have been trying to sort out and tidy my workshop in the garage. There just seems to be reams and reams of ribbons and braid and feathers all over the place.
Luckily I had a little helper, as you can see, although I think Tabby was actually just looking for a new place to snuggle down and have a snooze, usually on anything that I was trying to tidy away!
Yesterday I painted the drawers of all of the craft boxes with blackboard paint. What a fantastic paint, dries so quickly and then can be written on with chalk. The idea being that I can write on each drawer whats inside and it can be changed at any time.
I really have to get the workshop sorted as I have so much work to be getting on with, including making Miss C's wedding headdress before our first fitting in a couple of weeks.

A vase of flowers

I picked some flowers today from the garden. They are so pretty and fragrant
The bluebells that were all over the garden have now sadly died away and I found the last few that were not all dried up. I also picked some forget-me-nots because they're lovely.
I picked two lilac flowers the lilac coloured one from the front garden and the white from the back. They have such a wonderful scent. It's a shame because the lilac flowers on the trees don't last very long, apparently, just a few weeks or so in late spring.

Rosemary

The Rosemary bush that was left on the patio by the previous house owners appears to be alive!!
I thought it might be dead or dying as the branches seemed really dry and brittle. Although there were lovely little purple flowers growing on the branches and a few sprigs of rosemary, it looked a little sad and on it's way out.

Anyway with a little TLC and all of this fantastic weather we've been having it seems to have been brought back to life.

Today I noticed lots of new healthy green rosemary sprigs have grown. The smell is just gorgeous!

In delight at this abundance (well not quite) of fresh herbs growing in the garden I picked some of the sprigs to put with the potatoes I was cooking for dinner.



Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients
white potatoes, skin on, diced
sprigs of rosemary, roughly chopped
large garlic clove,thinly sliced
olive oil
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 200ºC/ gas mark 4

Put the potatoes into an oven proof dish covered with olive oil.
Sprinkle the sliced garlic and the chopped rosemary over the potatoes.
Add freshly ground pepper.

Roast for about 20/30 minutes until cooked and golden and crispy.
Sprinkle a little sea salt over the potatoes and eat immediately!

Fairy Cakes

I made some fairy cakes last night, like you do. Actually it was finding several boxes of eggs in the fridge that were slowly reaching their expiry date that prompted the mad evening bake-off!

Also Mr H was working late, really late, and the cats were investigating the night in the garden and there was nothing on telly.

I love baking though and Mr H loves eating cakes so it works well!

This is Nigella's recipe for Fairy Cakes. It's very easy and takes literally minutes to make the mix.

Unfortunately at this new house we have a rather rubbish oven and I have to turn the tins round to get an even bake... so much for fan assisted!

Recipe here 

Strawberries & Squash

The strawberries are slowly turning red. Some of the flowers have now become small fruits.

The leaves and flowers are looking really healthy, it must be all the sun! What a scorching day!
Luckily, so far there are no signs of any pests,
no slimey slug trails that is, Olive likes to have a good sniff round every so often!
















The butternut squash is growing faster than ever. One of the four plants in particular is enormous with a 6th leaf just coming through.

Pearl & Crystal Hair Corsage

I made this in November 2007 and wore it in my hair in the evening reception of my own wedding.
It was perfectly elegant and went really well with my Jenny Packham dress which was a 1930's style silk bias cut dress that epitomized Hollywood glamour.

The hair corsage was made of twisted silver plated wire which was set onto a small wire arch with loops at either end suitable for pinning to the hair.

The shape was very organic and I used 'branches' of wire with small freshwater pearls to create a fern design which surrounded the clusters of pearls, crystals and diamante.

It was very light and easy to wear, ideal for dancing the night away!

I think this design can be used in a variety of ways.
Fixing a brooch fastening to the back to create a decorative brooch which could be fastened to an outfit or maybe to fix a sash around the waist.

Designed and created by

shh...sarah hemsley headdresses

Peacock Fascinator

This fascinator is made of black silk organdie which has been gathered and stitched into a rosette shape to look like a flower.
In between the layers of organdie are black diamond-cut goose feathers and individual strands of curled peacock feather which catch the light wonderfully alternating between matt black and the irridescent blue/gold/green 'petrol' colour so recognisable as peacock feather.
Jet diamante and crystal also adorn the rosette and curling out from the back is a large black quill which has been curled into a large 'C' shape above the head.

This is all set onto a black straw fascinator base.

Designed and created by

shh...sarah hemsley headdresses

Really Easy Leek & Potato Soup

Ingredients

4/5 large white potatoes (700g) skin on or off depending on preference, diced

2/3 large leeks (300g), sliced

Knob of butter (25g)

Vegetable stock (900ml)


I actually very rarely measure the ingredients I just chop up whatever I have and bung it all in a pan! However the above measurements are a good guideline.

Firstly, melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat.
Add the potatoes and saute gently, stirring often to avoid sticking and burning.
After a few minutes add the sliced leeks to the pan and continue to saute the potatoes and
leeks.
Cover the pan and stir often. Do this for 10 minutes or so, until the potatoes have become soft.
Add the vegetable stock. Bring to the boil then simmer for 10/15 minutes.
Ladle into a bowl, grind some pepper on top and scoff with some crusty bread.
Yum!

Wedding Cake

My Wedding cake was made of four tiers (6"/8"/10"/12") each one made by a different person. I can't speak for the other ladies but I used the Delia Smith rich fruit cake recipe which has handy conversions for different sizes.

My Mum made the largest, bottom tier. The next one up was made by my Mother-in-Law. The next one up was made by myself. The top tier was again made by mum although this one was then 'blessed' by a group of my closest, oldest friends!
This happened when they all came to dinner at my mum's (which she cooked!) to celebrate my being a Hen (no tacky strippergrams for me, it was all of the utmost taste, even though plenty of wine was slurped!).

Anyway my mum had measured out all the dried fruit and put it all into a mixing bowl ready to be drowned with brandy.
After dinner we all passed round the bowl and each lady poured a tablespoon of brandy (ok maybe not quite exact measurements, we had got through several bottles of vino by this point!)
into the bowl and said a few (slightly slurred) words! It was a lovely way to toast the top tier!


To decorate the cake, I used 4 different widths of white millinery petersham (quite appropriate!) using the thinnest for the top tier down to the very widest for the bottom one. I then made silver twisted wire 'brooches' of pearls and crystals which were then stitched onto the ribbon, again these reflected the size of each cake.

The cake topper was again made of twisted wire with glass beads, pearls, crystals and diamante (for extra sparkle) and sculpted into a flower shape which was inspired by an Orchid.
This was then bound together and held in place with a light grey satin ribbon.

It was actually really fun to make as the shape was organic and I could be as creative as I wanted. I wanted the look to be classic and elegant and it looked fantastic, not too fussy and really simple with the pure white ribbon against the white icing, just hightlighting a few sparkles from the crystals.

The great thing is that we now have a lovely memento to keep. With fresh flowers, although I think they can look lovely on a cake they obviously soon die and can't be kept forever.

Three Ivory Fascinators

These are three ivory fascinators I made between 2006/2007.

The first one is decorated with ivory silk organdie which has been hand rolled to form roses's and pointed leaves. It also has rouleaux of ivory raw silk and is adorned with cream/very pale lemon coloured marabou feathers, white goose feathers and mother-of -pearl and crystal beading.

This is all set on an oyster coloured straw fascinator base which has been covered in cream coloured silk lace.

This was one of the first fascinators I have made.

The second shown here is lighter ivory/off white. Decorated with hand cut white goose feathers and curled white biot goose feather arranged around two white feather 'flowers', sparkling with diamante and crystal beads.
Towards the back of the fascinator there is a wide ivory silk ribbon and around the base are bows of white merry widow veiling.

The third, is a more darker shade of ivory, almost oyster coloured.
Sitting on an oyster straw base sits an oyster raw silk bow which has diamante and freshwater pearl beadwork at the centre.
This fascinator has height from a large ivory burnt ostrich feather which has been curled and decorated with diamante stones.


Designed and created by

shh...sarah hemsley headdresses

Cloudberry Tiarella

This is a set of three hairpins (which I call a Tiarella) called Cloudberry.

It is made with twisted sterling silver wire and Swarovski crystals, freshwater pearls, amethyst and garnet stones.

The beauty of the Tiarella design is that it can be worn in the hair in a variety of ways and can therefore create a very different look depending on the choice of hairstyle.

My friend, Mrs D borrowed this hairpin for her bridesmaid, Belle to wear. The Cloudberry colours of the crystals looked lovely with her gorgeous Vera Wang dress.

Designed and created by

shh...sarah hemsley headdresses

Pear Pincushion

I made this pear pincushion for my friend Miss E, for her birthday. It ended up so big we decided it could also double up as a mini door stop!

I used fabrics from Laura Ashley and filled it with sand. I think I might make it again but make up a smaller and less rounded pattern or maybe make it slighter larger and use it as a door stop!

New trees and sheds

Today, Tabitha and Olive had fun in the garden in the random few minutes that the rain stopped and the sun shone.

Tabitha was brave and climbed up onto next doors shed roof. This is quite adventurous for Tabby as she has been quite timid in the garden and doesn't seem to have ventured far. I think this may have been caused by a confrontation by a strange ginger cat that appeared in the garden one day and obviously frightened poor Tabby.

Anyway so while she climbed over next doors shed roof and then into their garden, Olive was discovering a brand new tree that she obviously hadn't noticed before.

Olive stared up at this new climbing frame for a second before hurriedly scrambling up it.

She enjoyed it lots and went quite far up until, typically she then had to work out how to get back down...not so easy!

Eventually, after me attempting to climb half way up in my big clumpy Eskimo slippers, ready to catch her should she fall, she finally did her usual backwards shimmy down the tree trunk hanging on by a claw!

If cats really do have nine lives she is definately using all of hers to the absolute limit!

Wildflowers

The wildflowers that have suddenly appeared in the garden are lovely. It's strange because since moving in 8 or so months ago we haven't touched the garden at all, in fact it is quite overgrown and totally apparent that the owners before us did nothing to make it look respectable so it didn't have much of a chance to begin with!

It's amazing that despite doing nothing, there is still this wonderful, colourful life bursting through the weeds and knee high grass!

I love Bluebells and we seem to have a wonderful abundance of them, almost looking like a meadow (ok the garden isn't THAT big!!) of periwinkle blue.

The Forget-me-nots are bursting through the wasteland that was once a kiddies play area and which will soon hopefully be re-turfed. They are so pretty though I would like to keep them somehow, may be I can replant them somewhere else.

The blossom is heavy on the trees which looks like confetti when the wind picks up. It is so pretty despite being an overgrown jungle.

Strawberries

The strawberry plants were potted 2 weeks ago and are doing well.

Small flowers have now appeared and the leaves have grown much stronger and bigger.

I'm hoping to get a bumper crop of strawberries this summer but am going to have to watch out for the dreaded slugs and may have to put some beer out for them!!!

Pepper

The pepper is eventually doing well despite a slow start.

The seeds (from a pepper - I have totally forgotten which colour!) were planted at the same time as the butternut squash - 4th April 2008.
It's interesting to see the difference in size!

The shoots appeared only about a week or so ago but now look healthy and seem to be growing relatively quickly.

I like to use small terracotta pots which can be bought quite cheaply from Homebase or B & Q.
Sometimes I paint a pattern on them like here, the white painted swirls look authentically 'antique' once the pot starts to age.
I also write the seed which has been sown and the date onto the side of the pot with white chalk - it's very handy to keep a record and this can be easily rubbed off when re-potting.

On the windowsill...

I planted several different herb seeds a couple of weeks ago.
Basil, Coriander, Thyme, Rosemary and Chilli.

They are not doing as well as I would have liked despite having prime location on the windowsill which tends to get a lot of sun and consequently is usually quite warm.

Coriander is definately doing the best with quite ample shoots which look green and healthy. Next is Thyme with smaller shoots but unfortunately absolutely no show from any of the other seeds.

I may try them in the mini greenhouse to see if that helps. It may be that they are quite slow to grow anyway.

We'll see.

Butternut Squash

The butternut squash is doing really well. I planted the seeds (from a butternut squash) about 3 weeks ago and the shoots now have a fourth leaf growing and they look really healthy!

I'm not sure if they'll bear fruit or if it will be edible - I think it will be as this is the method used by Carol Klein in the 'RHS Grow your own Veg' book although there are conflicting issues about growing veg and fruit from seed direct from the vegetable.

We'll have to wait and see!

I do know that when we have the vegetable patch I'll have to find a large space to plant the squash as apparently they grow like wildfire and spread quite far.

May 1st, 2008

At last there seems to be a little sunshine and Tabitha and Olive are making the most of this respite from the rain and are happily chasing bees and climbing trees!