Alpaca First Anniversary Card for my Husband

I have a bit of a thing about alpacas - they're so cute with their thick curly coats and crazy fringes that either make them look like a visit to the hairdresser went wrong, or they went in asking for the same style as Mimi Labonq from Allo Allo.




I like them so much that part of my hen night involved alpaca trekking and we even had alpacas at our wedding - just milling around during the afternoon reception amid the guests!

I had a birthday present this year from my friend and her daughter, where her daughter chose a couple of things to give me including a sheet of alpaca stickers. A month or so later when I came to thinking about an anniversary card for my husband I decided it ought to include alpacas and remembered the stickers.

The theme of the first wedding anniversary is 'paper' so I was always going to make my husband a hand made card, but I wanted it to be very 'us' and not just something generic with hearts and teddy bears. Alpacas are just as cute and cuddly anyway!

There was one large alpaca sticker on the sheet I was given, along with a few tiny alpacas, bees and an apple (do alpacas eat apples? I'm not sure!). The main alpaca was so big it would have taken up most of a standard A5 card blank and not left much room for a sentiment, so I used a giant A4 card blank.

 

I covered it with pink and red spotted paper as this seemed appropriate for an anniversary and printed the sentiments on the computer, then added the stickers. Easy to make though the sentiments took a bit of thinking about - it's a bit daft but then so am I, at least when it comes to cute animals, and luckily my husband knows that and loves me for it!

I'm sharing this with Ooh La La Creations as their theme this week is anniversary.

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 Week 28

I'm writing this in advance of our holiday - we are coming back from Malta on Tuesday so I'm going food shopping on Wednesday morning and need to have the shopping list already in place! For reasons I won't bore you with I have to take a 2-week block away from work once a year, so even though we only went away for a week (we've just had new double glazing done so two weeks away was a bit expensive) I've got the rest of this week off, and my husband decided to take the rest of the week off too.

Tuesday
Lunch: at airport/ on plane
Dinner: takeaway as we won't be back in time to go shopping and then cook (also as I have a circuits class tonight I want to get to!)

Wednesday
Lunch: chicken, pesto and sundried tomato ciabatta
Dinner: harissa prawns with cauliflower couscous for me, harissa chicken with mashed potato for him

Thursday
Lunch: cauliflower soup/ tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwich based on this recipe
Dinner: pork chop with quinoa and roasted veg for me, gammon and chips for him

Friday
Lunch: jacket potato with tuna for me, bacon sandwich for him
Dinner: chicken shawarma with garlic sauce and flatbreads

Saturday
Lunch: At a car show at Sherborne Castle so will take a picnic
Dinner: something like frozen pizza as we will be back late

Sunday
Lunch: pancakes with bacon and maple syrup
Dinner: roasted sausage and potato bake

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Silver Toned Christmas Bauble Christmas Card

One of the card making magazines I got as part of a special offer last year had a Christmas card kit attached to the front cover, that had various die-cut circles. To me, the circles looked like Christmas baubles, so I took a rectangular card blank and covered it with a piece of paper from the same kit, that had rows of what looked like Christmas decorations, and then stuck on three of the circles using adhesive pads.

I then took a sheet of silver outline stickers that I often use as borders, and chose one that had a chain link effect (some are more like a wavy line) and used that to make it look like the baubles were hanging from something.

I like the design and the colours of this card - silver with purple hints. I've stashed this away for next Christmas!

I'm sharing this with Sparkles Christmas Challenge as the theme this time is ornaments.

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Coffee Cupcakes with Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans

Coffee is not one of my favourite flavours; I generally dislike coffee cake and I don't drink coffee apart from on rare occasions. But in the hot weather we had recently I started craving iced coffee and even went to Starbucks for a Frappucino one time, something I haven't done in years.

How do I get from that to cake? Well, I found out at short notice that the front-of-house team were holding a bake sale in the lobby of my work building for Battersea Cats and Dogs Home. I love baking and I love cats (dogs too, but cats more!) so I wanted to lend a hand.

I needed to bake something that wouldn't take too long, that had ingredients I already had in the house, but also a cake that would last well in the heat and be something to tempt people on a hot summer's day.

 

I had a packet of chocolate-covered coffee beans in the cupboard from a recent Degustabox which I thought would be great on the top of cupcakes - which then had to be coffee.

I used a recipe from 'Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery' though I switched out the espresso powder as I didn't have any, for some strong coffee made from instant granules; I also used the same brown sugar rather than splitting the quantities between demerara and light brown sugar as advised. This is what I did:

Makes about a dozen cupcakes:
110g butter, softened, or margarine
130g light brown sugar
2 eggs
120g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
50ml strong coffee
75ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature

to decorate:
150g butter, softened, or margarine
350g icing sugar
1 tbsp. strong coffee made from instant granules
chocolate-covered coffee beans to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C fan. Cream together the butter and the sugar and mix in the eggs. Fold in the flour, vanilla, coffee and milk and combine until thoroughly mixed.

Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases in a muffin or cupcake tin and bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Allow to cool on a cooling rack.

To make the buttercream beat the butter with the icing sugar and mix in the coffee. Spread on top of the cooled cupcakes and swirl with a flat palette knife; place a couple of chocolate-covered coffee beans on top of each cupcake.

 

I'm sending this to Treat Petite hosted by Kat at Baking Explorer

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 Week 26

So the weather has turned and it doesn't look like we will be having barbecues this week! Never mind - not long til we go on holiday to sunny Malta.

Monday
Lunch: chicken salad with watermelon
Dinner: taking my husband to the optician after work to help me choose a new pair of glasses so we might get some dinner while we are out

Tuesday
Lunch: working from home - maybe a toasted sandwich
Dinner: home late after a circuits class; will probably have a microwave risotto when I get home

Wednesday;
Lunch: salad or sandwich as I don't have long to eat before going to a school where I volunteer
Dinner: salmon and vegetables for me, chicken grillsteak for him (meant to do last week but didn't)

Thursday
Lunch: salad
Dinner: pizza from the freezer as I think we will be home late

Friday
Lunch: salad
Dinner: chicken goujons/ fishfingers and chips

Saturday
Lunch: crumpet pizzas
Dinner: chicken and bacon pies with mashed potatoes

Sunday
Lunch: lemon chicken pasta with rest of jar of sauce
Dinner: toad in the hole

Join in the blog hop!

An InLinkz Link-up

 

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Baked (Jacket) Potato Soup - for Leftover Baked Potatoes

I love eating jacket potatoes, especially in winter, but even in summer they can be a particularly nice lunch with sour cream and chives (or something similar), cooling tuna mayo or homemade coronation chicken.

Baked potatoes are also a great barbecue staple, cooked either on the coals or in the oven, as everyone can have their own and top it with whatever they like; they are great even just with butter. But it's easy to cook too many and have some baked potatoes left - here is a great recipe to use up leftover baked potatoes.

You can make a delicious soup with the potatoes that you can top with anything you like and freeze the soup for another day (or take it in a flask to eat at work).

If you want to make this soup from scratch, there's a quicker way than baking a potato in the oven for an hour or more, which you won't want to do on a hot day. Simply simmer a whole potato in a pan of milk for about 20-25 minutes until the potato is tender.

Mash the potato into the soup, or put the potato into a food processor with some of the milk and pulse, then return to the pan and stir in with the rest of the milk. Season to taste.

If you are using leftover potatoes, chop the potatoes and put into a pan of milk so the potatoes are just covered and bring the milk to simmering point. Remove from the heat allow to cool; put the potatoes and some of the milk into a food processor as before then return to the pan and stir through, and reheat if you are eating this now.

 

Serve the soup in bowls and top with whatever jacket potato toppings you liked - eg cooked diced bacon, sour cream and chive or a sprinkling of grated cheese.

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Restaurant review: Cote Brasserie, St Christophers Place, London

I had a late dinner at Cote one evening with my mother-in-law after I had been to a KitchenAid cooking demonstration with chef Michael Moore. The demo didn't finish until 9 and even though I'd had a couple of bites to eat, trying some of the food that Michael cooked, it didn't really count as dinner.

We were near St Christopher's Place and my mother-in-law knew of Cote and wanted to go there - we passed some much more interesting restaurants as we walked, like Bone Daddies, but we were also with one of her work colleagues at the time so I didn't want to suggest anything else - I knew Cote would be comfortable, with plenty on the menu for everyone and in any case eating ramen (which Bone Daddies serves) is a pretty messy experience and probably not something to do with a work contact!

Because it was late I didn't want a heavy meal and also nothing that would take too long to cook or eat; there was a plats rapides menu that offered a couple of dishes that could be served quickly - I had the cod goujons for £11.95 which were essentially fishfingers but very large, chunky ones - nothing like the floppy flat ones you sometimes get in packets! It came with French fries- I declined the option of peas - and tartare sauce, and was very good. I recommend it if you are in the area, but next time I might try Bone Daddies!

 



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