Fabric Shopping in Borneo - Pin It Do It

by Bex

Instead of a normal Pin It Do It from us or someone else this morning, this is another "intend to do it" and not strictly from Pinterest although I have looked on there for ideas, some of which you can see below.

You know I love bright colours.  You know I love shopping.  You know I love making things.  

Shopping for fabric to make things in bright colours IS SO MUCH FUN!  

The fabric shop we go to in Borneo is called Jakel Silk House.  It's where I bought all the fabric to make our bridesmaids' dresses for the wedding (and a few other pieces including the fabric this maxi skirt was then made out of) and on our trip back to Borneo this time, we went back so Georgia could have a look as she's currently studying textile design at college.  Obviously this meant Mum and I could have a good browse too!  :)  I think we did well not to buy more as the fabrics are so beautiful, reasonably priced (so much cheaper than here) and there's such a great range of colours, patterns and types of material.  Literally three floors of choice, fabric piled high with roll upon roll of gorgeousness!  Oh to be a fashion designer and be able to do this as a career!

This time we managed to find the ultra-reduced corner where I found a huge roll of olive green jersey (below) for just £1 a meter!!  I bought 5m and plan to make palazzo pants, a vest and a maxi skirt/dress depending on how much I have left.

We did have quite a pile between us by the time we were finished (after about 2 hours or so!) much to Nik's distress!  Although we did spend quite a bit, we got a lot for our money AND as I like to point out, we're paying for a hobby and time well spent as well as the fabric and resulting clothing.  I really do enjoy sewing and get such a feeling of satisfaction and pride knowing I've made a garment myself.

Being waved off by the school girls outside.

Here are the fabrics I brought back and what I plan to make with each...

This would make a lovely maxi (dress or skirt) with the ombre effect.

This was actually one I bought last time I was in Borneo which I planned to make a sarong out of.  I think it looks a bit like starfish or octopuses.

This metallic one is just to make a cushion as I just loved it as a future room decor inspiration.
I'm thinking and Indian or Moroccan style with rich teals and golds.

This one would make a lovely blouse like this bug print blouse I own.

These twp will go together nicely to make a sundress like my green one I wore in Sorrento.

These two fabrics will make lovely A-line skirts

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This one was super cheap in the sale and I thought would make a nice summer maxi but now think it would be a fab pair of Pyjama bottoms or palazzo pants or a boho maxi dress.

I think this grey & green textured one would make a lovely shift dress or one like below...

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This one is also intended to be a boho maxi dress but would also make a nice floaty printed vest

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This chiffon one was only £1 a meter!  I have to admit this was the only one I didn't have a specific plan for when I bought it.  

This is another intended maxi skirt (also very cheap in the sale, I got Roz this in purple too!)

And my massive wodge of olive jersey for vests, maybe a skirt and definitely some comfy palazzo pants.

There's certainly plenty to keep me occupied over the next year or so!!  And I still have some screen printing fabric to make into things too.  Lots of sewing posts coming up I think!

Our Forever House - Basement

by Roz

It was lovely to share the first instalment of our forever house on the blog a few weeks ago, thank you so much for all your lovely comments!  I thought it would be fun to take you on a tour of the house and let you know what our plans are for each floor.  Whilst they might sound grand please do remember the clue is in the name...this is our forever house and many of the rooms, especially in the basement, are plans for the future.  Once we are at the stage where the house has a kitchen and is watertight (the roof actually leaks people!) we will be moving in and completing the work over the next few years when we have the time and the money to do so.

So, to help explain the layout of the house, I thought it would be fun to share a post each week detailing the plans for each of the floors in our townhouse.  It made sense to start at the bottom and work my way up, so this week you get the basement.  The first picture below is a snapshot of the architect's plans, you can't really read the narrative on them, but I think it helps show the layout of the floor.  The back garden is at the top of the drawing below and the front of the townhouse is at the bottom. 

As you can see there are three large rooms in the basement, along with a big bathroom and utility room at the rear of the property.   The large room at the rear of the house is going to be our cinema room!  B is taking charge of this and has plans to create a room within a room (for the ultimate in sound proofing and general man cave reasons!) and wants a very large projector screen tv.  I really enjoy watching movies, so I'm very happy at the thought of a cinema in our basement.

Future Cinema Room

The front left room will one day become our gym. It's easily the darkest room in our house as the left window is under the stoop so doesn't let much light in. The plan is to pop some mirrors down one wall and then invest in a decent cardio machine like a cross trainer or a rowing machine. People have already gifted us lots of random gym equipment so we have a reebok step, a trampet, lots of weights and a pilates machine, ace!  I feel fitter already just thinking about it.  Actually the house in itself is a bit of a work out, DIY efforts aside, my mum counted and there are 91 internal steps in the property from the basement up to the attic! 

Future Gym

The other room at the front of the property is currently two separate rooms, it's only a stud wall between them, so we plan to remove that ourselves and create the large room you can see on the plans.  This is going to B's pool room.  By pool room I mean he wants an american pool table, just in case anyone thought the plan was for a swimming pool!  Again, who knows when we will have the money to actually buy an american pool table, but again we are lucky enough to have been gifted a table tennis table so we will start off with that.  Ping pong tournament anyone??  Obviously there is going to be a built in bar in the pool room otherwise why would anyone want to play pool in there?!

Future Pool Room when combined

Now this next room is maybe my favourite room in the basement!  Well in my head anyway.  If you look back up at the plans, can you see the large cupboard next to the staircase?  Well folks, that is going to be our wine cellar.  I am so excited about this!!  At the moment it simply looks like a cupboard and we are using it to store shelving, brackets and random bits and pieces, but in my head it is already a floor to ceiling wine cave.  As you know I love my wine and kitting out a wine cellar is a pretty exciting thought for me.

Future Wine Cellar

As you can see the basement doesn't have any of the original features that we are lucky enough to have in the rest of the house, there are no fireplaces or nice cornices down here, but there are shutters on the windows at the front of the property.  There is a bit more evidence of wear and tear down here as well, the wallpaper was blistered and falling off the wall at the back door.

The damp in the basement is in part due to this delightful structure in our back garden!  Yes that is a five storey fire escape.  Thankfully we have planning permission to remove it, but the way it was cut into the sandstone has allowed water to travel into the stone and has resulted in the damp problem.  We did know about this issue before we put the offer in on the house and have already spoken to some experts to rectify the problem.

The bathroom and utility area are currently separate male and female toilets, which is great for us as it means all the plumbing is there.  All we need to do is take down the stud walls and kit out the rooms with the fixtures we want.  As it's going to be a functional bathroom, used for gardening, car washing and hopefully dog washing(!), the plan is to install a big belfast sink and a large walk in shower.  There will also be a washing machine for those sunny days when I can hang the washing outside.  I actually cannot wait to be able to do this again, in Wokingham used to hang our washing outside all the time, but in the flat for the past 6 years I've not been able to do this and have really missed it.  Bedsheets just don't smell as good when they have dried inside!

I guess since we are on a tour of the basement level, I should probably include some pictures of the garden.  It's so lovely to have a private garden in the city and whilst ours in not exactly massive, it's easily a manageable size and will be perfect for barbecues and chilling out in.  Especially once the fire escape is no more!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of the basement, come back next Tuesday for the Ground Floor :) 

Roz xx

Recipe - (Posh) Giant Jaffa Cake!

by Bex

Now, I had marginal success with this cake but have some tips and changes to hopefully make it successful should you (or I) try it (again).  Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely delicious, but the impressive, fancy climax to our meal it was not.  It did, however, provide some ongoing entertainment throughout the evening!  I made it when Roz and B came over for dinner recently (I made slow-cooked lamb kleftiko too) and they can vouch for the flavour - Roz's bowl was almost licked clean!  I had a lot of fun making the recipes - both found in my first copy of BBC Good Food magazine which I subscribed to due to a promotion for a free copy, then they offered me 3 further issues for £3 (not to be sniffed at but a classic trick to hook you in!) and I haven't decided yet if I will just continue it or cancel after the 3 issues.  I have to say, it is a magazine I buy occasionally and I do often love a lot of the recipes and tend to have a go at a few of them so I may stay subscribed at the normal price (£18 for 6 issues), we'll see.

Anyway, here's the recipe as I would make it next time, including my tips and a photo of how it's supposed to look...

Serves 10

Ingredients:
Jelly:
juice of 5 large oranges (about 500ml)
[save the zest of all oranges (1 to decorate, 4 for cake)]
100g golden caster sugar
6 gelatine leaves

Cake:
250g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
300g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs
100g full-fat natural yoghurt
300g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
zest of 4 large oranges

Chocolate Ganache:
300ml double cream
200g milk chocolate, finely chopped
100g dark chocolate, finely chopped

To finish:
The orange zest saved above
Apricot jam (I used ginger jam for a bit of zing)

Method:
Make the jelly the night before or a few hours in advance.  Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line with cling film.  Remove the zest from the oranges and set aside.

Tip the orange juice and sugar into a pan and heat gently to dissolve the sugar.  Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for a few minutes until soft.  Remove the gelatine from the water and squeeze out any excess and add gelatine to the warm juice mixture, stirring until dissolved.  Pour the liquid into the lined cake tin and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 160oC (fan 140oC) and line a 23cm round cake tin with baking parchment.  Tip all the cake ingredients into a large mixing bowl and combine with an electric whisk until smooth.

Spoon into the tin and smooth the surface.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

Now make the ganache.  Heat the cream in a small pan until hot.  Put the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl and pour over the cream, leave for 10 mins, then mix well - you should be left with a smooth chocolate sauce.  (This is where I would change it a little and add the chocolate to the cream as it didn't all melt and I had to put it in the microwave for a few seconds and wait longer for it to set.)

Leave at room temperature until the ganache cools and thickens a little (you can put it in the fridge to speed this up but keep an eye on it as it will set quickly).  (Again this is where I would change things again as I would wait much longer than I did.  It definitely went wrong because it must have still been too warm but I was so concerned about it setting and it seemed thick enough while only just still being runny enough to drizzle like in the picture.  Next time I would definitely wait longer and not worry about drizzling at all, the thick ganache didn't dribble nicely for me anyway, after I drizzled some over the sides and smoothed the top, a lot of the ganache around the edge also slid off the sides!)

To assemble the cake, place it on a cake stand and trim the top to give you a flat surface.  Warm the apricot (or ginger) jam until a little runny and paint it over the top of the cake.  (I would wait longer here before the next stage to ensure it is completely cool again.)  Flip the orange jelly out of its tin and position on top.

Using a palette knife, swirl the chocolate ganache over the orange jelly, letting it dribble down the sides of the cake a little.  Serve straight away or within 24 hours.

Per slice: 822kcals, protein 10g, carbs 85g, fat 49g, sat fat 29g, fibre 2g, sugar 64g, salt 0.8g

Wow, I never actually realised at the time just quite how calorific it is!

Anyway, what happened next is where it turns from looking a bit pathetic to quite hilarious.  The cake was finished just before Roz and B arrived, the lamb was in the oven and after taking it out to rest while the potatoes went back in to crisp up for 30 minutes, the cake had splodged a bit more.  It was hot in the kitchen and the jelly was obviously melting and sliding off with the slightly warm ganache and the heat in the room.  The problem was, it wouldn't fit in the fridge so we just had to leave it there.  We knew it would still taste the same.

We went to sit in the living room with our drinks while we waited for dinner to be ready.  When I went back through to finish dinner, it was like this...

 
And by the time we all sat down to eat there was a full on avalanche...

Not quite the beautiful masterpiece I planned!  As we hoped though, it still tasted good and we enjoyed the sloppy mess!

The cake itself was quite dense but had a lovely zesty flavour, the jelly was sloppy but perfectly orangey and the ganache was awesome!

Review - Three Choirs Vineyard by Katy

Today we have another guest post for you, this time from the lovely Katy who was inspired by Roz's winery tour post and kindly sent us this review of her own experience at a Vineyard in Gloucestershire.

Review of Three Choirs Vineyard, Gloucestershire

Hello Olive Dragonfly-ers!  Great to be over here on this epic blog  :)

I am writing a review for you because I recently went to the Three Choirs Vineyard in Gloucestershire for my lovely soon-to-be-husband’s birthday, and the whole idea was inspired by Roz and her wine related enthusiasm!

So, Three Choirs is the second largest vineyard in this country, it has 75 acres of vineyards producing around a quarter of a million bottles of wine a year, depending on the weather! As well as producing wine they have rooms (11 double or twin rooms) and an AA 4 star rosette restaurant. I knew we would want to *ahem* thoroughly taste all of the wines, and so we booked into a standard double room and the restaurant.

Visiting the vineyard and wandering around is free, and if you want to do a tour with a tasting then it is only £9 a person. We did the tour, which was really interesting and talked us through how they do wine making here! Neither of us had realised how much of a manual and labour-intensive process the wine making is – especially of their sparkling wine,  which accounts for 25% of their total wine production!

During the tour we tried four of their wines:

1. Classic Cuvée (£13.63) – this is their standard sparkling wine. We both really liked it and bought a couple of bottles! It is reminiscent of a Champagne rather than a Prosecco or Cava, I’d say, and quite dry.

2. Bacchus (£17.11) – one of their single grape variety wines rather than a mix. This was my favourite, a dry but fruity and very tasty white wine, worth the extra money!

3. May Hill (£8.81) – this is a blend, and apparently their most popular wine. It is a sweet white and definitely not my taste…

4. Ravens Hill (£10.37) – this is a blended light red, containing some Pinot Noir and other grapes. I liked it, I generally prefer deeper reds but I would enjoy this on its own on a sunny evening. Dan was not a fan at all!

We also tried four other wines in their shop, as they always have different wines that you can help yourself to as a taster! We loved their drier wines, and their blended English House Dry (£8.11) was very nice. I had a glass of their Siegerrebe (£15.11) before dinner and that was also really lovely! We were really very pleasantly surprised by English wine, as neither of us had tried them before.

With dinner we had a red wine that wasn’t by them, but their selection of guest wines was incredible! They admit they cannot do the variety of reds to go with the things on their food menu, like steak and venison. We also tried the Three Choirs Brandy (delicious) and Dan tried two of their ales (he was impressed by both). So that is the drinks sorted – delicious!

If, like us, you intend to appreciate the full variety of drinks they make here I suggest staying the night. If you are staying on a Friday or Saturday you have to stay for two nights, which is a bit annoying, so we chose to go on a Sunday. This turned out to be a good thing as we did a tour with 17 other people whereas on the Saturday there were apparently 80 people on the tour!

Our room was just lovely. Bearing in mind that Dan is still a student and I’m unemployed we don’t often stay in really nice places! So this was a real luxury for us. The bed was super comfy and massive, with deliciously smooth sheets. The bathroom was perfectly nice, I enjoyed a bath and the shower was really powerful. The room came with tea, ground coffee and a cafetiere (always a necessity for us!), wine glasses, coolers and a corkscrew (it’d be rude not to, right?) and homemade biscuits. However, the real crowning glory was our private patio overlooking the vineyard, it was just a lovely relaxed setting to enjoy a book, cup of coffee or glass of wine! The only downside I think we found is that when you turned on the hot water it made a bit of a racket… definitely something we can live with.

Luckily the standard rooms were a 2 minute walk to the restaurant, if you stayed in a more expensive and fancy lodge room it was maybe a ten minute walk? So, given that it chucked it down that evening, we made the right choice! The food at dinner was excellent, really tasty food well done, nothing too out there but different enough to be interesting.  Dan had scallops, followed by duck and I had beef bresaola followed by pork with black pudding. Unfortunately that’s as much detail as I can remember, but all of our dishes were delicious. We then shared a dessert of hazelnut meringue with a cocoa mousse and chocolate sauce (yes, my pudding memory is much better than my savoury one)!

Breakfast was also delicious, with a choice of a Full English, Eggs Benedict, Smoked Salmon and other classics cooked to order. A couple of little niggles here, like the fact the coffee was really quite weak and you had to do your own toast, and time it to when your breakfast came out! Overall though very tasty, I do love a good cooked breakfast!

All in all we had a very, very nice stay. We left very happy and chilled having spent some really nice quiet time together, a bit of a rarity at the moment with our wedding only 3 weeks away! I would definitely give a shout out to all of the staff we came into contact with, they were friendly, helpful and couldn’t do enough for you! It was an expensive night away, be prepared to spend £120 for bed and breakfast and a good £100 at dinner, and that’s before you treat yourself to a few bottles of their wine… I do think as a special occasion destination, though, it is really special and definitely worth it!

Katy xx

Sunday Summary & Sneak Peek

This week was a bit of a mixture with an anniversary DIY craft post on Monday.

On Tuesday, Roz shared her review of the new Hotel Chocolat shop in St Enoch with far too many tempting pictures!

Wednesday Roz shared a great Pin It Do It breakfast idea which a few of you have tried or plan to try out.

On Thursday I wrote about how horse riding and food got me out of a slump recently.  I'd been feeling a bit down lately and not been coping as well with all of the IVF 'thoughts'.  Getting out in the fresh air and spending some time with friends sharing delicious food really sorted me out!  You can tell by the massive grin on my face how being around horses makes me feel!

On Friday I told you all about how you can join in with a brilliant and fun way to help raise money for breast cancer charity, Breakthrough Breast Cancer as well as sharing what I got up to at an evening for bloggers to find out more with a sneaky what I wore stuck on the end ;)

On Friday afternoon I couldn't wait to share another holiday style post with you all.  The outfits I wore in Kota Kinabalu, including a fab £7 dress and my new favourite - a dragonfly print dress!!

Next week you can expect more on Roz's renovation plans with plenty more photos showing the inside of her gorgeous new townhouse, starting with the basement floor.  She's going to be updating us every Tuesday with more details :)

I cannot wait to show you all the fabrics I bought when we went to the huge Silk House in Borneo (and what I plan to do with them)!



We also have a brilliant guest post from the lovely Katy who JUST GOT MARRIED THIS WEEK!  Congratulations Katy!

I've also written a couple of my more personal posts, one of them about a hair decision I've made, so come back next week to find out what on earth that might be!  ;)