Saturday 29 September 2012

The truth about shabby chic


For some pieces of furniture, shabby chic comes natural. This stool belonged to my grandma.

Alright. You may not believe it, but I baked loads... before I started this blog. It just all comes together at the moment, moving flats and all.

So, in order to give this blog some life, some content, something, I decided to share my renovation experience.

The word of the year/past years when it comes to decorating surely is "shabby chic". I opted for this trend cos I like it and, well, sometimes it is so much less work. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the one dresser I painted, but trust me. As soon as you decide for shabby chic, only one layer of paint sometimes is all you need, no need to be thorough (unless the piece was originally a hideous orange or something. Cos the base colour will shine though). Just make sure to use a brush, not a roller. You wanna be able to see the strokes. Especially if your base is dark wood and you paint it white...

Anyways, I realise this is a bit frustrating without pictures, so I will talk you through "shabby chic" with another piece of furniture, a bureau, where I remembered to take pictures fairly early on. Here I did "shabby chic" the old-fashioned way, sandpaper and all. Trust me, not as easy as all the living and decorating magazines would have you to believe. But still easier than being neat and thorough...

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Chocolate biscuits with a zesty, caffeiny and crunchy kick

Espresso beans and orange chocolate biscuits

Hello everyone. I originally intended to post once a week - which I still *want* to do but, oh well, life gets in the way sometimes.
I didn't have time to bake the last weeks, so I have to use my notes on a recipe which I baked shortly before I started this blog. The reason I didn't post this earlier is just that it was only today that I rediscovered my notes under a pile of paper labelled "important stuff"... ooops. 

Right. What did I bake? Cookies. Or rather biscuits. As a German who studied Linguistics in the UK, I have my own, although somewhat vague, notion of what is a cookie and what is a biscuit. Cookies for me are chewy and/or chunky. Biscuits are smaller and crisp (though I suspect I may not be alone with this notion).