At It Like Rabbits

Hello Lovelies!
I hope that you have had a splendid Easter weekend?
I was lucky enough to have Sunday off from work, which is quite a rarity.
The reason being, we have child actors in our show (they play the young version of Tarzan) and because of child work laws here in Stuttgart that meant that the boys are not aloud to perform in the show on a public holiday. So for that very reason, the whole cast had Sunday off from work, as well as our normal Monday.
Two days off from work in a row, I felt like a "non performer" having a regular weekend, rather lovely.

Dennis was also off from work on Sunday and Monday, but spent the whole time shifting between the sofa and bed, with a stinking cold.
He's perking up a little now, but is still coughing and totally bunged up :-(

Being locked up at home for a few days you'd think that we'd be at it like rabbits, (crafting I mean). Unfortunately, not so much the case.
We did have a play around with a little Easter Hooking. We came up with come crochet Easter Eggs, but haven't quite tweaked the design, so it's going to have to be future project that we pick up for Easter next year.

Here a little peak at what we were up to:

We didn't get a huge amount of hooking action done over the weekend, but we were once again hard at work on the blog.
We spent a lot of time updating the past blog posts from my old blog "Crochet and Crafts According To Matt".

Last month I managed to be a little heavy handed whilst playing around with the template of my old blog and managed to rearrange all of the posts. This meant that links and information missing, not to mention, the text and pictures were all over the place.
I was devastated when I accidentally did this. All of my previous hard work had been ruined.
Dennis did his best at trying to fix my old posts, but after some thought, I decided to go back through the blog posts fully fixing and updating them. I wanted to salvage them so that they could continue to be used as crafty source for reference and inspiration.

Dennis helped me to work through the old "According to Matt" posts, and together we made quick progress.

It was lovely reading through all of my old posts, it was nice to reminisce and look through the photographs. I had no idea how much of a diary, my blog had become.

   

It was a real joy looking through my past work. It inspired me, to continue writing a blog that is as much about crafting, as it was about my day to day life.
I see now that we've worked so hard on the design of "Boys & Bunting" and work hard at trying to share new projects, that we've almost forgotten to blog about all of the other aspects of our lives, so I made a vow to get a little more personal with the blogging.

Re-reading my old blog posts also made me want to share them again with you all.
With that in mind, Dennis and I have uploaded all of the freshly salvaged "old" blog posts, making them available for you all to sift through.
We've arranged them by year, starting back in 2011 all the way up to last year:

You can find the "According To Matt Archives" under the "blog" drop down menu (which is also brand new!), positioned on our main menu bar. Alternatively you can follow the link here.

We hope you enjoy reading through some of the old posts and looking at some of our old projects.
Reading some of the old posts about the blankets we've created has really inspired me to get a BIG project on the go!

I think I need to do a little more research though, as to what project that may be? Then I'll be off to buy some yarn....yiiiiippeeeee!

Have a lovely week fellow hookers!!

xxx

A Weekend To Re-Energise

Hello there lovelies! I do hope you are all having the most splendiforous week?

The sun has finally started to visit here in Stuttgart, which means I'm certainly starting to feel that Spring is right around the corner!
I love Spring, it's one of my favourite times of the year. I love that the sun starts to shine, but also being able to enjoy the splashes of colour that start to appear on a somewhat grey canvas. Spring is when everything starts to come alive again, for me Tulips are a real symbol of that.
Coincidently, my other favourite time of the year is Autumn, I love the colours that appear as nature takes it's toll. Lots of reds, oranges and golds...divine!

Anyways.... enough about the weather...

I've had a really good week so far. Work is going well, I've got a crafting project (or two) on the go, plus I'm feeling rather energised from having a weekend at home with my family.

I got to a point about three weeks ago that I felt like I just needed to escape. I needed a break from work, a break from Dennis and Poppy (I hate writing that as I love them both so much), a break from the normal rut of life. I also knew that I needed to be at home with my parents and family. I don't get this feeling of needing to be close to my family that often, or even needing to be in my home country. Calling and speaking with my family tends to be enough and knowing what they are up to and that they are all healthy is enough to keep me content. However, every now and then the urge creeps up on me, that I have to go back home. A feeling of needing to be close to family and being in my home country.

With that feeling weighing down on my shoulders, I booked a weekend off from work and arranged a flight back home to England.

I told my parents that I was going to pop by for the weekend, but asked them not to plan anything, I just wanted to be at home and not turn it into some big "coming home" event.

I packed my bag on Friday night and after a frantic search of not being able to find my passport, I set off to the airport early on Saturday morning.
I made sure to pack the baby blanket that I am currently working on and joined the "Crochet Mile High Club", as I got my hooking action on during the flight.

Once I had arrived in London I got a coach to Reading, where I was meeting up with my parents and sister.
We grabbed a coffee and caught up a little, before strolling around the shops. It was so nice being back in England!!
I love living in Germany, but nothing can replace that feeling of familiarity when you walk into a shop and recognise the packaging of the products you were brought up with.
After we spent a good few hours walking around the shops, we made our 45 minute trip down the motorway back to my parents house in Malmesbury.

It was so nice to be back at home in the house I grew up in. Sitting around the dining room table as we ate dinner and chit chatted about EVERYTHING!

Sunday was also a rather nice day.
We went to visit my Nan quickly in the morning (in Bristol), before heading out for a Sunday Roast.
We ate our roast dinner in a pub in the center of Bristol, the pub was so quaint and had that homely old fashioned feel that English pubs seem to have.
We all ate roast dinners, Dad had a pint of Guinness and we finished our lunch of with apple pie and ice cream! YUMMY!!

After spending the perfect Sunday with my family, Monday morning arrived and I said my farewells and caught the train to London.

London was just a stop over on the way back to the airport.
I made a point of catching up with some friends. It was so good to see people that I hadn't seen in a while and realise that we were still great friends and living in different countries hadn't altered our relationships.

Of course being in London, I took the opportunity to look around some shops and treated myself to a rather lovely collection of books. I love buying books, but only really like to do it when I can browse through them in the shops, so going to Waterstones bookshop on Piccadilly Circus was a real treat!!!
I'll talk more about the books I bought in a later post, but here's a sneak peak!

I also had to buy Dennis and Poppy a little something. I bought Dennis a mould for his soap making and Poppy a London themed bandana.

On Monday evening I cought up with some more friends and was lucky enough to get some cheap tickets to go and see Kinky Boots the musical!! What a great show that was! Fun and camp and touching all at the same time. Well worth seeing if you get the opportunity.

Finally, Tuesday morning I was flying back to Stuttgart. I had one final stop that I wanted to make.
That was to visit the yarn shop Loop, in Camden Passage.
The shop opened at 11.00 so I had time to grab some breakfast. Eggs Benedict and a smooth milky coffee at the Breakfast Club.

Breakfast was awesome!!
I then went to Loop and had a good browse around the shop. The yarns were GORGEOUS!!!! So much choice and variety in not only the types of yarn, but also colour!
I did however, leave Loop empty handed. I didn't have a project in mind and couldn't justify splurging out on expensive yarn that I didn't have a purpose for. I know what I'm like and it would end up in the yarn basket gathering dust. So I decided to wait until I have a project in mind and then will definitely stop by and get some yarn from Loop.
Similar to my book buying, I'd much rather purchase my yarn from a shop, rather than online. I prefer to be able to see the colours and to feel the yarn before I make a choice on what I'm going to buy.

So that was my rather nice weekend back at home in England. It was just what I needed! A little me time and a chance to reconnect with my friends and family. Just having three nights away made me miss Dennis and Poppy though and I was really excited to see them both when I returned on Tuesday. Poppy showered me with licks, which meant that she had missed me also. Dennis missed me also, I could tell :-)
A little time away to reconnect and gather my thoughts, as well as make me realise how special my life in Germany is. Being away from Dennis and Poppy, made me realise how special my little family is!
It was a great weekend!

I hope you have also had a good week and that this weekend is shaping up to be a cracking one?!

xxx

In Bed With Boys & Bunting: Episode 2

Hello Lovelies!
We do hope you are all having a jolly good start to the week?
Well... After a really fun time filming our first video blog post and having a very positive response from you all, we're back with our second instalment of "In Bed With Boys & Bunting!!"

So pop the kettle on, put your feet up (or come join us in bed) and let's spend a little quality time together as we talk through our latest makes and have a good ol' chin wag with you all!

Candles à la Jo Malone!

Hello everyone!

Ok, so this post is not yarn related in any way. If you came here to read about colourful crochet projects, I'm really sorry! I promise you there will be PLENTY colourful happy crochet projects on this page in the near future, but for now I can't give you any of that.

I CAN however show you my latest creations! Which are almost as awesome as a crochet project!

Here's my story:

As you guys know, I'm Dutch. Us Dutch people, are known for being stingy and we love to save a buck (or euro) wherever we can. Now are you guys familiar with the Jo Malone candles? I first read about them in one of the Shopaholic books by Sophie Kinsella (GO READ THEM NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T YET!). I didn't know what the fuzz was about, until I smelled some of them in in the shop. Let's be honest, the smell heavenly, I absolutely can't deny that. Neither can you ;-). But have you looked at the price tag? I'm not saying that it's not worth the money, maybe it totally is, but I can't really afford to buy them on a monthly basis. In fact, I've never purchased one in my life, neither have I been gifted one (in case my parents read along: hint hint).

So what did I do? I decided to make my own candles! I was sure there would be plenty tutorials online and of course I wasn't disappointed. There they were: YouTube videos, blog posts, picture tutorials and so on... From all the information I collected, I decided to make Soy Wax candles. I read lots of good stuff about them:

They burn cleaner, have no toxins, carcinogens or pollutants. There's no petrol-carbon soot like you would get from petroleum-based paraffin candles. They are also longer lasting. Soy wax burns cooler which means that you can enjoy your soy wax candle for generally 30-50% longer than a paraffin candle!

What's not to love?! I purchased my Soy Wax from Amazon

I also ordered some wicks and perfume oils from Scentperfique in the UK. The reason I ended up ordering from this website, is because they did perfume oils in the style of other famous perfumes, like some of the Jo Malone scents, but also from other perfume brands. The scent I absolutely adore from Jo Malone is Pomegranate Noir. Scentperfique have a very similar perfume oil which is called Black Pomegranate.

I'm telling you, I can't smell the difference between this one and the original. I also ordered a perfume oil called Black Orchid which also smells absolutely divine. (We were not sponsored by this website by the way!!)

I also purchased some whiskey glasses from our supermarket, which came in a pack of 3 for €2,50 which was not too bad. They hold about 200 ml, which is a good size I figured. I didn't want to make a lot of candles on my first try, so I decided to use only 1 of those glasses, and 3 tiny little glasses I had lying around.

So, how to do it you might ask?

First of all you have to weigh out the amount of wax you need for your container. They way I did it was by filling my glass with water and weighing the amount of water. I deduced that by 20% and that should be the amount of wax you're going to need.

You then weight out the amount of wax and melt it using the double boiler method (or in my case, a bowl on top of a pan with water). Once the wax has reached about 80 degrees Celsius you can take it off the stove, add the perfume oil, and let it cool to around 57 degrees.

   

In the meantime, you should have already prepared your glasses by placing the wicks inside. I used a dot of hot glue, and centered the wicks in my glasses. I also made sure the top of the wick would stay in place, by using two wooden skewers per glass which i tied together on each side with some yarn. You place the wick in between, and pull it upwards and to the center. Now they're ready to be filled!

Apparently it's important to pour the wax around 55 to 60 degrees Celsius, to prevent a sink hole in the middle of your candle. It's also important to pour slow, but steady, so that you don't introduce air bubbles or splash the sides of your glass. It went pretty well I must say, although the small candles were a little harder to fill, since I didn't have a proper pouring jug for my wax. I poured it straight out of the big bowl, which was my own stupid fault. I did get all 3 little glasses filled, so I was happy! It all smelled soooooo good!!! I used Black Pomegranate for the big glass, and Black Orchid for the three small ones.

Now the waiting started! It gave me time to make myself a nice Cafe Latte from our new espresso machine. We always had an espresso machine but it broke down a couple of years ago and we never got round to buying a new one. The reason was as well, that the one we had wasn't being sold anymore which was a pity! I decided to have a look on eBay and found lots of sellers!!! It's so nice to have one again, since we can steam our own milk, grind the beans ourselves (we have a fancy grinder as well) and make beautiful coffee creations! I used to be a Barista before I got my first job in musical theatre and always took great pride in making my coffees as perfect as possible! I even learned how to make some basic Latte Art and it turns out I haven't forgotten how to make it!!! How fancy ;-)

By now the candles were starting to set, which went really really fast. They started out as this yellow see through liquid, then became a little cloudy, and finally turned into this beautiful creamy white! I read that you have to wait a minimum of 24 hours though, so I couldn't light them yet, but at least I could admire my creations!

   

Here they are all finished and pretty:

I think they look absolutely perfect!!!

It's the next day right now and I'm sitting behind my laptop with the big candle next to me which is burning now. I took a quick snapshot for proof:

It smells lovely, but isn't overpowering at all. The flame is very stable and calm. My first candle!!!! So very proud!!! I can't wait to try the small ones as well! I might just light one in the bathroom tomorrow before I take my shower!

Poppy had a lovely day today, as we met a good friend of mine who has a little doggy as well. Her dog's name is Hayley and she's the same breed as Poppy. She's actually the reason we bought Poppy! We used to babysit Hayley from time to time, and fell in love with this breed (Bolonka Zwetna). We took a nice long stroll around the "Bärensee" here in Stuttgart. The weather wasn't amazing, but it was still nice being outside. We stopped at a nice little restaurant where we were allowed to take our dogs inside and enjoyed a cup of coffee and some homemade cakes! A lovely afternoon it was!

I've been sitting behind my laptop blogging for quite some time now and just realised that it's completely dark here except for my "Dennis 'Malone' Marquez" candle and the light from my laptop. I keep getting wafts of that lovely scent and I feel totally happy.

I hope you're all having a lovely week! Have you guys ever made candles before? Let me know below, you might even have some more tips for me!

xxx