mooshpie

I have been admiring terrariums for a while now… a terrarium is a miniture garden contained in any sized vessel you wish, from light bulbs, fish tanks to old victorian bottles.

here is the first one we made. It contains little elm trees rescued from the gutter, sphagnum moss, soil, stones, a 1950s porcelain deer inherited from dan’s grandparents along with a miniature fir tree. i adore it!

the next one is in an old victorian Eno’s fruit salt bottle ( one of the many victorian bottles we collected for our wedding)

contains a mini t-rex, a foraged cyclamen from the garden, sphagnum moss, soil and stones.

These are just the begining. We are currently adding more display units to our sun room(below pic) so we can house more terrariums and plant specimens.

here are some of my fave and inspiring ones from the interwebs…

this lovely little donkey terrarium from ann wood

from little big check out littlebig’s blog on how to make them

i’ve had my hands full somewhat over the past 8 months since the minimooshpie arrived so my drawing days are few and far between.

however i get to use my creativity in other places like decorating minimooshpie’s bedroom.

i’ve also been doing a few other crafty bits which i shall post about soon! so keep watching.

here are a few sneaky peeks of her room. we both love it!

it’s full of inherited furniture( the book shelf is rescued from my old primary school before they knocked down the old cow shed buildings and replaced it with a new super duper school. i think they also started my obsession with school furniture.), lovingly knitted woodland critters from granny mooshpie and beautiful wall vinlys from love mae

i’m looking forward to my happy times in there!

xx

the book i did some illustration proposals for has come out. The New Artisans- http://t.co/fdiWb7ax. Im mentioned in back of recommend blogs

looking forward to getting a bit of drawing done next week something, dare i say it… christmassy!?! :-)

hey brighton followers get yourself off to the Printwerks screen printing evening tonight for G & T (towels!) http://t.co/7U9f1dzX

my tasty weekend mooshpie blog post featuring damsons in all kinds of treaty ways! http://t.co/sHIck4D Yummy :-)

I love this time of year, the summer sun has ripened all the early autumn fruits like crisp sweet discovery apples with blushing pink flesh and the bitter sweet tang of plums and their tiny cousin the damson.

We had a super relaxing weekend buying a bag of little damsons for a £1 at our local “trendy” farmers market.Said damsons were soon bubbling away into a tasty compote, while I baked a batch of double chocolate and sour cherry biscuits. (this picture is from a while a go as the biscuits didn’t stick around long enough for a picture as they were that tasty heheh!)

Soon the compote was ready and I treated myself to gypsy toast with lashings of the fresh damson compote and caramelised bananas- a lunch fit for a king!

There was a fair bit of the compote left so I dreamt up recipes I could make like damson brownies or a Victoria sponge, sadly I didn’t have enough chocolate, eggs or butter so that was end of that. In the end mixed it up with some yoghurt and icing sugar to make damson frogurt.

And my stars what a success it’s the tastiest frogurt I’ve ever had. The tangy sweet damsons cut through the sour yoghurt and the icing sugar makes it all fizzy like sherbet! A super supper treat…

stopped watching the scary film now me and the mini mooshpie are baking a cake instead, she has her own tiny spoon to help too!

i find myself even more now being nostalgic for the places i have been. as mr maskingtape pointed out to me the other day (whilst we and the mini mooshpie were picking blackberries), that nostalgia means home sickness (nóstos, “returning home”,  álgos, “pain” or “ache”)…

i have been lucky enough to have been to some pretty special locations. Sometimes living there for a month, other times just a week. i have a long time love and affinity for these homes away from home and wish to one day return…

here are some photos of the places i’ve stayed to feed my nostalgia (some mine some mr maskingtape)

this is where we house sat in vancouver looking after 2 cats while i did my animation course. we lived there for 1 month.

our little log cabin on the arctic circle for our honeymoon (nearly 3years ago) where we watched the northern lights shimmer away. 1 week!

we stayed in a forest hut like this in Tsitsikamma nature reserve south africa. ours was right on the river bed, we bbq’ed with genets and woke up to the call of turaco

the little cottage we stayed in akaroa at onuku farm new zealand. we had a small fire which we made every morning and slept in the rafters listening to the bell birds.

we stayed in this cottage for a night it was in the middle of this valley, on its own. It had one room with an open fire, double bed, and a tiny kitchen out the back. The toilet was located behind that bush, and was full of all kinds of creepy crawlies…

In Reunion. In a wooden windmill in the mountain Cirque de Cilaos. inside we could take our pick of beds (there were a few) it was so cold though so we piled on the blankets. The hosts were amazing cooks and we feasted on duck with vanilla and beef with orchids and drank botanical ales. in the morning we were greeted with fresh bread and delicious home made jams! we stayed 2 nights.

Maybe that’s why we’ve moved to a house with a shed, and why i’ve got my obsession with sheds…