I love pink

Well my dear blog readers (aka no one as my blog is private, duh), you know I adore a bit of baking, especially when it’s for a fantastic cause, so last Thursday night saw me whipping up a storm in the kitchen once again, this time in aid of Breast Cancer Care.

Friday 28th October was national Wear it Pink day, where people, businesses, shops, groups etc were encouraged to wear something pink to work, and donate £2 for the privilege. Of course, me being quite the pink lover (the colour of this page says it all really!), I jumped at the chance embrace the theme (think pink top, pink bracelet, pink nails, pink lipstick…you get the gist.), but I thought why stop at clothing, why not make some cakes and sell them at the office to my sweet-toothed, cupcake loving colleagues in order to raise even more money?!

So I set about making cupcakes, a victoria sponge and some chewy white chocolate cookies, but these were no ordinary cakes. No no my friend, it is fair to say that I cracked out the red food colouring, meaning my creations were not only delicious and beautiful, they were pink to match the day’s theme!

Here is a snap of my beautiful pink cupcakes!


Cool huh? They went down an absolute storm, and by the end of the say I had sold all 30 cupcakes, 1 massive victoria sponge (sliced up in to about 14 bits I think) and 15 huge cookies!

The total we raised on the day was £141.09, and I think about £40 of this was from cakes alone so I was so pleased with that :)

I love raising money for charity, but when you can raise money but doing something you really love, that’s even more rewarding. Everyone said to me that my cakes were delicious, and some even said that I have missed my vocation in life and should open my own bakery haha! I would go that far, but I will be sure to keep on baking, and if they are lucky, I may even bake some more cakes to bring in for my colleagues next Friday!

Love Lauren x

I love flying....

Ok, well the title of this is clearly a lie! But whilst I dread the mere thought of cruising through the air at 600 miles an hour, 34,000 feet about the earth which is just clearly NOT natural, it doesn’t mean I don’t go on lots of flights to enjoy a holiday or two at some stunning far flung destination.

Apart from the sheer terror of take-off, the trauma of turbulence and the distress before landing, the thing I hate the most about flying is the pure discomfort. Being stuck not only in the worlds most cramped seat, for 10 hours is one thing, but having to sit upright and try to sleep really does not make for a pleasant experience. Now sadly, I am not one of these fortunate folk who can afford the extortionate amounts it costs to fly in business class, so we mere mortals have to be inventive when it comes to providing ourselves with in-flight comfort (you don’t get free pillows and blankets these days people).

My sister flew to Las Vegas on Monday (lucky mare), and before she went she was talking about wanting a neck pillow for the flight. I thought this was a genius idea so we decided that I should use my sewing expertise (ahem) to make her one. If you want to know how to fashion your own in flight neck pillow out of some fabric and the inside of a cushion, keep reading.

So to make this delightful pillow, you will need:
· Any cotton fabric of your choice
· Stuffing from the inside of an old cushion
· Thread to match
· A sewing machine (although it could be stitched by hand if you don’t have one)
· Scissors
· Pins
· A needle
· A pen

Oooh take a look at my old school sewing machine. Cool huh. I may as well be living in the 50’s. This beauty can only do a running stitch. No zig zagging for me! But it serves its purpose I suppose!

Ok so firstly you will need to pick your fabric. Rowanne chose a charming mint green material with small flowers in pinks, purples etc. Fold the fabric in half so the nice sides are facing inwards (rough edge on the outside) and lay flat on the table. Use a pen to lightly sketch the shape of your pillow; think a thick boomerang!

Once you have drawn your shape, cut it out. Once you have done this, you will have 2 shapes that look like this (you have 2 because you folded the material in half, remember?)

So now you need to line these shapes up, with the good sides facing each other. Use your pins to pin them together so when you are sewing, nothing moves out of place. Take this pinned piece and use your sewing machine (or hand sew using a running stitch) and sew about 1 centimetre from the edge nearly all the way around, leaving a gap big enough to get your hand through when you are stuffing! Turn the shape inside out so that the good side is now on the outside and you should have something like this!
Unsure why this is sideways, but you get the gist, right?

All you need to do now, is stuff the pillow with your chosen wadding and then stitch up the gap by hand. This can be a little tricky as you must turn the open edges inwards and do a looping type stitch to make sure the pillow is sealed with no rough edges (Blimey, that’s so unclear…I’m presuming no one will have a clue what I mean haha!)

And voila!! You should have something that looks a bit like this! (Yes, I know one side is chubbier that the other. I don’t care. It looks stunning)

Hope Rowanne had a nice sleep on the flight. Considering I also made her a matching eye mask, she should have slept like a baby!

Love,
Lauren
xx

I love DIY

Bonjourno!

As you may have noticed, my blog is an utterly random array of things I love (well, and hate, but I don’t think a blog called ‘Lauren Hates’ would be a terribly appealing read!)

So today I just wanted to do a little post about my interior designing skills! As you know, I love anything shabby chic, vintage or Cath Kidson esq, but I really do not appreciate the insane price tags that come with purchasing these delicious items, so I have taken to creating my own in order to create the style I desire but actually have enough money to survive (aka go down the pub).

I have spoken about my love for sewing, but sadly there are some things that you just can’t sew, so (aaagggh too many so’s!!!) how else can I go about turning my home in to a cute little vintage dream? Well, being an expert in all things shabby, I know that if its cute, white, and rough around the edges (that sounds like a man I would like to meet!) then it’s in, so how do you go about creating the perfect piece?

My sister had a really ornate but black mirror, but as black is not in keeping with the country cottage vibe, I decided that I would paint it for her and see if we could ‘shab’ it up a bit.

Literally, all I did was masking tape up around the mirror, get some white emulsion and after 2 coats of paint (and a fair bit of mess later), the only thing left to do was to sandpaper and rough up any bits that protrude or stuck out to make it look like old wear and tear…and here is the end result!
Cute eh! With my quick dry emulsion, I would say it only took a few hours! You could do it so anything, mirrors, photo frames, shelves, furniture, the world is your oyster. So if you see something that you think is cute but doesn’t quite have the vintage factor, just do it yourself!

Top tip: Keep an eye out at boot sales. Items are dead cheap but you could make them look uber expensive :)

Also, here is an updated pic of my room, hope you like!
I am getting a pine bed frame on Wednesday, which I will be sanding down and painting white, so hopefully that will look awesome!!

Until next time….

Love
Lauren x

I love an overreaction

Having read on Twitter about the earthquake on America’s East Coast that happened the other day, I was expecting to see pictures of devastation to rival that of the earthquake in Christchurch or the Tsunami in Japan, but what greeted me was, to be honest, nothing short of a disappointment. Now, I hate major disasters as much as the next person, but if you are going to cause such a drama and splash a story all across the internet and TV, at least give me something to look at. Here are some of the images of the ‘damage’ that the 5.8 Virginia earthquake caused:

Wow, a few bricks on the floor and a broken jar of Dolmio? I for one am surprised that nobody was killed (please note my overly sarcastic tone). I would say, this earthquake has had nearly as much publicity and air time as the New Zealand quake, but literally pales in comparison! Here are some photos of devastation caused in Christchurch, where 181 people were killed.

How many people were killed on Tuesday in America? That’s right, a big fat zero, so why such a fuss? At least some of the less dramatic Americans saw with the reaction what I see, and decided to poke fun at it too! Here is my favourite viral pic:


Even people on Twitter have started to poke fun at the clear overreaction …..My two favourites are:

@geek3point0: President Obama has just confirmed that the DC earthquake occurred on a rare and obscure fault-line, apparently known as 'Bush's Fault'.

@Supajoe: This east coast earthquake is obviously divine retribution for Jersey Shore

Hahaha. Yep. Jersey Shore is terrible. Take that as payback MTV.


But seriously, maybe America needs to stop this melodramatic behavior, after 9/11, you would think they would actually be able to distinguish between the serious, and the downright stupid!
Anyway, rant over for the day! Bank holiday weekend, bring it on woop!

Love,
Lauren

I love the internet

Even though I know how big the internet is, I am often still amazed by its power.

Take the recent riots for example. It seems that some of these thugs did try to organise the chaos via the internet, and clearly, it worked. The message spread fast and hundreds of would-be rioters gathered in force to do battle with police. But that was not the extraordinary thing. What amazed me was that via twitter, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people opposed to the mindless violence spread the word and got together to help with a mass clean-up of the devastated areas of London.

Even blogs, which do not have such a wide readership as Twitter and Facebook have been proven to muster support and get something done about a situation.

I was having my daily (uhhh more like hourly!!) catch up on Mail Online earlier, and came across a story in which mother of 2, Nancy Atkinson-Turner used her blog to foster public opinion and force a retail giant to bow to pressure and finally apologise to her for accusing her of shoplifting. Having been falsely accused to pinching shampoo from her local Tesco Extra, all Nancy wanted was an apology from the store manager. But when weeks passed and she had heard nothing, she took to her blog to have a bit of a rant about the way in which she had been treated. She thought perhaps her friends might read it, and pass it on to a few others, but she was not prepared to find that just a 24 hours after writing the post, she had accumulated over 60,000 hits and hundreds of supportive comments. The next day, Tesco called her up and told her an apology letter and a voucher to compensate her was on its way. It seems blatantly obvious that Tesco only apologised to Nancy because their misdemeanour was being circulated to a wider audience and they didn’t want to look bad. Blog pressure. I like it!

This got me thinking about marketing. It just proves what a useful tool social media has become, not only for the masses to spread awareness and organise mass opinion in to mass action, but for businesses too. Promoting a service or an event has become so much easier with the use of online marketing. One click of a button and your message is out there, for hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people to see, so why not use it to your advantage to promote yourself? Nancy showed that even something as simple as a blog can be turned in to a platform to get your point across and gather support, so I think businesses, especially smaller ones would be foolish not to use social media to their advantage!

Everyone should have a blog. Even if no one reads is (like mine ), it is still somewhere to voice your thoughts and opinions, and if you can’t be bothered to write long posts like me (by now you will have figured I like to ramble on a bit!!) then why not try Twitter for a micro blogging experience. It is clear that achieve a lot with the pesky 140 character limit! you can tweet me @LaurenPrater

Love
Lauren x

I love....

Amen!

I love things like this, little mantras that actually make you stop and think for a second. I know better than most that life is unbelievably short, so I for one am going to start making the most of it. I am going to have a think of what I want to accomplish over the next year, perhaps I will make a list and see how many I can tick off :)

Love
Lauren x

I love.....being lazy

Oh dear. Looks like I may have missed a few week’s worth of blog posts (MONTHS I hear you cry!)….

I know you were panicking that I may never return (ok fine, no one actually reads this but you get my drift..), but I am back now so you can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward the next few weeks of witty, hilarious, interesting and informative blogging. That is if I actually remember to write anything. Hmm.

So I’m sure everyone is wondering what I have been up to during my extended leave of absence. Well if you think I have been sewing, making stunning creations and growing my Cath Kidston imitation empire, you would be wrong. I have been so busy just working and going to the gym (SAD) that I am ashamed to say my sewing machine has been gathering dust for some time now. I need to find some time to make a few more cushions and perhaps start selling them on eBay, I know I could become some sort of eBay queen and make a stack of dosh but I just can’t really find time to sit down and sew at the moment! I just need to make a bit of time and then I’m sure I will be making my millions just like dear old Cath. Wishful thinking eh!

So, in a nutshell, this is what I have been up to whilst I have been AWOL from the blogging world:

· Weekend trip to Dublin. Highlights include drinking lots of Guinness, eating a Guinness pie, visiting the Guinness Factory (sensing a theme?), hanging out in Temple Bar and basically loving the craic.
· Gymming. A LOT. I am trying to get healthy so at the moment I have been going to the gym a fair bit. At few weeks ago, I could run for 1 minute on the treadmill and have to stop due to pure exhaustion, (Lame), but now, I can run for 8 whole minutes! Quite an achievement for a lazy so and so like me!
· Camping trip to the New Forest with my besties Laura, Tom, Rowanne and Andy. Saw many cute ponies, drank copious amounts of wine, stealth mode in darkness, sat on a roof terrace by the beach in the blazing heat and basically chilled out to the max. Oh and witnessed Colin Farrell having an asthma attack and being carted away from the campsite in an ambulance at 1 am (Not the real Colin I must stress...)
· Started reading the New York Times bestseller ‘Skinny Bitch’. Put off of fizzy drinks, sweetner and meat/fish for life. Still have half the book to read. Scared.

I’m sure I have done a lot more than this, but sadly I have not the will nor the energy to divulge. Hopefully I will update my blog at least once a week, but don’t hold me to it.

Ciao Amigos.

Love,
Lauren xx

I love cupcakes - UPDATE!

I ended up making the cupcakes round my sisters flat last night, was so fun! The red velvet-ness was not as velvety as I had hoped, but they were yummy all the same, and the cream cheese toppin g was incred! Here is a photo of Rowanne loving a bit o' frosting.....


Anyway, I don't have a picture of the inside of the cupcakes, but they were gorgeous and red (obviously hahahaha)! We decorated them with cute little pink sprinkles that I bought from Sainsbury's...I love making things look pretty!

Here are our cakes woo!


We gave them to my best friend Laura for her birthday, along with one of my home sewn bags...she loved them! I would definatley recommend making gifts for people instead of buying something; its much more personal and makes giving that little bit more special!

So sleepy today, not in the mood for a long post, but I'm sure I will think of something amaze to write tomorrow :)

Love,
Lauren x

I love cupcakes

So I’m sat here trying to engross myself in a powerpoint presentation, but distraction has driven me to search online for delish cupcake recipes.


I found a recipe for Red Velvet cupcakes! YUM. Not sure how many people have heard of Red Velvet cakes as I think they are more of an American thing, but I personally heard about them years ago when I watched that ever so intellectual reality show ‘Newlyweds’, starring everyone’s favourite couple Jess and Nick (yeah right..)







They had a Red Velvet wedding cake, which to be fair looked 10 out of 10 yummers. I couldn’t actually find a good picture of their exact cake, so here is a random picture of a slice of Red Velvet cake (we can just pretend that this is the exact one they ate, yeah?)



Looks yummy right?



Well you too could be chowing down on some Red Velvet cake tonight like I will be, if you just follow these ever so simple (?) directions…




Red Velvet cupcake recipe




6 0g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150g caster sugar
1 egg
10g cocoa powder
20ml red food colouring (preferably Dr. Oetker's as red food colourings vary in strength)
½tsp vanilla extract
120ml buttermilk
150g plain flour
½tsp salt
½tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½tsp white wine vinegar


For the cream cheese frosting:
300g icing sugar, sifted
50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g cream cheese, cold





Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3.



Put the butter and the sugar in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy and well mixed. Turn the mixer up to high speed, slowly add the egg and beat until everything is well incorporated.



In a separate bowl, mix together the cocoa powder, red food colouring and vanilla extract to make a thick, dark paste. Add to the butter mixture and mix thoroughly until evenly combined and coloured (scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula).



Turn the mixer down to slow speed and slowly pour in half the buttermilk. Beat until well mixed, then add half the flour, and beat until everything is well incorporated. Repeat this process until all the buttermilk and flour have been added. Scrape down the side of the bowl again. Turn the mixer up to high speed and beat until you have a smooth, even mixture. Turn the mixer down to low speed and add the salt, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. Beat until well mixed, then turn up the speed again and beat for a couple more minutes.




Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until two-thirds full and bake in the preheated oven for 20–25 mins, or until the sponge bounces back when touched. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.




Meanwhile for the cream cheese frosting: Beat the icing sugar and butter together in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) on medium-slow speed until the mixture comes together and is well mixed. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated. Turn the mixer up to medium-high speed. Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least 5 mins. Do not overbeat, as it can quickly become runny.



When the cupcakes are cold, spoon over the cream cheese frosting on top.








Man that’s long. Anyway, I’m off to Sainsbury’s soon to buy the ingredients, hope they turn out well! Maybe if you are lucky I will post a picture of these beauties after I am done later.

If you make them too, I hope you enjoy!



Love,
Lauren x

I love CK

I don’t know how it all started really. Well I do, but I’m still trying to figure out how I actually got so obsessed. You see, I love Cath Kidston. No, not the actual woman, because that would probably be a little bit weird, but I literally am in love with EVERYTHING that she designs. Here is a delicious little taster of her god damn incredible work…..

Ooooh! SO cute it actually makes me want to cry inside a little. Yes, I’m insane. No, I don’t care.

Anyway, it all started when it was my sister’s birthday. I was deliberating whether to get her something standard (Some jewellery (SALE items, naturally), a nail varnish and a bottle of £3.99 rose – yeah ok I’m Scrooge in disguise..), or to be the nice sister that I am and push the boat out. I decided on the latter, which posed a problem because I had absolutely no idea what might constitute an interesting present. I started thinking about a bag, but it is well known that a nice bag is usually expensive (think Mulberry, Louis Vuitton and suchlike). So I looked around online a little, not expecting to find anything, when I suddenly stumbled across Cath Kidston and her array of incredible bags. So to cut a long story short (you will find that I tend to beat around the bush in my story telling ways..) I decided a Cath Kidston bag would make a nice thoughtful present (lucky girl eh!), so off I pottered to the Cath Kidston shop in good old Winchester.

And oh my, as soon as I stepped across the threshold I was hooked…

From bags to aprons, bedding to mugs and purses to phone covers, every single household or practical item is there, but just adorned with one of her gorgeous patterns. I ran around the place like a kid in a sweet shop, squealing in delight at the exciting things that I found. After half an hour of said squealing, I remembered what I was there for. The bag. This became an issue in itself as Cath Kidston not only makes about a million different styles of bag, each style comes in an array of different patterns! OH GOD this was too difficult for me..I loved them all. But this wasn’t for me, sadly it was for Rowanne (damn her) so I eventually decided on this beauty.

Lovely eh?

So anyway, I got home, and began getting over excited about CK’s fine wares. I needed a bedroom like the one set up in her store. I needed a floral bedspread, a spotty lamp and some union jacks to adorn my newly designed bedroom. From then on, literally everything I bought was floral/spotty/vintage/shabby chic/insanely cute. As I swiftly ran out of money (not everything CK sells is cheap my friends) I decided that surely I could make a variety of cute vintage inspired items myself for much less dollar?! Here is the current view of my bed. I made all of these cushions myself (oi, don’t look so shocked!)

So this is where the sewing obsession began. If I had never had gone to the Cath Kidston shop to buy my sister a bag, I might never have become like a crazed maniac when presented with floral fabric and a sewing machine.

Thanks Cath Kidston for inspiring me. Big love.

Lauren x

I love blogs

Well, here we are. I have finally made some time to actually start this blog (which needless to say I have been babbling on about for ages..), but now comes the hard part; what to actually write about?

I have been asked numerous times (well, like twice ha) what my hobbies are? The answer to this has always been embarrassingly straight forward. I didn’t have any.

“You don’t have any hobbies?!! That’s crazy! Surely there must be something you like doing in your spare time?!” people would exclaim! ”Well I’m sorry”, I would reply, “I just haven’t found anything that really interests me yet”. You see, when I was younger, I tried lots of different hobbies to see if I could find one to suit me, but each time I gave up within the first few weeks. As you will see, my reasons for abandoning ship were usually just bad excuses. Gymnastics (too strenuous), Horse Riding (too smelly), Painting (too messy), Swimming (too lazy), Collecting Lamb cuddly toys (too geeky)….I did however teach myself the guitar when I was 14 (which I still play now, might I add), but this was only to impress a ‘cool’ guy at my school who was really in to rock music, so really this was just me pretending to have a really interesting hobby.

I can honestly say that up until now, my primary extra-curricular activity has been drinking wine, but I think that’s more of a necessity in life rather than a hobby ;)

However, at the ripe old age of 24, the tide is a’ turning. I think I may have found something that can actually turn in to a real hobby!

Drumroll please………

My new found obsession is........sewing!

GOD I sound cool.

But seriously, I have found something that I absolutely love doing, and it is a hobby that I literally know I will never give up. All I want to do is get out the sewing machine and make new things, one Sunday I actually got up at 9 in the morning, and made things ‘till the sun went down. Yes it was summer. Yes the sun went down around 9. Yes I am insane. But I cant stop!!!

It all started when I became obsessed with Cath Kidston. You all know her, the woman who makes the delicious floral bits and bobs. We will discuss her at a later date, all you need to know right now is that she was the inspiration behind my new found psycho ways. So I decided to decorate my bedroom using Cath Kidston’s delightful influence, but I could really find any cute cushions or decorative bits in the shops that would go with my theme?! What was a girl to do? My beautiful CK boudoir was fast becoming a distant dream, would it ever be within my reach?!! FEAR NOT everybody, because I swiftly came up with a cunning plan: I WILL MAKE MY OWN.

Make my own?! Surely this would not be possible? I didn’t even have a sewing maching, let alone know how to use it! Que Grandma. She had been hiding away an amazing Singer sewing machine dating back to the 1950’s (which incredibly still works) which she had probably been hoping I would never get my grubby little mitts on, but I asked her very nicely if I would pretty please with cherries on top borrow it to make a cushion cover, and she graciously obliged. She showed me how to thread that bad boy up and get him working, and soon I was well away.

Here is my beautiful sewing machine in all its glory.

Old huh. Well yes, but it does the job (well aside from the fact the only stitch it does is straight, but its good nonetheless and still works after 60 years...trooper)

Needless to say my first attempt a making a cushion cover was a bit shoddy, but I was shocked at how good it was considering it was my first ever time using a sewing machine.

Here is said cushion.

Since that day (about a month ago ahahaha) I have made about 8 cushions, lots of little heart shaped hanging things (pics to follow if you don’t know what in the name of Mary I am talking about) , half made a patchwork quilt and have even made a bag. YES A BAG.

I love sewing sew much HAHAHA please excuse the pun! I love my new hobby and I hope to use this blog to share all of my creations/ideas/general musings with the world. And don’t worry, its not only sewing I will be talking about……I love baking, knitting, cute shizz, music, beauty, the odd celeb and muchos more, so keep checking back to see what I am loving this week

Ok, I have chatted on long enough. Time to get back to the real word.

Love,
Lauren x