A Little Bazaar!

I'm so excited! A couple of days ago a friend and I were accepted for A Little Bazaar!
A Little Bazaar is run by two lovely ladies through a variety of venues across London, and this coming Sunday (6th December) Laia and I will be selling our wares in Shepherd's Bush!
I will be selling a whole host of vegan goodies, including:









Plus waffles, cookies and other secret sweeties!


I hope lots of people can come down and purchase our lovely little things! Laia will be selling some top notch bags, necklaces and plenty of other unbelievably cute and amazing accessories!


A Little Bazaar will be held at Defector's Weld, 170 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush- the nearest tube is Shepherd's Bush (central line) but it is also close to Shepherd's Bush Market, and Shepherd's Bush overground station. It runs from 12-6pm and is free entry! So you can really splash out, treat yourselves and others to some handmade personal presents!


For more information about A Little Bazaar:
http://www.alittlebazaar.co.uk/

Crystal.

This past week has been filled with so many ups and downs; from being pretty low after what felt like all the 'important' things in life were falling apart (job, home...) and then spending Saturday with my beautiful and inspiring friend Chloe, sat in a wonderful pub in Brixton while she sold some lovely little diaries, purses and address books.

Since moving further into London, finishing University and being dumped into the 'real' world, it's a bit of a shock to say the least. At Uni I had my loan, my bursary and a part time job which usually took up at least 20 hours of my week. So money was never really a problem; I had enough to buy some nice things, drink coffee whenever I wanted, and buy most of the materials that I needed. I had a studio, I lived in a cute suburban town with friends nearby.

Suffice to say that all those lovely things changed when I moved to New Cross Gate, and the last three months have been somewhat of a struggle. But these last few days I can start to see some sunlight and have become inspired, thinking about all of the things that I want to do to make me happy. I changed my job (although the first two weeks were very hard and every other day I thought about going for lunch and never returning), I want to start having exhibitions again, and I want to carry on making nice things and selling sweet things at various craft fairs.

So- this week I have been experimenting with different things to sell at the fairs, I will be a knitting commuter and I will start a new log of inspiration, continue reading medical books and art theory and try to drown myself in things that make me happy.

First experiment with Cupcake Jars:

These are layers of cake and frosting in a jar which you can take away and eat with a spoon!

They need some work so that the jars are filled and don't look so pooey inside. They taste good though! I made one with chocolate cake and cinnamon icing, and another with chocolate cake and peanut butter icing. My favourite is peanut butter, oh my god that icing tastes good!

Another exciting thing that I did this week, was buy MAKE UP! I had a brief fling with make up when I was 14, which lasted a couple of years before I started college, let my arse hang out of my jeans, stopped brushing my hair and all make up went out of the window. A few years ago I introduced mascara back into my 'beauty routine' and two days ago I went to the wonderful B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful and pleaded for HELP! The amazing girl applied various creams and potions to my face, explaining how each product worked and how I could apply it, and helped me select the most important products. I bought tinted moisturiser, eyeliner, lipstick and cleanser. It felt strange at first, and when I looked in the mirror I thought I looked like a drag queen, but I am getting used to it and it's kind of fun! I even want to buy blusher and powder and concealer!

I'll let you guys know when I get some dates organised for craft fairs, and update with my sweet experiments!

https://www.bnevertoobusytobebeautiful.co.uk/

Cat and Cake.

Chocolate avocado cake, banana cake, chocolate avocado cake.

Cinnamon buttercream.

Chocolate ganache&sprinkles.

Ginger and Plum Tofu.

My new favourite thing to do is make lots of tofu for dinner, and save some for lunch the next day. I cheated and bought a marinade- ginger and plum, yum!- sliced the tofu into fairly slim triangles and grilled for around 15 minutes, turning every so often. In a frying pan I melted some butter, then threw in half a bag of spinach, allowing it to wilt gently, whilst seasoning and grating nutmeg over. When the tofu is nearly cooked, I threw a handful of cashews under the grill with it so they are slightly tangy and crunchy, then serve with plenty of salad. Delish!

Home made ravioli and garlic bread.

I took a little break since Vegan MoFo, and haven't been doing too much cooking lately (at least no blog-worthy meals!) but recently I changed jobs and have a few more dinner times free to cook things, which has been nice. Mostly they have been consisting of vegetable in various sauces and spices, so it's been lovely having some goodness back in my diet. Not that I don't think my houmous diet was good- oh it was GOOD- it isn't so good for my immune system, especially as the temperature has dropped in the last couple of weeks!

So me and Mr T made ravioli last weekend; he even bought a super cute pasta machine! I can't quite remember the recipe, and we totally stole the recipes from both Gordan Ramsey and Maple Spice's blog! For the mixture Mr Ramsey gave us a great demonstration (his videos on The F Word are brilliant! Simple, no fuss, I love them!) and consisted of spinachy, buttery nutmegy, melting-in-your-mouth, tossed with toasted pine nuts piles of delish! The ingredients and method for the ravioli can be found at Deb's blog (link below) and were so simple and fun to make! We also used her garlic bread recipe. All in all a buttery garlicy deliciously indulgent dinner, which we followed with a piece of strawberry cheesecake and can be found in the freezers in Holland and Barratt. Go find all these nice things and eat them!

www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/f-word

http://www.maplespice.com/