welcome to my blog!!!!

Thank you for dropping by....i will be blogging about my life in Devon by the sea-side, decorating my 1926 home, vintage treasure hunting from auctions, charity shops , recycling centres and the good old british car booty!! One mans rubbish is another mans treasure! baking, sewing, painting and probably the weather!!!! enjoy!
claireljinks@hotmail.com


Thursday 24 April 2014

Dandelion Petal Cake......

 As regular readers of my blog will be aware I have got into foraging ....BIG TIME.
At the moment I am captivated by the humble Dandelion......Making a few Dandelion Petal Cakes....
It's very labour intensive.....involving picking dandelion heads....washing them, then pulling all the petals off, steeping overnight, straining, making into a syrup,  then pickinganother lot of  dandelions, washing  and pulling all the petals off to put into the cake along with syrup. But well worth all the effort x x

Next week I am making another lot of syrup, and some dandelion marmalade which is delicious, would anyone be interested in purchasing a jar off of me???????

Tuesday 22 April 2014

A lovely blog

please can you pop over to my daughter's blog and follow it please.....she is new to blogging and feeling a bit lonely x /http://mummykitsch.blogspot.co.uk/

Patience's 3rd birthday beach tea

It's Patience's 3rd birthday...we wake up and it's SUNNY! Now when you live at the beach, that means you take the birthday to the beach....a day full of opening presents, collecting driftwood for fires, pom poms, dressing up, tents, and even dog gets to sleep in comfort!!!!!!!!!!

 























Happy Birthday Patience x x x 

Monday 21 April 2014

Bookbinding course.

Hi what did you get up to this Easter Monday....
 I spent mine in this wonderful creative kitchen......
It belongs to Hesta of Bodkin....
And she was running a book binding course....
We had a dandelion petal cake and rhubarb and lavender cake....
I fell instantly in love with these Alfred Meaking Brixham trios.....
Everywhere you looked........
 You saw something new.......
 and creative......
Even the tea was special Lavender Earl Grey!!!
After introducing ourselves and nattering away , we finally got down to book making.....
It was a very stimulating atmosphere, as we were all getting loads of ideas....
Nina was a really inspirational teacher.....
And it was really good fun!
 I struggled a bit as I kept stopping to take photographs and then fell behind!
 It was really interesting deciding what papers to use....
There were many to choose from, different textures and styles I loved these maps.....
I chose a dark brown cover....

Tiff chose a yellow jacket.....

 Hesta found an old 40's children's  book and I loved the illustrations....
 They were vaguely art deco....
 Nina took us through step by step.....

Everyone loved making their own personal books....

Here we all are at the end of an enjoyable couple of hours...well I am behind the camera! It was also great because I got to meet lots of lovely like minded ladies and  Dottie  Angel!
thank you sooooo much Nina Fenner and I can't wait to do it all over again next week, as Bodkin  are running another bookbinding course next monday ,but  there are only  a couple of places left. If you are interested in signing up for one of Bodkin's courses please click here x