If you want to know how bad croissants are for you, make your own...

When I started off this blog the intention was for it to be a blog about my knitting projects. However, that seems to be giving way lately to my culinary endeavours. Although I am knitting a lot and have added a few bits to my Etsy and Misi shops this week, I don't feel particularly inspired to write about it. I do , however, feel inspired to write about how homemade croissants require you to take an entire 250g block of butter, smack it with a rolling pin, and then fold it into the middle of a ball of pastry. I know nobody thinks that croissants are the healthiest thing in the world, but I seriously wouldn't have believed the amount of butter that's in them had I not taken them out of the oven and gasped in disbelief at them swimming in it.

I don't mean this as any kind of a negative thing. They taste the way they do for a reason, and if there was less butter in them, they would probably taste a lot less awesome. Also, I obviously didn't care that much as I went on to add chocolate to mine. They were yummy :-)

And speaking of butter, we made our own for the first time last week! Tesco had a load of double cream reduced to 45p for 600ml, so we thought we'd give it a go and it's SO easy, and ridiculously nice. Yes, we are very proud of ourselves.

When making butter, for those who haven't made it themselves, you get lots of buttermilk which is basically the liquid part of the cream, and with this we made awesome buttermilk scones, and even if you never make your own butter, you should make the scones because they are great. So great, in fact, that we ate them before I remembered to take a photo!

Finally on the 'I made it myself' front, I made lemon curd for the first time this week as well. Again, takes ages (croissants take like, twelve hours.Literally. Lemon curd is nowhere near as long but just a lot of 'simmering in a bowl over a pan of hot water and occasionally stirring it to see if it's thick enough yet'), but so worth it in the end. Especially if you are a special kind of mad person who makes their own croissants as well and then you can dip the croissants in the lemon curd and it's just all kinds of awesome.

There's loads else I want to talk about (like the fact that I gave away 25 of our 30 tomato plants via Freecycle today and gentleman who took the last lot away brought me 2 bunches of tulips in return. Sweet), but mostly this book:

I bought about 30 books from eBay a while back all featuring various crafts and related activities and this is pretty much my favourite I think, primarily for this page:

My disgusting photography skills mean you probably can't really see it, so I'll tell you it's a page full of sweet recipes. Amazing. I will probably be making these all at some point over the next few weeks, so watch this space!

On the knitting related front, I am currently knitting a Christmas stocking. Yes, I know it's April, but what can I say? Sometimes the fancy takes hold and there's nothing I can do. I did finish a turtle mobile today though. You can find it here, and it's pretty cute if I do say so myself!

The Most Exciting Earnings Ever!

Today started off a little stressfully to be honest. I had a meeting at work to talk about what will happen when I go back after maternity leave - it won't happen till September so thankfully I still have some time to wrap my head around the idea of not being home with a small gorgeous baby all day! After that I came home, hung out with aforementioned baby and hubby for a while, and thought I'd check my email quickly before heading out to do some more househunting. I checked my email, and literally started shrieking because......today (after pretty much giving up on ever selling anything) I had my first Etsy sale!

 

I honestly don't think I've been as excited to have earned money since I was a kid, and although I love my (previously mentioned) 'proper job', this is the first money I've made in a loooooong time from the work of my own hands and it feels amazingly rewarding to know that somebody thought something I made was good enough to spend their own hard earned money on! I spent the evening packing it up for postage tomorrow so now I just have to wait with baited breath and hope that my first ever customer loves her purchase as much as I do. I am literally on tenterhooks, and now I'm off to rush about the house and shriek some more.

 

And because I'm not one to miss an opportunity for shameless self-promotion, if you think he looks adorable, I can make you your own, just click here!