Vintage heaven at Blakesley Hall

Emma's been busy attending loads of vintage fairs recently so even more of you get the chance to buy her fabulous vintage wares! Yesterday the venue was the beautiful Blakesley Hall in Birmingham, a delightful 16th century Tudor house - you can find out more about it here. Here's a peek at some of the offerings from the day!

H & E x

Vintage heaven at Solihull Vintage Fair

Remember last month when we blogged from Solihull Vintage Fair? Well Emma is down there again today! Despite the snow and horrendous cold weather, vintage lovers are wrapping up warm and heading to the Meadows Suite at Solihull Ice Rink til four today - the link to the website is here if you want more information.

H & E x

Tasty Tuesday: Valentine's Day chocolate

With Valentine's Day next week, love is well and truly in the air so we thought we'd make some cute little chocolate hearts and lollipops you can hand out to your admirers! Even if you're single this Valentine's why not hand them out to your family and friends - we can guarantee they will absolutely love them! They are so simple and cheap to make they would be perfect to make with kids. 

Harriet chose to make some little chocolate hearts while Emma picked the lollipops!

 

You will need:
- Chocolate (we just picked up the Tesco basics chocolate in both the milk and white varieties but you can choose any you like)
- Moulds (the lollipops were from the internet and the hearts were from Hobbycraft - they are really cheap and you can use them again and again so you really do get your money's worth!)
- If you're making the lollipops, you'll need some sticks
- Clear bags
- Plain labels
- Ribbon or colourful tape
- Saucepan, bowl and spoon

Step one: Break your chocolate in to small pieces and put it in a bowl.

Step two: Fill a saucepan with water and place the bowl over the water (not touching it though!), keep stirring it until it's completely melted.

Step three: Pour the chocolate into the moulds - why not try creating patterns using two or more different types of chocolate? If you're doing the lollipops you need to put the sticks in at this point!

Step four: Pop them in the fridge until they set.

Step five: Put a lollipop or a couple of the hearts into a bag, wrap ribbon around the top or some colourful tape to seal.

Step six: Attach a label to them which you can decorate and write a lovely message on! Harriet chose to close her bag with some red tape and then stick some ribbon on to the labels while Emma used the ribbon to close the bag!

Step seven: Hand them out to your loved ones (or eat them all yourself, we won't judge you!)

 You can be as inventive as you like with these! Why not try adding things into the middle of your mould like nuts/raisins etc? Or try orange/mint chocolate.

Although these are perfect for Valentine's you can use them any time throughout the year - keeping the kids busy, birthday presents, or even try popping something like a fruit juice in the moulds and freezing them to keep cool in the summer!

H & E x