Put it into Music: Caffeine

This week's 'Put it into Music' word is caffeine..






This video never fails to make me grin like an idiot. (Sorry about the quality of the vid - Prince is very vigilant about taking down 99% of his videos out there, grr! But this one's definitely worth a watch)

Food Diary Continued...

A few nice meals we made last week. Above: Seeing Jessica's radishes made me want to buy some fresh ones too, they really are pretty with their leaves still on.

A chilli non-carne I made with lots of nice veg (our tin opener broke so I couldn't add any kidney beans but it worked out fine!)

Tom made this Mediterranean fish stew, it was a little bit spicy, and very tasty (once I'd taken out the prawns, i'm weirdly squeamish about them) and I was fascinated by the fennel as we've not cooked with it before.

Weekend in pictures

The weekend flew by and involved lots of nice things, including:

• A My So-Called Life watching night with friends and some lovely wine (we wore our best plaid shirts for the occasion)
• A trip to Sherwood Craft Fair, Pimms and a very strange man dancing with an onion (hmm)
• A last trip (sniff) to my Nan's house.. she's moving soon and it's now a mad rush to pack up 60 years' worth of stuff.. a very tough job indeed. But I picked out a few sweet items that I didn't want to see given to charity, more on that to come..
• A lovely walk across the fields in long dry grass

Want.

Lomography, why do you tempt me so? Love the packaging on these new wide angle 35mm 'La Sardina' cameras, see more here. via design work life

Film Friday: Tapeheads

This week I watched a very odd 80s film, starring a young Tim Robbins along with the wonderful John Cusack, (I know Andrea is a fan!) who looks slightly weird sporting a moustache.

Tapeheads is about two security guards who lose their jobs and embark on a new career making some very bizarre music videos. Worth watching if you're a fan of the 80's, Cusack or Devo (and it contains some bizarre cameos as well).

A couple of comics...

I drew this quite a while ago but forgot about it..

Also wanted to share this comic Tom drew a few weeks ago, this is what he's busy doing tonight! Can any of you guys relate? Hehe.

More Nottingham Goings on...

This looks lots of fun!

Put it into Music: Words

Two of my favourite bloggers, Andrea & Erika are currently running a weekly series where they choose a word and post up a song and picture relating to it. This week's is "words" so there was really only one song that sprang to mind for me! Sing along now.. aye kay aye yippy aye kay aye...


[photo by me]

Nottingham News

To any Nottingham locals - this looks like a great night, and there's a ZINE fair too! Unfortunately I'm away that weekend and will miss out but I'll definitely be checking out the artworks on display at the Malt Cross at a later date.

Also... At Nottingham Castle soon there will be a Street Art exhibition, featuring work by Jon Burgerman and Amy Blackwell amongst others which also sounds fun! It runs from 2nd July to 25 September and you can read more here.

The Burning House

My submission to the Burning House is now up on the site, hurrah! Read my entry here. (So glad Frank has found further fame...)

Food Diary: Pesto & Mozzarella Tart

I made this earlier, it was a really quick and tasty supper. I admit it resembles pizza but it's actually a Greek tart made from puff pastry and is so easy to prepare. Recipe as follows:

Ingredients:

1 sheet puff pastry
Pesto
Red onion
Red pepper
Olives
Mozzarella
Feta

Method: Roll out your sheet of pastry and cover with pesto, leaving a gap around the edge. Place on a baking tray covered in a sheet of baking paper. Chop the vegetables and cheese and add on to the pastry base. Season and place in a hot oven for around 20 minutes. Ta-da, a tasty tart in no time at all! This is such an easy recipe to modify too as you can use pretty much any veg or other ingredients you have left over in your fridge.

Food Diary, Continued

On Wednesday I decided to try baking some olive & chilli bread. I'd certainly recommend the combination, but my kneading technique needs improvement - the final loaf was pretty heavy! Has anyone else had the same problem? I did a breadmaking class a few years ago and the bread came out perfectly, so I think I need to remember the technique to a proper loaf. Tom made a nice Greek salad to go with the bread, yum.

Blackout Night

Recently Tom and I have realised we have far too many screens on in our house on in the evening.. with laptops, TV and iPods it's hard to get away from the constant glare. So we decided to try a 'no electricity' night, switching off our laptops and getting back to reality!



Candles replaced lights and gave our flat a lovely cosy feeling. I learnt how to play a bit of a beirut song on tom's ukulele, wrote a letter to my grandma, drew a comic and experimented with my camera on its manual setting, using my tripod for the first time in ages. It was a great evening and so relaxing, I think we'll make it a weekly occurence!

Grizzly Bear

Introducing... Tom's new bear hat. I made it for his birthday (with the aid of my crafty friend Laura). We really should've taken more photos of the process as there don't seem to be any bear hat tutorials online so we had to make it up as we went along. But Tom seemed pretty pleased with the end result, (he's wearing it now!) and we've already started planning a cat and panda hat to match!

A Food Diary - Monday & Tuesday

This week I thought I'd document my evening meals (mostly as an incentive to make me cook nicer meals and be less lazy!) There are some brilliant food bloggers out there (Come On in my Kitchen, is a recent fave, Siobhan is a pretty ace cook) and I find them a great source of inspiration when I run out of meal ideas. The only trouble is I'm often pretty hungry after looking at them!



Okay.. cheated a bit yesterday as we went out for a meal for Tom's birthday at Wagamama. Mmm.. Katsu Curry. (Tastes a lot better than it looks!) Their plum wine is amazing. And afterwards a nice spot of cider..





Tonight I made a nice potato salad, combining new potatoes, sour cream, spring onions, dill & black pepper. With a fishcake & salad it was a tasty and quick meal to make after work.

tweet tweet

Oh, i now have a twitter (which I don't use all that much but it's nice to read other people's!) if you want to add me i'm @laura_millward

Much Love Monday

Loving: hot tea to wake me up on a grey morning! Share what you love on much love monday.

PS Happy birthday Tom! xxx

Under the Boardwalk

This weekend for Tom's upcoming birthday we went on a little sailing escapade from Felixstowe to Ipswich, then sailed out to the ocean (spotting Sealand in the distance, what a strange place that is!).

It was my first time sailing on a yacht and it was lots of fun, although I had a lot to get used to! I didn't realise that sailing with the boat at about a 45 degree angle to the water is quite normal so a lot of the time I was hanging on for dear life! I had a go at steering too which is a good way to keep an eye on the distance to avoid sea sickness. The weather was a little unpredictable (it actually hailed on Saturday.. in June!) but we had a lovely evening in Ipswich last night and the docks looked beautiful under the moonlight.