Table of Contents

Introduction

For many embarking on the Keto or Paleo journey, giving up bread can be daunting. Bread, after all, is not just food; it’s a part of numerous cultural traditions, a staple in many diets, and for most, a comfort food. However, the high-carb content of traditional bread doesn’t align with the low-carb, high-fat principles of Keto and Paleo diets. This is where almond flour bread comes as a savior for your taste buds and diet plan.

Why Almond Flour?

Almond flour, made from ground almonds, is not just a low-carb alternative to traditional wheat flour; it’s a powerhouse of nutrition. Rich in vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats, it aligns perfectly with the principles of a ketogenic diet. Almonds are known for their heart-healthy fats, which can aid in maintaining healthy cholesterol levels. Plus, this gluten-free flour makes it a fantastic option for those with gluten sensitivities or celiac disease.

The Nutritional Profile

A slice of almond flour bread contains significantly fewer carbs compared to its wheat-based counterpart. Here’s a quick nutritional breakdown for a typical slice:

• Calories: 160-200 kcal
• Carbohydrates: 3-5 g
• Dietary Fiber: 2-3 g
• Protein: 6-8 g
• Fats: 14-18 g

These values can vary based on the recipe and additional ingredients used.

Recipe for Almond Flour Bread

Now, let’s dive into how you can bake this delightful, keto-friendly bread at home.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of almond flour
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 cup of butter, melted (can be substituted with coconut oil for a dairy-free option)
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• A pinch of salt
• Optional: herbs like rosemary or thyme for added flavor

Instructions

1. Preheat the Oven: Start by preheating your oven to 350°F (175°C).
2. Combine Dry Ingredients: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the almond flour, baking powder, and salt.
3. Add Wet Ingredients: Incorporate the eggs and melted butter into the dry mixture. Mix until you achieve a smooth batter.
4. Pour into a Loaf Pan: Grease a loaf pan and pour in your batter, smoothing the top with a spatula.
5. Bake: Place in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
6. Cool and Serve: Let the bread cool before slicing. Enjoy it as is, or toast it for a crunchier texture.

Conclusion

Switching to a Keto or Paleo diet doesn’t mean you have to give up on bread. Almond flour bread is not just a great alternative; it’s a nutritious and delicious option that complements your dietary choice. Whether you’re enjoying it with a slab of butter or using it for your favorite sandwich, this bread will satisfy your cravings without compromising your dietary goals.

FAQ

For those of you who don’t know what lactation cookies are, it’s pretty simple. No, they do not cause you to lactate. They’re just a cookie packed full of really good ingredients that can help sustain you for a long time. They’re called lactation cookies because breastfeeding moms are burning a lot of calories, so it can be handy having something nice like this on hand – kinda like protein balls. Richard and I would often grab one on the way out of the house in the morning when we didn’t have time for breakfast. The oats and protein in them help sustain you for a while.

The original recipe that I based my version on is How Sweet Eats. I converted it to grams and then tweaked the ingredients a bit. Her original recipe called for ‘brewer’s yeast’, which was the only thing I couldn’t find. My local health food store doesn’t stock it, beyond some pricy capsules. It’s not an essential ingredient but adds some nutritional value (for those of us actually lactating). If you can find it, feel free to add it! Oh, and please don’t confuse this with nutritional yeast. They are very different and the latter will make your cookies taste like cheese.

One of my favourite things about this recipe is that it can be tweaked so much. I tend to call this my ‘kitchen sink’ cookie recipe since I see it as an excuse to use up leftover ingredients. (Hence, everything but the kitchen sink).

Don’t have almond butter? Use peanut! Don’t have enough oats? Substitute some shredded coconut instead! No chia seeds? Throw in some sesame! I’m pretty sure I’ve never made the exact same batch twice. These cookies are pretty darn forgiving, so go nuts. And I mean that literally, add nuts!

The only thing I definitely use each time (besides some portion of oats) is cranberries. There’s just something about the tangy flavour that helps cut through the sweetness of the other ingredients, which I think is wonderful. I’ve tried other things but always come back to cranberries.

As for the review from those who are breastfeeding and not? Well everyone who has tried these loves them. Honestly, Richard asks me to make these all the time. He’s even brought them into his work (back when offices were a thing) and I’ve shared the recipe with friends of mine who are actually breastfeeding. Thumbs up all around!

So whether you’ve just had a baby or not, why not try making some lactation cookies? Have them with a glass of milk… just don’t tell me where it comes from

CAT DOOR

When the first lockdown hit, we started to seriously talk about getting cats. We’d always figured we would adopt a couple of older cats but had intended to wait until the major building work was finished. But after being stuck at home every day, we started really wishing we had something furry to love and care for. I found myself surfing rescue sites in the evenings, but none of the centers were open to allow adoptions. And that’s when it hit me… kittens!

See cats don’t understand things like lockdown. They’re still out there, getting preggers and having kittens. I figured there might be some in our area needing a new home. I’ve always wanted to have kittens, but since we both work 9-5, we wouldn’t be around enough to look after them. But hey, now we’re stuck at home all day every day!! Suddenly this lockdown has an upside – we could get kittens!

So we looked around in our area and sure enough, there were some Maine Coon cross kittens available nearby! I’ve always been of the opinion that the larger and fluffier the animal, the better… so a kitten with even a hint of Maine Coon was right up my alley! (Not sure what I’m talking about? Just google Maine Coon and you’ll see!)

Enter the cutest little fluffballs you ever see… Moose and Smudge!

I can’t handle the cuteness…

They really made lockdown just the absolute best. I still find myself looking back at photos and videos from when they were wee little things and it makes me want to get more kittens aaaaaall over again. (Richard keeps saying no.)

So cute!

Anyways, what was this post meant to be about again? Ahh, right. My secret cat door.

The plan

I don’t know about you, but I’m not really a big fan of the way most cat/dog products look. Who decided that brightly colored plastic everything was the way to go? If it’s going to be on display all the time, it could at least look nice.

So now that the cats are getting a bit older, we have been talking about where their litter tray will live. It lives in the living room at the moment, where we shut the cats in each night so they don’t get into mischief. But eventually, we’re planning on moving it to our under-stairs cupboard.

The only problem with that is how do they open the door?

We obviously can’t leave it open all the time, but traditional cat flaps just look so… bleh. I wanted better for myself my kittens (yes, I still call them kittens).

So I looked online at some tutorials where people converted one of the panels on a paneled door into a hidden cat flap. They all used really clunky mechanisms, so I tried to come up with something hidden. My idea was to install some small metal rods into the sides of the door and then router a groove/track into the sides of the panel that they could slot into. Then, in theory, the panel would just swing on the rods.

Oh, and apologies up front for the lack of progress photos, or just good photos in general. Most of these are crappy iPhone pics, as I was sort of making it up as I went along.

Turning plain into the paneled door

The door in question was actually not a paneled door to begin with. It was clearly not the original door, but something they must have swapped in at some point over the years. Because it wasn’t as thick as a normal door (only 18mm), I knew that I could add thick MDF pieces to the face of it. That would create the four-panel look, without adding too much weight/depth. I based the dimensions of the panels on the original doors with have in the house, scaled down appropriately to our smaller cupboard door, and cut them out of 12mm MDF.

Before they all got nailed into place, I marked the inside of my secret door and cut the panel out. I had to drill two holes in the corner to get the jigsaw in, but I knew I could fix that later with wood filler. Once the panel was out, the MDF got wood glued and nailed in place. I could go into detail about filling/sanding/painting the door, but I think that’s all pretty self-explanatory.

Secret door mechanism

I picked up a length of 6mm steel rod at B&Q to inset into the door frame and finally plucked up the courage to learn how to use a router. Luckily, my router bit set had a straight bit that was 6.35mm in diameter. I figured that if I routered a track using that bit, the rod would perfectly slot in with just enough wiggle room to swing about.

Using an angle grinder, I cut two lengths of the steel rod, 20mm long. I thought that I could drill into the door 10mm, leaving 10mm exposed for the door to swing on. There was no real science to the height that I chose for the rods to be installed. I just eyeballed it to where it made sense in terms of gravity allowing the door to hang mostly vertical when not in use. For my actual panel which is 535mm tall, that ended up being 95mm from the top.

I measured the door frame first, marking the same distance down from the top on both sides (95mm), in the middle of the original door frame (not including the added MDF). Using a 6mm wood drill bit (in a right angle drill attachment since the opening was too narrow), I drilled 10mm in for each rod. A bit of glue in each hole and they got hammered into place.

Next up, I needed to router a track to allow my door to slot in and then hang. Basically, I drew a hockey stick shape (see below), 6mm wide, so that the rods could enter from the back of the secret door and then slide up. The stopping point had to be exactly level with the top of the rods, otherwise, my door wouldn’t line up. I did it in a couple passes of the router, being careful not to go past the top mark. If the sides were a bit wonky, no big deal, but the top line really mattered.

And it worked! Well, mostly.

There’s always going to be a bit of sanding required to make it swing perfectly without catching. And the thickness of your panel will make a big difference. Since my door wasn’t a normal four-panel, the swinging part was actually a lot thicker/heavier. So I ended up sort of rounding the back edges, top and bottom, to allow for a perfect swing.

Finishing touches

Now that it worked, I just had to make it look pretty! I purchased some ogee panel trim at Wickes to match our existing four-panel doors, and installed it around the inside of each normal panel, with glue and some veneer pins. For the swinging door, the trim was installed on the actual panel, not the door.

Nail heads were sunk, everything got filled and sanded, and then it was paint time! I painted the door in a custom color (which we dubbed “‘Bout Ye”), like all the trim. I couldn’t find a dark green that I liked, so we color-matched it from a mixture of F&B ‘Bancha’ and F&B ‘Pitch Black’.

The swinging panel had to undergo a few more rounds of sanding once the door frame had its final coat. With the clearance for the swing only a couple millimeters, layers of paint can get in the way. I just had to keep testing it, sanding it back, painting… and then testing again.

The final result!

Add a shiny new beehive knob and boom! Secret four-panel cat door.

Part of why I think this works so well is that the panels naturally have a shadow all the way around due to the trim. So if there’s a subtle gap all the way around one panel it blends in. It would look even better on a proper four-panel door, where both sides have panels. The inside of this door is flat, which means that you can see it from the inside. However, it’s not as clunky as some of the mechanisms out there, so I’ll let it slide.

I also just had a lightbulb moment where I realized I should have routed from the bottom straight up the side to my stopping point. You could slot it in that way and never see where it goes in! If anyone attempts this, do that!

The only niggling detail is that I’d like to sink a couple magnets into the bottom edge of the panel/door. Right now, if you open the door, the panel starts to swing. It would also help the panel stay perfectly vertical all the time. I know I have some perfect neodymium magnets somewhere in the house, so I’ll add them once I find where they’re hiding.

But hey, it works! And it’s a far cry better than what was there before, don’t you think? Do you feel like attempting your own hidden cat door? Or am I the only crazy one…

If you follow me on Instagram (or you’re related to me) you’ve probably seen these spaces as we work on them. They’re a long way from done, but already look so different! The few months since we got the house have been crazy, so we haven’t been able to do as much as we wanted before moving in.

The layout of the house hasn’t changed drastically since it was built, way back in 1890-ish (still researching to nail the exact date). It was built as a two-up, two-down. So there are two main rooms on both the ground and first floors, divided by a very narrow staircase.

On the ground floor, the two original rooms are the living room to the front of the house and dining towards the rear. Back when the house was built, the dining was most likely the kitchen, with a scullery and toilet out the back. I found plans in our local council’s archives of a nearly identical house built on our street, which had them labelled as such. Will I ever know for certain? Nope. But hey, I like to make uneducated guesses.

We’ll start the grand tour with the living room.

Gorgeous fireplace, right? And that carpet colour? Oooooooohhh… you can see why we bought the place, right?

The first thing you’ll notice about this house is that while it might have been built in 1890-ish… it has absolutely zero character. They ripped out every good thing over the years (coving, fireplaces, woodwork, floorboards, etc.) and replaced it with ‘blah’. The 60s have a lot to answer for when it comes to housing.

Why did we buy this house again? Oh yeah, proximity to the train station, shops, quiet street, and the fact that it’s basically a blank slate. I would have preferred a home with character, but definitely didn’t want one where I had to redo someone else’s renovations. I hate the idea of buying a property that someone ‘flipped’, only to pay more for someone slapping on white paint and installing a bunch of builder-grade finishes. Character I can add!

When I’m through with this place, you won’t know that it didn’t start out full of charm and character. Unless you are reading this blog, of course…

Back to the tour!

The living room is a bit awkward in terms of layout possibilities because it’s narrow and the placement of the bay window/fireplace/doorway means that there’s really no good place to put the sofa/TV. It’s like the Bermuda Triangle of awkward layout options. My first choice would have been above the fireplace, but Richard dislikes it when TVs are so high up. Then I suggested no TV and we put a projector in the bedroom (ha! That didn’t go down well).

So now we’re working on a compromise layout that will incorporate some library built-ins!

It’ll mean that the bay window is a bit underused, but hey ho. What can you do? I get library built-ins and sconces… I call that a win!

Moving on to the dining room…

Oh hey, another amazing fireplace! And those floors?! 

Be still my beating heart…

The dining room (former kitchen) is probably the darkest room in the house. With narrow doorways and only one window (which is shaded by our neighbour’s house), this middle room needs some serious love. It’ll serve double duty as a dining room/entryway since the teeny tiny space at the base of the stairs isn’t going to cut it. We still need a place to put down our keys, stash shoes, etc. so I’m going to have to get creative in here.

I have big ideas around incorporating the original cabinets on either side of the fireplace and playing around with contrast trim paint, I just need to get Richard on board. So far he isn’t quite sold on all my plans…

Moving on!

On the other side of the dining room, we have the kitchen and two and a half bathrooms. Only the kitchen was part of the original footprint, but it probably wasn’t a kitchen back then. I imagine that they moved the kitchen when they converted the fireplace in the dining room. The cavity there is the biggest in the house, and most likely would have had a wood stove inside.

It’s the kind of kitchen that professional chefs only dream of, right? Also, carpet in a kitchen?!

It’s a super awkward layout, with the kitchen a thoroughfare of multiple entry/exit points. It’s the biggest change we want to make in the house that will require moving walls and steel beams to address. That’s phase 2 renovation territory as we just don’t have the capital to tackle it now.

Okay, let’s head on through the kitchen to the weird side-by-side bathrooms…

Oh look, cheap, boring bathrooms… and for whatever reason they decided that two toilets side by side made the most sense. Richard likes to joke that we can now poop side by side and talk through the wall. I sure picked a keeper…

Alright, let’s head up those very narrow stairs and take a peek at the upstairs.

The house originally had just two bedrooms on either side of the staircase (hence the fireplace locations). At some point, they added a small room on top of the new kitchen, which required dividing the second bedroom to create a hallway. And of course, they built the wall with those amazing glass windows…

The hallway, middle and little bedroom all had carpet tiles, which you can see in some of the photos. They weren’t stuck down at all, so the moment we got the keys I picked them all up in order to get a better look at the floors. I forgot to take photos before I did it – whoops! Just imagine all these spaces feeling much darker with navy, brown and beige carpets everywhere.

Because of the new hallway, the middle room no longer has a fireplace (boo) and there’s a big chimney breast in the hallway. It’s not ideal, as we can’t really add a nice fireplace (too narrow) but I have plans for making it a feature anyway! Two words: exposed brick.

We hadn’t planned to do much to the middle bedroom yet, since our phase 3 plans involve a loft conversion and part of this room will become its staircase. However, we ended up deciding to refinish all the floors upstairs in one go, so out came the wall! We’ll build a new one with the doorway shifted over and frame it in such a way as to accommodate future loft access. We definitely won’t be adding huge glass windows to our wall, but will most likely incorporate transom windows above the doors, letting some much-needed light into the hallway.

Next up, we have the ‘little’ bedroom at the end of the hallway.

It’s just a wee little room (hence the name), which means it’s only really suitable as a nursery/box room. But then we thought, what about turning it into a bathroom?! We really want a family bathroom upstairs and figured it was a much better use of the space.

We’ll still have three bedrooms once we convert the loft upstairs, but this way I won’t have to walk so far when I have to pee in the middle of the night.

Rounding off the upstairs, we have our master bedroom.

Oooh, so fancy, so grand.

It’s not a terrible size, but the narrow layout (like the living room below) makes adding storage difficult. The wee closet is currently doubling as the access point for the loft and housing a large water tank. Eventually, when we redo the kitchen we’ll get a double boiler installed, getting rid of this tank and another one in the loft.

It’s not much right now, but we’ll add plenty of character and try to make it worthy of being a ‘master’ bedroom.

Alright, let’s head back downstairs and through the kitchen, to finish off with the backyard!

For people who love to garden as much as we do… it’s laughably small. Our street is at an angle which means that gardens get progressively larger the further down you go. Guess which end our new house is? Yup, we have the smallest garden on the street!

In case you couldn’t tell from all the apples on the ground, the big tree that’s sort of smack dab in the middle is a nice old apple tree. If it was anything else, we’d probably get rid of it because of its awkward placement, but nope. We’d feel too guilty, ha. And of course, Richard has grand ideas of making cider from it too.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking about how there are probably lots of people with way bigger gardens who don’t use them at all, and then remind myself I’m lucky to have any garden at all. Back when we lived in the flat we could only BBQ at the allotment picnic-style! Anything is better than nothing after all.

We’ll work hard to make it feel so much larger than it is. Plus, with the aforementioned allotments (three plots!), we have more than enough growing space for veg – this space will just be pretty flowers and a wee outdoor dining area. But those plans will have to wait until we tackle the kitchen since it’ll involve digging up new trenches for pipework etc.

Although with the whole coronavirus thing, we might need to do some quick fixes to make it function better right now. I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time in our backyard this summer…

And that’s it! Can you see the potential? We sure can (otherwise I doubt we would have bought it – ha). I can’t wait to start seeing some of my ideas becoming reality.

Waaaaay back in March, we listed our flat on the market and started hunting for the perfect house. We debated a few areas and neighbourhoods, but in the end came back to the good ol’ London Borough of Bexley. Our new house is actually just around the corner from the flat!

When it came to the neighbourhood pros and cons, we looked at commute (we both work in London), schools (both for resale and in case we’re still living here by then), house prices (could we afford to live there), resale potential (could we make money) and the overall ‘feel’ of the neighbourhood. Some of the areas seemed amazing on paper but when we visited them and walked around… just didn’t feel right.

Some neighbourhoods were too ‘up-and-coming’ (to put it nicely). We knew the value could go up over the next 5-10 years but didn’t really feel comfortable living there. Others were too pricey (here’s looking at you Hither Green); we debated Sevenoaks, because we liked its ‘quintessential English’ feel, but the commute and prices just made it unsuitable.

So we sat down, talked through everywhere we had looked at and realised that we both actually liked living in Sidcup! It’s not that we were lazy and didn’t want to move – Sidcup has a lot going for it. I actually can’t understand why the market here isn’t more expensive!

It’s got great rail links (22 minutes to London Bridge), green spaces (Five Arches is lovely), convenient shops (Waitrose, Morrison’s, Boots, Holland & Barrett, etc.) and, as I said before, great local schools. And the biggest bonus? We can keep our allotments!!

Our new house isn’t perfect (yet), but we’re going to make it something really special. I have sooooooo many plans and ideas, as you can imagine – I just need time and money, ha. Want a sneak peek? Just check out this mess!

Oh, and in case you weren’t sure it was meant to be, the house has a name (which I have always wanted by the way)… Victoria Cottage. Yup, I didn’t give it that name, it already had it! It’s the name of the city where I grew up, which I named this blog after… so of course it was the house for us!

So stick around this space and see how we’re turning this old house into our dream little cottage… it’s going to be amazing.

Now excuse me while I order a custom address stamp… I’ve always wanted to have a house with a name…

Our flat isn’t exactly spacious. Don’t get me wrong, it could be smaller, but the only storage we have (besides our bedroom wardrobe) is one tiny closet in the hallway.

I wanted someplace to store books, computers, cables/cords… and plants! I wanted more plants! Oh, and whatever it was had to fit perfectly between our living room doorway and TV cabinet.

I started hunting around for a perfect bookshelf – something visually open, interesting and tall. Our flat might not be big in square meters, but it has really high ceilings – why not make the most of them? Since this bookshelf was going beside the doorway, the shelves couldn’t block sight lines into the room. Hence my ‘open’ requirement.

The perfect bookshelf was the helix from CB2. But, not only did I want it to be cheaper (international shipping and all), I also wanted it to be wider and taller. I figured that it couldn’t be too hard to make something similar myself – after all, it’s just a couple of metal poles and wood, right?

Well… nothing’s ever easy, is it?

I found a website that not only supplied the metal I needed but would even cut the mitre corners for the top! Cool right? They also had metal lugs that I could get welded on as shelf supports. Now, all I needed was someone to weld those 16 joins (for the corners, and attaching the lugs).

I started asking local metal fabricators but the quotes I got were insane! I mean, the metal was going to be delivered to them, already cut to size – they just had to weld it. They were trying to charge £200 to make 16 weld joins. Bat-shit crazy…

So I put it off to the side and kind of forgot about it for a while, until I had an epiphany. There are other jobs that use welding! And, because building custom furniture or railings isn’t their 9-5, they might not try to rip me off! So I called up a local auto-body shop and managed to secure the work for only £30! Boo-yah! To finish them off, all it took was a couple coats of primer and black spray paint.

Next up, came the wood. Which threw another wrench into the works.

See, I wanted the shelves to be 30cm wide, which it turns out, is wider than standard planks of wood. I searched high and low but anything wider than 20cm was expensive. So I decided to go with plywood! I knew that I could add wood edging (which I used to make the bedside tables) to make it look like solid wood, but I kind of liked the plywood edges.

I looked around for a place that would not only supply large enough sheets of the right grade plywood but would cut it down into my shelf size. That’s when I discovered Builder Depot and boy, do I wish they had a location closer to me! I have lots of projects in mind…

The first time we went, I didn’t call ahead of time and they were out of the birch ply I was planning to use. I had already been toying with using marine grade (looked nice in photos), so figured I would just give that a shot. It ended up being a nightmare. The edges just splintered when I tried to sand them smooth, not to mention the stain looked awful. So I managed to convince Richard to drive me all the way back another weekend for the birch ply – it made all the difference.

Seriously, the stuff is amazing – it’s no wonder they use it to build kitchen cabinets etc. The edges are neat when you cut it and you can sand it without wearing away the top layer.

To construct the shelves (which the helpful staff at Builder Depot cut at 30cm x 100cm) all I had to do was cut a little notch to allow the metal to sit flush with the edge. I measured my metal posts, marked the square, and cut it very carefully with a jigsaw. It took some time to do each one, as I had to sort of cut it away in triangles a bit at a time.

After cutting, the shelves got good sand and some Danish oil! As I was worried about the colour looking blotchy, I did a couple of coats with clear oil first. I figured it could soak into the grain and ensure that it didn’t absorb too much pigment in the later oils. Then I did a couple passes with a mixture of Canadian Cedar and Jacobean Dark Oak. I tested both colours on some scrap plywood and decided something halfway between would be the best match to the existing wood in the room. Once the colour was dark enough, I let them all dry completely before varnishing.

Side note – I can’t wait to have a garage or somewhere to do stuff like this! We ended up taking them to my brother-in-law’s place, as they had some room in their garage we could use.

Now, one thing I didn’t do a great job of, was choosing the best birch ply sheet. The stuff they had in stock wasn’t the same grade on both sides (BB and C) which meant that some sheets had lots of these patches anywhere there was a knot on the one side. I hate being picky when someone has to forklift sheets down for me, going through them until I find ‘the one’, so I kind of settled on what I thought was good enough. Well, the stain really highlights those patches! It’s not the end of the world though – I made sure that they were either on the underside of a lower shelf or the topside of the higher ones. You never see them! But if you’re doing anything similar, learn from my mistake. Be that annoying perfectionist going through an entire stack of plywood!

Now that I had everything ready to go, it was just a matter of putting it all together. The metal supports got these plugs to go in the bottom so they wouldn’t scratch the floor and then I just had to attach the shelves.

I found screws that were short enough that they didn’t go all the way through the plywood; unfortunately, the holes on the lugs were a bit wider than the screw heads. To compensate, I picked up some washers and sprayed them black to match the screws. Then it was a simple job of attaching the shelves by screwing through the lugs, making sure to put the shelves in the right order (to hide the patches).

Finally, we stood them up, measured and marked the holes for the wall, and drilled in some drywall anchors. The studs would have been great, but the placement of the shelf didn’t line up with any. We used some spare butterfly anchors we had and I painted the heads black to match.

And that’s it! It took a long time to actually get these shelves up, what with finding the right welder and getting the wrong wood at first, but I’m so happy with them! They fit the space perfectly – adding much-needed surface area for all my books and plants. (Not to mention the booze and computers/random cables hidden in those baskets.)

What do you guys think? Feeling inspired to find a local welder of your own? Now that you know my mistake’s secrets, give it a shot!

SIMPLE ART LEDGES: Now that I’m back to being my productive self ?, I figured I should really post a few projects I made last year that never made it onto the old bloggity blog – like this one! Queue the endless ramblings…

Do you ever look around your place and think that something’s missing? You have all the essentials (furniture etc.), but for some reason, the room lacks personality. For me, there are two ways to solve this problem – plants or artwork! Or both! Ooooooohhh…

Our flat was seriously lacking in the personality department for a while, so I started to remedy it through an assortment of items (juju hat, abstract paintings, baskets, an old flag), but the wall above our tiny dining table still needed help.

SIMPLE ART LEDGES

Now, I’m a big fan of gallery walls (done them 3 times in previous apartments) but I wanted something ‘looser’ this time. Something that I could adjust when the mood struck. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling inspired by everything that Jenny Komenda does lately, or maybe it’s the fact that I feel loath to fill a million nail holes someday.

image via

Enter the art ledge! Dun dun dun… The perfect option for those feeling a bit lazy in the whole hanging-a-gallery-wall department. Not to mention – is it just me or are we all getting a bit tired of gallery walls?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, when they are done right they are amazeballs… but they just feel a bit overdone these days. Since I didn’t feel like I had the right wall or a great collection of pieces to display as a gallery, it didn’t feel like the right move here.

Back to the art ledge!

images via

Aren’t the above rooms gorgeous?

The space I had in mind for them wasn’t huge, but when I looked around at ready-made options, they were all too short (or not solid wood – so cutting them down wasn’t an option). I wanted something the same length as the table itself, so figured why not make my own?

All you need are a few pieces of wood, finish nails, wood glue, appropriate filler, and sandpaper. (Depending on how you want to finish them, you’ll also need either paint, stain and/or varnish.) It only took me like 30 minutes to cut and assemble the ledges. Easy peasy!

I took photos of the assembly but lost them (it was ages ago). But then I realised, there are waaaay better tutorials out there than the one I was making. Why add to all the great content already in existence?

If you’re looking to DIY some yourself, check out this tutorial from Chris Loves Julia, this one from A Beautiful Mess, or this one from Little House on the Corner. Honestly, it’s so simple and there is no right/wrong way to do it. Just go to your nearby DIY store (I used B&Q) and find the strip wood that fits the style/size you’re looking to build.

I decided to paint mine the same colour as the wall so that they would blend in and allow the artwork to be the focus. They would look equally awesome as wood too… there was just too much already in the form of the table/chairs/frames etc.

They’re mounted with some simple screws that we had lying around. Sure, I could have pre-drilled larger holes to sink them into the wood (and then fill/sand) but I just couldn’t care enough. This way, if I ever want to remove them, I can do it without any extra hassle. Also, since they’re painted the same colour (and generally covered with artwork) you can’t tell they are there.

And that’s it! Super simple and easy to change on a whim. My kind of project! Why not make some yourself?

Why has it taken so long? Well, because procrastination is a bitch.

As most people who suffer from procrastination will probably agree, it comes from this place of not feeling like you can start anything because of the sheer magnitude of stuff to do. It feels overwhelming – so rather than doing something, you end up putting it off, again and again. It doesn’t help when you’re also in a bit of a sucky mental place due to injury and lack of motivation.

See, I tore my knee on a family vacation almost two years ago, and that torn piece of meniscus was flipped over and stuck in the wrong spot. It meant that I couldn’t go back to work as a baker until after surgery – all it would take was one slip to damage my knee even further. (Fun fact – commercial bakers in the UK are almost all male because it’s a very physically demanding job!) Then, after being told it would only take 3 months to get surgery, the NHS took almost a full year to finally get me booked in. By that point, I had already arranged to get it done privately in Lithuania (a different story for another time).

Now, at first, having three months off work sounded like it would be a great chance to do some fun personal projects. Instead, it turned into a year of feeling like my worst self. I realised that without motivation to do anything, I did nothing. And then I felt worse about myself for doing nothing… which just made me feel worse and not do anything. It was a vicious cycle.

Even after I got my knee fixed, I still felt… off. I mean, even right now as I type this, I still don’t feel quite myself. I used to have the energy to bake things, or do crafts. But these days I feel like it’s a struggle to find motivation to do anything beyond my actual job. (Second fun fact – no longer a baker. It’s been a while, hasn’t it…)

Maybe it’s like what they say about forming habits, that they take two months until they feel natural. I had a whole year of wallowing in apathy… I think it’s going to take some forced activity to make me feel like myself again.

Hence this blog post… I’m forcing myself to get productive again! (didn’t see that coming, did you?) I’ve got a major new project on the horizon, so I’ve got to start now.

You can bake this cake in a simple 9×9″ tin, and cut it into squares. Serve it warm, adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream – it’s the perfect end to a meal! Or, you can fancy it up a notch like I did here – baking it in two round tins to make a layered cake. I used a vanilla German buttercream between the layers (and a thin layer on the outside for a ‘naked cake’ look), then topped it with caramel sauce, poached pears and some candied nuts.

Now, I made this once before with the same amounts used in Justin’s original recipe – and found that it didn’t taste quite as strong as the cakes sold in Justin’s bakery (Bread Ahead). So this time, I increased the amount of chopped stem ginger and ground spices. It’s such a great cake – sticky and full of ginger flavour.

For the caramel sauce – I really wanted to use a recipe that only had a couple of ingredients. Caramel sauce isn’t complicated – just sugar and a fat (butter and/or cream) that has been heated to a specific temperature for the consistency you want. I adapted this recipe slightly, using a dry caramel (I can’t be bothered adding water only to then boil it away) to make a sauce with the right thickness to top a cake. Not too runny, but you can still get some nice drips on the edges. Of course, I accidentally boiled it too long (distracted) and it was super thick, so I just thinned it a bit with some hot water! You could also add more cream instead.

As for the buttercream? Well, I decided to go for a German buttercream, as I dislike the traditional stuff. I was always that kid removing the icing from her cupcake because American-style buttercream is either sickly sweet or just tastes like butter. German buttercream is pastry cream that has been whipped with butter. And it is delicious! I used inspiration from this recipe, whipping the butter first, and adding the pastry cream in increments. I didn’t have any issues with it splitting, so perhaps it’s the new way to make buttercream?

And to top off the cake? Spiced poached pears and candied nuts! I used Jamie Oliver’s recipe for the pears, which is just so simple! The candied nut recipe makes waaaay more than you need – but they taste great so who cares! I had hoped to get some gold leaf to finish everything, but they sold out Maybe next time!

And that’s it! Maybe a good cake for New Year’s Eve? I had hoped to post this before Christmas, but time got away from me… but hey – what else is new?

I actually made a pinecone wreath in the same way about 5-6 years ago when I was back in Canada. I had always intended to make it snowy but chickened out. See, I was worried that I was going to mess it up, and you can’t really go back once you start painting pinecones. It already looked nice just brown, so I ended up leaving it.

But this time, I was determined to get the snowy wreath I had pictured! And you know what? It turned out amazing!!!

I find that it’s rare when a craft turns out exactly as awesome as I intended it to be. I tend to have these grandiose ideas, which never execute quite as well as I hoped. I mean, they look good, just not exactly like my imagination. But not this wreath!! It’s almost better than I pictured it! But the bad part is that I have nowhere to store it!

I promised Richard (when I first started gathering pinecones) that we could throw it out at the end of the year (can you compost hot glue?!). But, now that it’s done… I am not sure I can bear the thought! Does anyone else want to give it a home once Christmas is over?!

Anyway, back to the tutorial!

This wreath is dead simple and just takes time. It’s also super cheap if you can get a good deal on hot glue sticks (it used a ton!).

Oh, and a tip for you – take a couple of large pinecones and remove the individual scales. Then, glue a line of these around the edges (inside and out) of your wreath before you start glueing down pinecones. Both times I made this wreath, I ended up with visible cardboard along the edge. I ended up glueing a combination of individual pine scales and tiny hemlock cones along both edges to fill the gap. But, if you wanted to do it first, it would definitely be easier. Up to you!

That’s the gap I was talking about above and below shows it filled in with hemlock cones and a few scales.

Oh, and the pinecones? Well the best time of year to gather them is actually the summer (weird, right?). That is when they are ripe and fall off the tree all nice and open. But who makes pinecone crafts in the summer?! So if, like me, you are hunting for them in fall or winter, here is a tip – bake them!

That’s right! To open up green pinecones (and get rid of sap and any little crawlies you may have picked up) you bake them in the oven at a low temp! Simply line a couple baking sheets/tins with foil and place your pinecones in a single layer. Then you bake them at 100-110°C (200-230°F) for about an hour. Depending on how many you have, and how open they are, it can take a bit more time.

I just went to the park one day and collected all different kinds of cones – pine, fir, cedar, hemlock, etc. The tiny hemlock ones were perfect for filling in the gaps later. I had about four oven trays worth for my wreath.

Warning, it’ll make your oven smell like pine for a bit, but it’ll fade pretty quick once you cook anything else. I haven’t noticed any lingering smell, and nothing I made after tasted like pine.

So, once you have a nice big bowl of pinecones ready, you can make this wreath!

Materials:

• Hot glue gun + glue sticks (I forgot to count how many I used, but would guess about 30 mini ones?)
• Stiff cardboard as big as your desired wreath
• Pinecones (lots!)
• White craft paint
• Clear-drying craft glue (I used some wood glue I had lying around)
• Cheap paint brush
• Fake snow
• Ribbon for hanging (I got mine on Etsy)

Directions:

1. Measure how large you want your wreath to be, and cut it out of some stiff cardboard. If your wreath isn’t strong enough, cut out two layers and hot glue together.
2. [Optional] Glue a line of pine scales along the inside and outside edge of your wreath.
3. Glue down a ring of similar-sized pinecones along the inside and outside edges, overhanging a bit.
4. Continue to fill the wreath with a variety of pinecones, adding depth.
5. Fill in any gaps along the edge or middle of the wreath with little cones, like hemlock.
6. Using a dry brush (with only a little paint), dab all over the pinecones to give them a frosted look. Let dry.
7. Figure out which way you want to hang the wreath so that you can add snow where it would naturally sit. Using the same brush, dab craft glue along the tops of some of the pinecones. Sprinkle over fake snow.
8. Add as much snow as you want, piling it on the ‘tops’ of the larger pinecones. Lift up the wreath and shake to remove excess. Warning – it’ll make a mess!
9. Add ribbon and hang.

You can see how light my paint application was above. The left shows without, and the right is with paint. Use a really dry brush, and stipple it on the tips of the cones.

Et voila! A gorgeous wintry wreath that’ll add a touch of snow to your Christmas, no matter where you live! I only wish that my door was outside (and prettier) so that more people could see it!