I'm so obsessive. (part two!)

It's time for yet another edition of Things I'm Currently Obsessed With!

iPhone!

My Christmas present to myself this year was an iPhone, as my upgrade was due January 1st. I'm in love. I can access the internet anywhere (not remotely helping my already crippling Facebook addiction), and it's so shiny and sleek and futuristic and amazing.

Shoe sales!
Thank you, New Look, and your £5 shoes! I really need a bigger wardrobe.

Glittens!
I've wanted some of these glove/mitten hybrids for a while, and luckily Santa listened and rewarded me with these, from Accessorize. Snuggly, practical and pretty.






Taking photos of the snow:
I hate walking in it. I hate driving in it. I hate standing in it. But goddamn, it's pretty.
And I really hope it's gone for good now.

Who doesn't love a makeover?

I've had a super quiet, kind of boring weekend so far (but I AM going to go for a walk soon, I promise!) but one thing I have achieved is finally giving this blog a PROPER layout.

As a bit of a graphics geek, it shames me how long I've had the default layout up here. I've been working on it for months but I've never come up with anything that I felt happy with, but today the little fairies that control my pencil were obviously in a good mood as I finally AM happy. Et voila! What do you think?

Sadly, I do not own that dress. But I do own those shoes!

In other news, I've also set up an RSS Feed so you can follow my blog on LiveJournal, if you are so inclined, or if not, you can follow it on Feedburner, too.

Anyway. What did you get up to this weekend?

Making jewellery

What better way to spend a dreary Saturday than watching lots of telly and catching up on jewellery orders?

(Yes, I do make my jewellery over my laptop keyboard. Yes, I do constantly get beads and bits stuck under the keys. Yes, when my last laptop massively overheated, this was partially to blame. Should really change that habit. Probably won't.)
It's kept me busy today - expect some new bits to be making their way to my Etsy very soon - including something rather exciting and new that I can't wait to wear myself. :)

Down with jeans!

There's a line in the 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother where Barney, whilst extolling the virtues of suits, sings 'Send casual Fridays down the laundry chute...' (Nothing suits me like a suit!)

I love it, not just because any time NPH is singing and dancing on my screen is A-OK with me, but because it's so true. I hate casual Fridays. I don't do casual. I wear skirts and dresses 95% of the time, and the other 5% I spend in tracksuit bottoms and pyjamas. One of which I am wearing right now. Can you guess? (Yeah, it's totally jim-jams. God love jim-jams.)

My favourite thing to wear to work is a tea dress, accessorised with a cardi, tights and killer heels. I only have a couple of tea dresses though, so have been on the lookout for new ones for some time.

STEP UP, DOROTHY PERKINS.





I have such a floral fetish at the moment, and it seems like Dotty Ps have decided to take their latest line STRAIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD. Wow.

However, I find this a problem, because if DP just had one dress I liked, I would buy it. But they have about fifty dresses I like, and NONE of them are in the sale. And I have a no-sale pact for January, so I'm just going to have to dream of them until February. Although, if I bought all of the above, I'd be looking at about £400. Ouch.

But, still. I want them. All. Now. Please?

Why my head is never cold.

I love hats.

No, really, I do. I have more hats than anyone else I know, and it has been this way for a long time. Back when I was 13 or 14, hats were not fashionable. You might have worn a plain beanie when it was cold (I had an Arsenal one that I sometimes wore, despite the fact that I never ever gave a damn about football, but I was assured it was cool). However, this was about the time when the stars of teen American TV lived in hats. Anyone remember Alex Mack?

Sister Sister?

Or even... Blossom?

(Although actually I was way more like Blossom's BFF, Six, because I can talk really really really fast without taking a breath for ages, it's a gift.)

Hats, hats, hats, all the time, hats! So, my impressionable young brain became obsessed with the concept of wearing hats all the time, and as a result I started collecting them. I had a couple of Samuel L.Jackson style Kangol hats that looked really... well, bad. But I loved them, and even though my fashion sense has improved (thank god), my love of hats has never gone away.

See though, this is one of the things I love about winter, because it’s an excuse to wear hats aaaall the time. And I have a lot of hats. A lot.






That's maybe half my collection.

Note to self: buy less hats.

Alcoholic adventures in baking!

Unsurprisingly, I haven't had much time to blog this last week. My system has been adjusting to life back at work. I really like my job, but whenever I don't have to work, I revert back to my student sleeping patterns frighteningly quickly. If I was an animal, I would definitely be nocturnal. A bat, or something. Anyway, after nearly two weeks of going to bed at 3am and getting up at midday, rediscovering the Seven AMs was just no fun at all. Add mad busyness at work preparing for a new campaign to the frankly annoying (albeit pretty) blanket of snow covering the nation, and you're looking at one tired blogger. Tired and cold, actually.

Anyway, despite the fact that we're all trying to detox at the moment because that is what one does in January (this year, though, I'm horrible at it - I might just have a February detox instead as there is still more pizza in the world I need to inhale), I wanted to post the dessert I made on New Years Eve.

If you're feeling glum because it's cold outside, this is the perfect dessert. It's rich, decadent and the booze factor makes it just a little bit naughty. Also it's pretty.

Baileys Cheesecake Brownies
(recipe taken from here)Brownie mixture

• 110 g dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa)
• 110 g butter
• 120 g vanilla sugar (or caster sugar)
• 60 g plain flour
• 2 eggs
• glug of Baileys

Cheesecake mixture

• 225 g cream cheese
• 40 g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• another generous glug of Baileys

1) Preheat the oven to 150oc then line a 23 cm/8 inch square cake tin with baking parchment. Melt the chocolate with the butter in the microwave or a bain marie. Remove from the heat, add the sugar and stir then set aside to cool.

2) While the chocolate mixture is cooling, make your cheescake mixture in a separate bowl. Beat the cream cheese and sugar together. Add the egg and mix then stir in the Baileys until all is well combined.

3) Return to your chocolate mixture and beat the eggs one at a time into the brownie mixture, beating until it is glossy. Stir in the Baileys until well combined then gradually fold in the flour then pour into the cake tin.

4) Top the levelled brownie mixture with the cheesecake mixture and using a knife, gently swirl it into the chocolate mixture. If you're struggling, just try and lift the chocolate mixture up and dollop it back onto the top, you should get a good marbled effect.

5) Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until just set in the middle. Leave to cool in the tin for at least 15-20 minutes before cutting into squares and serving.

These are mad quick to make and vanished pretty much instantly. They have a gorgeous, gooey texture - a good reason to make sure you wait until they are cold before removing them from the tin. I've made the mistake of not waiting before with a similar recipe, and if you put something of this consistency on a cooling tray when it's still warm, the middle all falls through. Not fun to clean up.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2010!!

As much as I love Christmas, my heart has always belonged to New Year's Eve. After all the stress and expense of Christmas, it's so nice to have a night with all my friends. Also, dressing up for a big event is one of my favourite things to do ever. If I didn't like sleeping so much, I'd be happy to spend every day in a pretty dress with perfectly coiffed locks, false eyelashes and killer heels.

(Sidenote: I appear to have finally learned to walk in heels this year! I'm not sure how it happens, but suddenly I can last all night in 4.5 inch heels. Amazing!)

This year, my NYE consisted of a civilised dinner party with a few of my closest friends. The food was amazing - I brought dessert, of course. Stay tuned for a post on that, hurrah. It all seemed very grown-up, except of course we all ended up drinking too much wine and dancing around my friend Sarah's living room.

I loved how perfect my ringlets turned out. :)

So, new year, new decade, and that means resolution time! I always have mixed success with my resolutions, but this year I am determined to get fit and live a healthier life. Although this means giving up on all the buttery cakes and desserts that I love sooo much (at least for a while), I got two great books on low-fat desserts for Christmas so all is not lost. This isn't going to turn into a diet blog, I promise.

Other resolutions include trying to be slightly more sensible with money... oh, and to learn to like red wine. A very important life skill, I think you'll agree.

I hope you all had a great Christmas break! What are your resolutions?