A mini warming of a mini flat

Last night I had a few friends round to officially warm the mini flat. It was an elite (read motley) gathering, with a distinctly retro feel to the party food.

One of my oldest friends came up from the country to stay the night and take the sofa bed on its first spin in its incarnation as a bed. As is usual with myself and said friend, once we got chatting all thoughts of photography and blogging went out the window. Corks were popped and our focus turned to boys and clothes, with a smidge of careers and current affairs thrown in for good measure. So I'm afraid that I've had to make do with the leftovers (all homemade and wheat free of course):

Guacamole - the Hairy Bikers' way:

Babaganoush. This time from a recipe and with tahini, a variation of Hugh's recipe:

 

Gluten free cheese straws:

A retro classic - made me inordinately happy, especially when sticking out of a foil-covered grapefruit. No, really.

Macaroons:

 

After this morning's breakfast of champions (provided by my lovely ex-housemate last night) I've been pretty slow moving today, enjoying a lot of quality time with sofa and rug. Happy days.  

Back on the shelf

This last week has been a good one and a bad one. On the good side, I had my first non-familial dinner party, kicking off a week of house warmings. Due to various unscheduled events such as lockings out and breakings in, the cooking stage was a bit more rushed that I'd have liked and so no time for pics, other than the aftermath:

Dinner was a wheat free, meat free, nut and legume challenge due to various dietary requirements (and there were only three of us!) but consisted of homemade babaganoush (if only I could ever remember the recipe), sweet potato and spinach curry and lemon marscepone cheesecake. Needless to say, Wednesday was a struggle but I felt like a very lucky lady to have such lovely friends.

And on to the bad...sadly myself and the muscle have parted ways, which has left me sad and deflated. But leads me nicely onto two projects I HAVE completed this week - my 'back on the shelf' makeover. And on this rare occasion, I don't mean a new hair colour or flowery dress.

Number 1: My Billy bookcase makeover

Inspired by this blog here, and uninspired by the Ikea Billy bookcase that I've been lugging around various homes in London for the last eight years, here's my Billy bookcase as a work in progress:

 
And unveiling Billy's new look:

 

And onto the worst flatpack job I've ever had the pleasure to experience (in case you're wondering why the cheapest Argos shelves are so cheap). After a link of paint, and some added sparkle, now interim home to all my crafty bits and pieces:

And so off to bed for tomorrow the housewarming continues with a mini warming of a mini flat. Pics and sore heads to follow on Sunday I'm sure.

Good night x

Veggie luncheon for a staunch carnivore

I was delighted to have my first guests round for lunch today as my parents made the trek (mentally far removed, if not physically) from rural Northamptonshire to urban Streatham Hill.

It was part house warming, as the first time they've seen my flat, part Mothering Sunday (though I actually forgot that this morning!), part putting Dad to work utilising his drill.

While I'm not a true blue veggie, I very rarely eat meat these days, apart from an recent crash off the non-meat wagon headlong into a plate of obligatory Ikea meatballs. I blame it on the fact that I was a) getting ill and b) surely there's not actually any meat in said meatballs anyway?

Feeding such a staunch carnivore as my Father the following menu was a risky strategy but having spent most of yesterday either shopping or cooking here was my Mother's Day lunch menu:

Green lentils with roasted beetroot and feta:

 

Quinoa with roasted sweet potato: 

 

Potato salad - a staple favourite at any Tolliday / Ingram dinner party: 

 

The verdict I would say it was a win-lose result. The quinoa was not well-met, but the sweet potato was grudgingly ok, the roasted beetroot was 'good', and the potato salad was worthy of any Ingram gathering. 

And for pud... 

Berry polenta cake:

 

One highly commended wheat-free pud, gorgeously sticky without being stodgy. Nom.

Lovely to see my folks and I'm feeling pretty damned spoilt and happy to have them back in the country after a month of them travelling in New Zealand. And to bring the weekend to a happy close, a glass of wine with a certain young gentleman and Upstairs Downstairs - my new not-very-guilty guilty pleasure.

Duvet day

The last couple of weeks have been fairly hectic with moving and trying to get everything sorted out, whilst doing my best to navigate the 9-5. I think that the lack of any proper fruit and veg might have caught up with me and I'm off sick, so I'm catching up with the blog posting (my new house resolution) that I couldn't do until I had my wireless connected.

I spent an epic weekend painting the living room, which was my priority in order to make the most of the beautiful cherry blossom trees outside my window at the moment. And yesterday I managed to hem the cheap cheap Ikea curtains I bought as an interim measure. Here are the before and after shots.

Before:

After:

 And a gratuitous shot of the view from my window right now (*sigh*)...

Moving day

Today has been somewhat traumatic due to the pretty bleak state that the previous owners left the flat in. First mission is to get rid of a whole van load of rubbish that they left behind, and to give the flat a good scrub to make it vaguely liveable (enclosed picture of freezer gives you a good idea of the whole flat).

 

 Not too busy to celebrate with some ‘champagne’ (Co-op Brut) and fish and chips though.

And here’s the muscle helping me to move in. Thanks Al, you’re a trooper!

Completion cushions

I completed on my very own 37 square feet haven in South London today, HURRAH! Which means that tomorrow I can pick up the keys.

So obviously the first thing I did was to drive to that well-known Swedish homeware emporioum. The object of this mission was to buy myself a cheap wicker chair that I could use in my lounge until I get my sofa delivered, approximately four weeks from now.

In a fit of indecision and borderline panic driven by firstly getting lost amongst the Milton Keynes roundabouts, and then by going against the arrows in Ikea, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a chair, and so instead bought two large cushion pads and beautiful double duvet and pillow case set as I love this fabric.

Here are the fruits of my labours, and I still have a whole half a duvet cover of fabric and two pillow cases left....cheaper than a new chair.

Patchwork cushion beginnings

In a bid to stop myself from whiling away a whole day of browsing furniture and other people’s interiors blogs on the interweb I’ve decided that it’s not too early to get started on kitting out my new pad (mine in four more sleeps!) So take four fairly nasty cushion pads, which have moved house with me more times than they’d care to mention, plus one pile of scrap material, which is longing to reclaim its former glory and find a place to call home. Said pile consists of:

• Material given to me when I was teaching in Japan
• Two Cath Kidston tea towels (not a fan of drying up)
• One cheap nasty shirt from Brixton market that I liked the pattern of
• One skirt given to me by an ex-boyfriend, also a present from Japan
• 1 old pillow case

Patchwork cushion covers may have been a fairly ambitious project to use to reacquaint myself with my sewing machine but several hours later, here are the finished products. (Yep, there’s only three of them but one of the cushion pads was just too nasty to upcycle and had to be abandoned.)

Oh, and because I was having too much fun to leave the house to go and buy some actual food, I decided that lunch would have to be made out of what ingredients I had left in the house, hence a short peanut-butter-flapjack-making interlude. One weekend day very well spent.