Christmas Hamper

Since the Honey at my Wedding was a great success it's given Me, my Mum and Sister the taste for homemade goods so we planed on making a Christmas hamper for Aunties and Uncle for Christmas.

My Mum provided the Honey, made and decorated a Christmas Cake and Preserve as well as and cultivating and bottling her Homemade Ginger Beer (such an amazing drink that I must try and start my own batch this year).
My Sister has been perfecting her skills as a Chocolatier and after a very excited corse decided to make some luxurious chocs for the Hamper. My Sister's new blog-Emma's Fancies show's her in action doing the finishing touched.

I contributed with:
Homemade Lemonade
I've had great fun making Lemonade last summer and am addicted to the Sloe Gin which we create ever year but due to the shortage of Sloe's this year I'm going to stick to making some Lemonade for the hamper although it's not very Christmassy. I also made some labels with my wonderful husbands Illustration.

Seed packets
I'm also fascinated with collecting seed so this October I collected a bunch on Munchkin seeds and packaged them up as gifts, hopefully this year everyone will be tempted to give them a go and grow Munchkins for Halloween.

Homemade Bath Bombs.
Although handmade edible goodies are traditional my Aunty loves bath stuff and I though it would add a girly feel to the hamper so bought some Bath Bombs and Bath Melts from bathbomb.biz and had great fun making and packaging them up for the hamper (a gift for me and for the hamper) well worth a try.

Peppermint Creams.
One of my favourite cook books (which also contains the homemade lemonade recipe) has peppermint creams which are so easy to make and such a lovely treat so last minute I thought why not and made a batch for the hamper.

I enjoyed making the hamper so much I hope to keep making things through 2013. Next on the list to try is fudge :)

Next year I plan to perfect my winter remedy teabag- it didn't make it into the hamper this year as I couldn't get it strong enough but here's some work in progress pictures.

Lots to catch up on

It's been so long and so much has happened!

June was a very hectic and exciting time. Work's started to get very busy, I got married and headed straight on our Honeymoon to Italy.

Although we've had a small brake in the new year at work we've still been very busy selling and delivering the show to broadcasters around the world as well as creating new content to keep interest going in the show so there's been a lot of paperwork to do as well as trying our best to prepare for the new series, so we've not really had much of a brake.

Planning for the wedding was a major task and we ended up forgetting to do half the things we wanted to do but despite that we had a fantastic day.


Louis my husband, did a fantastic job of creating all the table names. We came up with some of our favourite films and picked a location within the film to name the table after. Because of his amazing illustrations most people managed to figure them out except the head table which we named 'The Seminole Ritz Miami', can you guess where this location is in one of our favourite films?


My Mum and Dad have been keeping bees for about a year and I've found them fascinating especially since I've been helping out (I've not been stung yet!), so I couldn't resist it and pinched all their first year Honey as Wedding favours and had great fun creating the label and seals. (Don't tell Mam & Dad but I can't wait to package up the next batch).

My Sister did an amazing job of creating and decorating our Wedding cake (as well as doing my make up on the day). I'd asked for lace, ribbon, pearls, vintage flowers and she managed to exceed expectations (the flowers were so detailed). Not only the main Wedding cake but she also made 2 different deserts for our 100 guests (superwoman as she also has a 19 month old boisterous baby boy too)!

Here are some other things I must mention that made the day special:

We had our ceremony at St Fagans at the Oakdale Institute (possibly where my great grandfather may have gone to socialise when he worked in the mines) and as well as being an historical and beautiful place the Museum were very helpful and great to deal with. A fantastic site to visit if your ever near Cardiff to visit for a day out or just to go for a picnic.

A main feature that added to the day was the 1948 American Chrysler Windsor from Happy Days Car. Not only did the car look and smell amazing (polish and leather) but the driver (who also owns and loves the car) was so professional and friendly he instantly put me to ease and the morning went smoothly (and my Dad fell in love with the car too).

We owe a huge thanks to Brother Ray who started the partying with their amazing band, can't recommend these guys enough you must visit their youtube page.

Honeymoon in Italy
Straight after the Wedding we headed off on our Honeymoon to Italy.
We spent the first 3 days falling in love with Florence, then made our way to Seiena then onto Rome for 3 hectic days to then spend our last week on the Amalfi Coast. We had a fantastic time.

One of my highlights was touching Michelangelo's Cristo della Minerva statue at the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church in Rome.

A warm May weekend

I've had a lovely weekend at home with my Mam, Sister and her little boy Gruffydd.
It was my fiancé's Stag do this weekend so I went home back to Merthyr, South Wales to help my Mother with bunting, gardening and just to enjoy some girly time together and we were lucky enough to get some sunshine so i had to take some pictures. It's really starting to feel like summer is trying to make an appearance- fingers crossed June will be lovely and warm.

Thought I share the finished image that was on Emma's t-shirt. I was really happy with it, thought it looked just like her and had the Diva vibe I was going for. 

When looking though some old folders I found my Sister's Hen Party pictures. 

I put together her outfit and designed her T-Shirt which I was quite pleased with, along with stencil to faint on everyone who wanted get involved so thought I'd share it with you. She had a great night and I think she loved the outfit :)

Fabric Flower

Just a quick little update- I've been busy organising, scheduling and budgeting my Wedding (by the way the budget is looking very colourful) but I've managed to potter about with fabric and making some fabric flowers- here's one I made earlier ;)

Sgwd Gwladus Waterfall

007_Waterfall-Sgwd Gwladus, a photo by sarahpowski on Flickr.

Last weekend I managed to go on another photography walk with Vale Boy (Clive) to take photo's of the beautiful Sgwd Gwladus waterfalls in South Wales. It was a lovely sunny Sunday and although Clive was a bit disappointed it wasn't as full as it usually is we where lucky enough to be the only one's there at the time so managed to take some lovely shots standing in the middle of the river. This is my first attempt of editing my RAW's and I'm quite please with them- it's encouraged me to get out and do more (lots of room for improvement).