Ebay goodies!

Hey lovely readers, I said I would let you know when I had listed my things on ebay so here you go! If you've any questions please contact me! There are lots of items that have been featured on this blog for sale.

Take a look!

EDIT: All items are now available with international shipping!

I'm glad so many of you liked the Victoria Sponge recipe! Thanks for the feedback! Coming soon I have some ASOS goodies to share with you and a review of the Models Own products I bought in their 50% off sale.

The Great British Bake Off: Victoria Sandwich Cake.

The Great British Bake Off has started playing on BBC two. The first episode was all about cake. Perfect start! The amateur bakers made some amazing looking cakes. I am definitely going to try the brownie meringue and raspberry cream cake. And wow the cinnamon, banana and caramel cake looked amazing. Did anyone else watch the show? If you're from the UK you can watch it on BBC iplayer.

One of the judges is Mary Berry, who I get many of my classic recipies from. It was one of the cakes baked in the programme. I thought I would share her recipe for one of the most basic but delicious truly British Cake, the Victoria Sandwich. It's a very light sponge which goes brilliantly with the heavy double cream and tangy jam.

Ingredients:

• 225g/8oz butter or margarine, softened

• 225g/8oz caster sugar

• 4 eggs

• 225g/8oz self-raising flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

For the filling and topping

• 4 tbsp strawberry or raspberry jam

• a little caster sugar

Tins

• 2 loose bottomed 20cm/8in sandwich tins, 4 cm deep

Method:

1. Lightly grease the tins and line the bases with non-stick baking parchment. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2. Measure the butter or margarine, sugar, eggs, flour, and baking powder into a large bowl and beat for about two minutes, until just blended; an electric mixer is best for this, but of course you can also beat by hand with a wooden spoon.

3. Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared tins and level the surface with the back of a spoon or a plastic spatula.

4. Bake for about 25 minutes, until well risen and golden. The tops of the cakes should spring back when pressed lightly with a finger. Leave the cakes to cool in the tins for a few minutes, then run a small palette knife or blunt knife around the edge of the tins to fee the sides of the cakes. Turn the cakes out on to a wire rack, peel off the paper and leave to cool completely.

5. Choose the cake with the best top, then put the other cake top downwards on to a serving plate. Spread with the jam, put the other cake on top (top upwards) and sprinkle with caster sugar to serve.

It's not in the recipe but I fancied some icing on the top instead of sprinkled sugar so I just mixed the icing sugar with a drop of water and drizzled on top. Yum! This cake was a big hit, everyone loved it and it's so simple to make. It's a really good starter cake if you haven't done much baking before. Enjoy!

Photography by Sarah Kane.

My best friend is a wonderfully talented photographer. She recently uploaded photos from our trip to Paris so I thought it would be a good time to give her a little appreciation. As a best friend I may well easily be biased but all it takes is one look at her flickr or website to see the amount of talent she has. If you love crisp, interesting and often ridiculously cute (see: Moses, her charismatic kitty) check her out. If I ever get married she is definitely being hired as my photographer. If you're getting married you should hire her as yours. Shameless promotion here, she is amazing. Sarah took my graduation photos for me as well and it's lovely to have these stunners instead of the generic fake books background shots you see all the time.

Sarah and I are soon embarking on a joint project involving pin ups and zombies so it's clearly going to be awesome. I can't wait to share it with you all.

You can check Sarah out on her blog, her website and her flickr.

You can see some of her lovely shots of our trip here and here. She is good at documenting my deep love for candy floss, or cotton candy as it's called in the States.

Lace, pearls and hearts.

I bough this dress before I went to Paris. I love it, so I thought I'd share! I've very new things to show you since I am currently broke and needing to save money! I'll be selling things on ebay soon including the Chanel earrings in this post (sterilised of course) so I'll let you know once everything is up.

Isn't the giant lollypop amazing? It's filled with normal sized lollies, my sister won it at a fair. The sad thing is to get the little lollies out you have to open it :( but chupa chups are amazing so it's probably worth it.



Dress - A-wear
Pearls - Vintage
Tights - Accessorize
Shoes - Dorothy Perkins
Bag - Ladurée
Earrings - Chanel











I also have some fun news, my favorite blogger is coming to stay with me from the 3rd of September! So be prepared for lots of fun posts involving me and the wonderful MessyCarla. I cannot wait!

Preparing for autumn...

I know I spend every season wishing it was the next one but I really can't wait for autumn. I absolutely dread winter, and as much as I love summer and long, bright evenings I hate dressing for it. I hate summer clothes. I love tights, boots, layers, scarves. Bring it on. I'm already dressing in more muted tones in preparation. To be honest we have just had the dullest July on record and summer is pretty much over anyway.





Dress - Topshop
Scarf - Topshop
Jacket - Dunnes
Tights - Accessorize
Bag - ASOS
Necklace - Accesorize
Rings - Topshop
Shoes - Topshop



I love these flats. I had wanted them for ages but thought they were sold out then last week I found them in my size down from £28 to £15 and they scanned through at £7. I got student discount so they cost me a grand total of £6.30, real leather too!






Surprisingly most of this outfit is from Topshop. I love it but resent paying so much for things that aren't worth the quality. I bought an amazing wolf head ring from there recently and the whole wolf fell off somewhere and now I'm just left with a bronze band that turns my finger green.

I was really glad to find this dress in store. Coming across size 16s is a rarity there! That reminds me, I was in Primark a few days ago when a woman looking at pajamas remarked "These are all 16-18! Doesn't any care about skinny people?!" followed by some vulgarity I won't repeat here. It made me look because this woman was clearly at least a size 14-16. Ah well, you can't please everyone!

Lastly, I made cupcakes for a party last night, glitter everywhere!