Dala Horses

This past week I have been working on making felt dala horse ornaments. I absolutely LOVE how they turned out. I made 20, each hand stitched by me :) Although a bit time consuming they are super easy to make. I copied a picture of a dala horse off the interweb and traced it onto red felt (40 times for 20 horses). I then stitched a design on each side of the horse, and whip stitched them together. I didn't have any cotton or fluff to fill them with, so I just used the scrap felt and it worked just fine. I still need to add some string to the top so that I can hang them on our Christmas tree (that we don't have yet, but making ornaments seems like a step in the right direction to getting a tree).

 Ah I love them so much. Ben and I have been playing with them since I have finished them. We stack them, put them in funny places, organize them, and generally just look at them and smile. The other night when I was brushing my teeth, I came back into the bedroom to see on my my little horse friends lying on my pillow! Ben also suggested that I make hats and scarfs for them....we'll see about that.

Here are some more pictures, just because they are so cute.

And here is the only picture with all of them. Pile of ponies!!

Pomegranate Chocolates

One of my favorite things about winter is pomegranates. I absolutely love eating them. As my family can attest I often peal a whole pomegranate and eat the seeds out of a bowl with a spoon :) I also love cooking with them. Pomegranate seeds are delicious on salads, or topped on chicken or fish- but really my favorite thing to make with pomegranate seeds is pomegranate chocolates.

This creation came about several years ago when my brother and I were making chocolate raspberries for christmas. After we had finished making all the chocolate raspberries we still had melted chocolate left over, so we did what normal people do and started scrounging through the kitchen to find more things to cover with chocolate. 

We came upon a bowl of pomegranate seeds, and thus pomegranate chocolates were created.  They really couldn't be easier to make and oh so delicious. All  you need are some little baking cups (smaller than the mini cupcake size), a bowl full of pomegranate seeds, and your favorite chocolate for melting. 

Fill the bottom of the baking cups with pomegranate seeds. I usually do this on a baking sheet so that I can easily place the in the fridge to cool. Next melt your chocolate (I always use dark, but use whatever kind of chocolate you like) in a double boiler- or like I do in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water. Once the chocolate is melted, using a teaspoon, spoon chocolate over the pomegranate seeds so that they are covered. Once finished covering the seeds, place one pomegranate seed on top. And that is it. 

A simple, delicious, and refreshing christmas treat. Now the hard part is to not eat them all before giving them to friends, family, and coworkers as gifts :) 

Oxford Weekend

Last week Ben and I headed up to Oxford for the Weekend. The main reason for the trip was to tour the MBA program there, and we decided to make a nice little weekend out of it. Oxford is stunningly beautiful. The buildings, grounds, gardens, and river walks are all breathtaking. The history is entirely fascinating and the culture is awe-inspiring. 

 We walked around several of the museums in Oxford, the building pictured above is the Natural History Museum, which was half under construction so sadly all the dinosaur exhibits were closed. The Science Museum was small but had an impressive collection of the first telescopes and microscopes, as well as an exhibit of the equipment used to make the first penicillin. The Science Museum also had a chalkboard that Albert Einstein has used while giving a lecture on general relativity at Oxford.

Pumpkin Pie Tartlets

Pumpkin is not a very popular ingredient here in England. In fact, none of my coworkers had ever eaten any dessert with pumpkin in it. No pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, no pumpkin cheese cake, no pumpkin bread, no pumpkin pie. Sure around Halloween people carve pumpkins, but there is no fall time obsession with pumpkin treats as there is in America. 

As soon as I found out that none of my coworkers had ever had a pumpkin dessert I decided to make little pumpkin pie tartlets. Another fact, cans of pumpkin puree are also difficult to find in London. I have heard that a few stores sell them, but none of them were close to me, so I made my own pumpkin puree out of a cute pumpkin I purchased at the store. 

Needless to say the tartlets turned out delicious and everyone loved them. They were all devoured quickly, and if I were to bring pumpkin pie to work again I would not do it in the miniature form. 

To make these little tartlets I followed a classic pumpkin pie recipe:

For the crust I just used store bought pie dough and rolled it out and used my Williams Sonoma tartlet baking set to mold my crust 

For the filling :

1 cups Pumpkin puree 

1/2 cups brown sugar

3 tsp mixed spice or pumpkin spice

2 eggs

1/2 cup heavy cream 

Top with freshly whipped whip cream (fun fact: I had to whip the whipped cream by hand with a fork when I made these for my coworkers, as there was no whisk, an certainly no hand mixer at work :) ) 

This made approximately 24 miniature tartlets. 

Saturday Exploration

Today I spent the afternoon wondering around Westbourne Grove. This area is near Portobello Road (which has a big market) and located near Notting Hill. There are all sorts of stores,  restaurants, cafes, and pretty buildings to look at. I took some pictures of the more vibrant and tasty things :) 

Pretty dress made out of leaves and flowers in the window of a dry clear and clothing repair shop. Their speciality is designer clothing. 

Wolf & Badger is a store that sells jewelry, clothing, and shoes of up and coming designers. It is like an art studio, but for clothing. They have a very interesting and eclectic mix of stuff. 

A vintage Fiat! My favorite car. If I could have any car this would be it. It is so cute and every time I see one (vintage or new) I smile. This one was parked across from Ottolenghi (pictured below) 

A window full of treats. This restaurant is Ottolenghi and is on our list of places to try. We have heard that their food is absoluetly delicious, and I can hardly wait to go and get a yummy meal.  

Bank Holiday

Monday was a bank holiday.  I had a few errands to run and decided to handle them in Covent Garden. Covent Garden is a really neat area with lots of shopping, cafes, markets, theaters, and restaurants. It has several street that are pedestrian only so it is really easy to get around.

As I was running my errands I decided to stop by Laduree and treat my self to a pan au chocolate. This is probably the happiest bakery you could go to. It is so colorful and everything looks simply amazing. Sadly I ate my pan au chocolate before I could snap a picture...but when you come visit you can look at all the pretty pastries and treats for yourself (and eat some as well).

I also stopped by Waterstones, which is a book store here. I could wonder through this book store for hours. I loved the wall of staff recommendations. All the books have such beautiful covers. I want them all to just sit on my bookshelf and look pretty.

So all in all Covent Garden is a super cool area of London. Great for shopping, eating, and simply wondering around. We can go when you come visit.

Busy Week

It is surprising how busy I can get even without work or school to occupy my time. This past several days have been very busy. We did lots of socializing with people in our ward, went to a modern art exhibit (pictured above), I had my internship, found a new hair salon, tried to buy new shoes (2 times, both unsuccessful), went to a book club, bought a desk off of gumtree (like craigslist, but for London), and spent several hours at vodafone trying (unsuccessfully) to get my phone working. All in all it has been a busy past couple of days.

Most importantly I was able to get my hair cut. It was getting awkward, mullety, and puffy. Not a good combination, especially when it is humid a fair amount of the time. I found a salon using reviews on yelp, and I was very happy with my stylist. I will defiantly go back there next time I need a trim, which with short hair will probably mean next month.

We also purchased our first piece of furniture this week! A new to us desk :) It is very nice and we love it. It is glass with black metal frame legs. We saw it at Habitat and loved it, but really didn't love the price, but we found one on gumtree for less than half the price. The tricky thing about buying big pieces of furniture is transport. As we don't have a car, we have to be creative. Sadly we couldn't carry the desk on the tube at it is glass and weighs 60 or 70 pounds. We instead we booked an Addison Lee taxi van and were able to get it to fit in the back.

So, our week has been busy. So far we don't have any weekend plans, but I am sure that we will come up with something fun to do :)

Weekend in Review

My weekend was great. Our laundry is caught up, we did some sight seeing, and most importantly relaxed, ate some good food, and took a nap. Here is a little break down of what we accomplished this weekend.

Tate Modern- This amazing museum is located across the Millennium Bridge from St. Paul's Cathedral. The collection of art is really stunning, but just as stunning is the view from their many balconies over looking the Thames and St. Paul's Cathedral.

Millennium Bridge- A quick walk that has amazing views. You can get a good view of London Bridge, and there are lots of vendors selling roasted nuts, so it smells nice as well.

St. Paul's Cathedral- A truly stunning building. We have passed it many times and ever time I am in awe. It is beautiful, and massive. Here is a picture from Tate Modern, over looking the Millennium Bridge, and St. Paul's Cathedral.

John Lewis- This is a department store I stopped by while looking for a kitchen trash can. It is a massive department store that is fun to look around in, however I didn't find a trash can that I loved. I'll just have to keep on looking.

Church- The major event of Sunday was church. A major plus is that the tube station for the Hyde Park Ward is on the same line as the stop nearest our house. A downside is that it still takes 45 minuets to get to church. The Hyde Park Ward is located on Exhibition Road which is home to many of the London Museums (Natural History, Science, Victoria and Albert). The ward is also a five minute walk to Hyde Park. It is definitely a great area to spend a Sunday afternoon in.

New Washer/Dryer

Behold, our new (to us) washer/dryer. We lasted all of three weeks before we caved and bought a washer/dryer off of gumtree (a UK classified site). It is a lot of work to have to air dry clothing, and after having clothes laying out to dry everywhere in our apartment all the time we decided to treat ourselves to washer dryer combo.

Most apartments have the washing machine in the kitchen, which means that there is not usually enough room for a washing machine and a dryer. Our apartment came with a washing machine, but we talked to our landlord and asked if we could replace it with a washer/dryer. He said that that would be fine and now here we are.

It fits perfectly into the spot where the old washing machine was and I think it is very clever to combine the washer and dryer. Now we don't have to change our our clothes into the dryer. I am now looking forward to doing all the laundry that has been piling up :)

Hooray for clean and dry clothing!

Our London Apartment

Hello Friends. Here is a first look at our sparsely furnished London apartment. The above picture is the view from our bedroom, which I have not pictured as it is a complete mess at the moment. We don't have a dresser so our clothes are in piles on the floor and in suitcases. We also don't have a table so our mail and paperwork is also in piles all over the bedroom floor. But the view from the bedroom is nice :)

Our apartment consists of a very large bedroom, a decent size bathroom, a good sized kitchen, a tiny living room, and a good sized patio. There is a pop up table in the kitchen, but when it is up there is no access to the fridge- we have solved this by eating on the bed. We are looking through the classifieds everyday and are hoping to find a nice couch in the near future.

One nice thing about our apartment is the very high ceilings.  They allow for double high windows that let in lots of light which is great. There is a lot to be done to our little apartment before it feels like our home, and not just a place we are staying, and I look forward to decorating and making this place our home.

Enjoy the pictures :)

Progress Report: London

We have successfully moved into our new apartment, err I mean flat, in London. The past few weeks have been very busy. Since we arrived we have had to set up new back accounts, get new phone numbers, find an apartment, register for school, all while applying for jobs. It turns out these types of errands take a lot of time and often several days before everything is worked out. 

Thankfully now everything is settling down. I am starting fashion design school this fall, we have a lovely apartment, and now we are turning our focus to finding jobs and internships. 

We are also having to get our new apartment set up. Pictured above is all of our belongings, which mostly consists of clothing, computers, and books. Our flat came partially furnished, but very very partially. We are still living out of suitcases and our mattress have been pulling triple duty as a dining table, sofa, and bed. We are slowing buying things for the kitchen, and yesterday we ordered several things off of Amazon :) 

The next phase will be figuring out how to move furniture that we purchase off of the classifies. I think you can rent a man with a van, but I need to do further investigating. It is exciting to move into a new apartment and have a clean slate to start decorating with. I am excited for this journey that my husband and I have started and I hope that you will take pleasure in coming along for the ride. 

p.s. As a side note, the black suitcase barely made it. By the time we moved into our apartment it only had one wheel and the other wheel was half gone...it did not take well to the streets of London. Goodbye black suitcase, you served us well. 

The Adventure of Moving

Last week my husband and I decided that we were going to move to London. We had been talking about moving for months. But last week we reached the point where we had no more excuses not to go on an adventure and experience something completely different. If you are wondering, we don't have any jobs lined up, or masters degree programs to start, but why should small things like that hold us back? We decided that we had enough in saving to take several months , if needed, to find jobs and establish ourselves.

The night we decided to just up and move to a different county was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. All the what if's started to pop into my head. What if we couldn't find jobs? What if we run out of money? What if we have a difficult time adapting? There are a lot of ways that this could go wrong. However we decided that even though there is a possibility of failure, we are hard workers and we want to make this work.

To make things even more exciting, we decided that we wanted to move in one month. So we bought our tickets and started to make extensive lists of everything that needed to be done and who was going to do what.

To get a glimpse of what our next month is going to look like, here are a few items off of our list.

• Sell all of our furniture
• Sell car
• Clean out closets
• Carefully select books to take with us, donate the rest to the library

Basically we will be going though everything we own and either decided weather to sell it, donate it, give it to a friend or family member, or take it with us. Shouldn't be to hard...right?