Tasty Easter goodies :)

This week I thought I would feature a seller on Esty and a blogger I follow known as Marmalady. Shes from Derbyshire here in the UK and she sells in her shop all sorts of traditional homemade tasty treats that look fabulous. Take a look at the Easter cakes below that she has just recently added to her shop along with a few other treats that will make you drool :)
Check out her blog too http://marmalady1.blogspot.com/

A beautiful selection of Simnel and Easter cakes above.

These cookies look so good!

Oh how I love Lemon Curd.

 I've tried a few attempts to make fudge but it never works, good job I suppose otherwise I would make it all the time. This chocolate fudge looks delicious.

Slow times on Etsy...

Well my sales in my shop on Etsy have been almost non existent this year which is a bit disheartening. I had my friend Michelle round my house for Sushi last night and I showed her the jewellery I have made. She said that the women she works with would love my designs and I should let them see them. I packed a few things up for her to take into work today. To be honest because of the slow sales on Etsy I wasn't too sure that she would sell anything, then this morning she contacted me to say that as soon as she had got out the jewellery at work they had swarmed round and were fighting over the pieces! Well she has ended up selling 3 things so far for me with 2 requests for a necklace to go with a pair of earrings someone has their eye on and another charm bracelet which one of the women had bought. So all in all its been quite a success and I'm over the moon!

Honeytree Photography

Ok so this is the first time I have featured anyone on my blog and it makes me slightly nervous. There is so many wonderful talented artists out ther that I feel like I need to start sharing with you all the ones I've came across on Etsy.com.

As we're heading into Spring and Summer I couldn't think of a better artist than Lupen Grainne of Honeytree Photography to share with you. Her fine art photography captures nature and life at its best, the pictures draw you in with their warmth, dreamy lazy Summer feel and charm as Im sure you would agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonderland and afternoon tea

Yesterday my husband Dave had the day off work so we thought we would make the most of it by going out for some lunch and then to the cinema.
For our lunch we went to Betty's Cafe Tea Room in Northallerton in North Yorkshire. I have been here a few times now and I love it so much. Its a dainty traditional English tea room that makes you feel like you have stepped back in time to the 1920's. They have a little shop in the front of the building selling a range of cakes, biscuits, chocolates and pastries to take away, then in the back is the tea room with its domed glass roof and a huge palm plant set in the 'palm room'. The food here is amazing from the warm seasonal quiche to the simplest dish of egg mayonnaise and cress sandwich, Ive never had a dish that I didn't enjoy, even my Mam and Dad thought it was delicious when I took them for a treat. The desserts and cakes are what Betty's are famous for, a selection of mouthwatering cakes you can choose from off the cake trolley they bring to your table for you to browse. Its called a cafe tea room but the prices are restaurant prices, I find the food and service is better than restaurant standards so I think the prices are reasonable. If you are ever in Yorkshire look this tea room up and take a visit as you won't be disappointed but it is quite expensive.
We had a lovely time yesterday there, I ordered a warm spinach and leek tartlet with salad and chips and Dave had fried fillet of haddock with pea puree and chipped potatoes which was basically fish and chips but was the best I've ever tried. For dessert we both had chocolate torte served with double cream. We were so full up for the rest of the day :)

Betty's cafe tea room in Northallerton.

After finishing off at Betty's we headed to the cinema to see the new Alice in Wonderland in 3D.  Unfortunately we missed the 3D showing, I've never seen a 3D film and presumed that all of the showings would be 3D, but no not at the cinema we went to. I wasn't really disappointed that it wasn't in 3D to be honest, I can imagine the 3D making me feel motion sick. I thought the film was a remake until Dave pointed out that he had read somewhere that it was a sequel where she returns back to wonderland 13 years later. I really love the original Alice in Wonderland with all the colourfulness and surrealism but the new one has more of a darker feel, I suppose that's because its a Tim Burton film. It includes a good cast, the favorite and funniest for me were Tweedledee and Tweedledum which were played by Matt Lucas. The film was good and I did enjoy it but in my opinion it wasn't as good as the original, it might have been better if it had been a remake. Has anyone else seen this film yet? What did you think of it?

All in all we had a really lovely day :)

Don't get scammed like I did

My husband and I enjoy buying DVD box sets for things we're really into watching. About a year ago we got into watching the American sitcom King of Queens on the Comedy Central channel and decided to buy the box set so we could start from the beginning and work our way through. We're really loving it but we're 2 seasons away from the end so I thought I would get us a box set for something else to watch when King of Queens has ended. We both really love American sitcoms and another one we have enjoyed a few episodes of is Everybody Loves Raymond. So a couple of weeks ago I searched the Internet for the complete box set for it and came across a site called www.supremedvds.co.uk (DO NOT BUY FROM HERE) which was the cheapest I could find, £60. If you have ever bought a complete DVD box set you will know that they don't come cheap (the King of Queens one we bought was about £100). So anyway the website had good prices and seemed genuine so I made my order through Paypal. 2 weeks later they arrived from China and because of the cheap price and it being shipped from China we started to have a few doubts as to the DVDs being genuine. Once unpacked the box that contained the DVDs looked how I expected until I opened it up to look at the discs which were in plastic envelopes, which didn't seem right. I also tried playing the discs, we have a multi regional DVD player that can play discs from any country, but only about 8 out of 44 would play! Quite a few of the discs were also scratched. I realised that the box set we had been sent was a pirate copy so I contacted Paypal about this and luckily the seller refunded our money within about an hour of complaining! I found the genuine box set on Amazon for £111 and ordered it and was very happy when it arrived, no fakes this time. Has anyone else had problems like this before?

This is the first box set that arrived. Its slightly smaller than the real one and has different pictures in the windows and door. Other than that you wouldn't be able to tell.

^ This is the genuine one .^

The fake one once opened. Discs in plastic pockets in 2 boxes labeled box 1 and box 2.

Inside the genuine one with the discs inside season folders and a booklet of the finale script.

I've bought quite a lot off the Internet in the past and have never been scammed until now. I will definitely be more cautious of websites that are selling things with prices that are 'too good to be true'. I just wanted to share this experience with everyone to make people aware of things like this.