Save the bees!

All future orders will include a little something extra... for our little buzzy friends! 

Adventures in cordial making

The elderflowers are on the trees for such a short time, about three weeks in total, and as a lovely friend of mine has an Elder tree at the bottom of her garden, we decided to take advantage and try our hands at making elderflower cordial.  

The process is as easy as pie and so satisfying; we're already talking of it becoming an annual tradition!  If you fancy having a go (and I thoroughly recommend you do!), here's how we did it....

Firstly, using slightly wonky scaffolding, we picked around seventy heads of flowers.  They had a good wash to remove any bugs or debris and placed into a very large pan.  

We added the zest of eight lemons and then chopped the lemons into thick slices and this all went in the pot with the elderflowers.  

In a separate pan, we disolved two kilos of sugar (yes, poor teeth!) to three litres of boiling water and poured it over the elderflower / lemon mix along with 100g citric acid (available from lots of online shops), covered it with a lid and left it overnight.  The smell when the hot water hits the elderflower and lemons is wonderful!  

I forgot to take any photos the next day but it was very simply a case of removing all of the lemon pieces and large elderflower stalks from the water, then straining the remaining mix through muslin into a large jug to be poured into sterilised bottles.  
It will keep in the fridge for a couple of months and can be frozen if you want to keep it for longer. 

 

It is really tasty mixed with just still or sparkling water but is utterly delicious when mixed with gin and soda water!  

Cheers!  

 

Sunday snippets

It's been a while since I wrote a 'Sunday Snippets' post so here we are with a few excerpts from my life over the last week or so... 

Visiting one of my favourite coastal places and these wonderful pastel beach huts

A sweet little commission I've been working on.  This papercut was personalised with their names and wedding date and then mounted onto the front of their wedding guest book.  It was stuck down using double sided tape, a sheet of acetate was placed on top to protect it when it was being passed round the wedding guests to sign and a border of fabric washi tape was added.  I think I held my breath the whole time I was doing it but was so pleased with the way it turned out.   

A little purchase of fabrics from Fabric Rehab for a few little projects I have in mind... 

Beautiful ranunculus from lovely friends that came to dinner last weekend 

It's been such a perfect week weather-wise up until today.  Today is a day for snuggling up with hot chocolate and a good book!  What Sundays were invented for!  

Vintage cameras

A new papercut just up in my Etsy shop, inspired by my ever growing collection of them!

Remember the days of having to choose reeeeally carefully which 24 photos you wanted to take?!.... Then being really disappointed when only 12 of them came out right!  
It all adds to the charm though!  

Summer garden party

All this beautiful summer weather had me all inspired to create an Etsy treasury today. 
Enjoy!  Hope you're all having fun in the sun!