How to Make Animal Push Pins

Hello and that was a break a little longer than I intended.
We have much to catch up on: Murray! Yay! Summer! Yay!  Holiday! ...over. Boo - but I return inspired and eager to get cracking on these projects that are building up and keep getting added to various lists.  First up, I finally got round to this mini project: Animal head pins.

A B&M store opened recently near me and it is the perfect place to walk around and kill an hour of time with endless aisles of cheap goodies.  I'd been searching for some cheap, plastic animal toys, but had struggled to find a pack the right size.  I found a collection of 5 farm animals for £1.99 which were perfect, so it was worth waiting and searching for.  I have a pig, sheep, cow, donkey and horse:

To make this project even simpler, I could have left the animals decorated as they were, however; to tie them all together, I wanted them all to be silver.  I didn't have can of spray paint to hand, so went for the next best thing - silver nail polish.  I have so many nail polishes, I pretty much have all colours covered, so if you have small items that you want decorated, I thoroughly recommend nail polish as an alternative.  It comes with a brush you don't need to clean, only requires one coat and dries pretty quick.

I covered the entire head area with one coat of the polish and left for a few minutes to dry:

Then I chopped it off.  Using nail scissors.

Is this barbaric? 

I found my nail scissors were perfect for piercing the plastic and then getting an even line, but I think small scissors in general would be just as good.  My animals were hollow, but if you find solid figures, I would recommend a sharp knife or saw [if you have one] - whatever you use, be careful and safe!

I touched up any of the polish along the cut, then rested the head so that I could fill it with glue
[I just used pva as that's all I have]:

...and then took a pin with a tall head and aligned it to match the pin with the cut off of the head:

[You could attach a flat pin with superglue]
Leave to dry overnight [at least] and make sure it's secure, before pinning to your board:

...and lets be honest, I'm most likely going to be pinning shopping lists and bills to the noticeboard, 

so I may as well make them seem more exciting with decapitated animals?

They also come in handy as little hooks for your keys and I'm starting to wonder if I should re-think my entire jewellery organisation to have all my necklaces, bracelets and watch to hang on animal hooks.

See you next time x

White Chocolate and Strawberry Cheesecake

Another healthy recipe form the House of The Things I Make.
Tomorrow is Wimbledon final day and the day I knew would happen and is also know as
Andy's Final Day! Whoop whoop.  Come on Murray.  I'll be needing this cheesecake to
distract me from your break points and double faults.  Good job I'm off for a week after, as
I reckon judging by Friday, I'll need it.

What I Used:

Serves 6(ish, more if you don't have eyes bigger than your stomach)
50g white chocolate chips

50g icing sugar

600g of cream cheese

Strawberries
10 digestive biscuits
butter for the base

The main reason for making this cheesecake was to try out my new cake tin.  Seriously.  As you may know, I'm not a sponge-gal, so cheesecake seemed like the best cake to be making with it.  To start, I prepared my base, which is my favourite.  Breaking up the biscuits to smithereens.

Once smashed, I added around 10g of melted butter at a time to help combine the crumbs and form a paste of sorts to line the bottom.  As this was going to be an epic cheesecake, I made quite a thick lining [1 part base, 2 parts cake], but you can judge this for your taste:

 ...pop in the fridge to set whilst preparing the cheese.  I combined 50g of melted white chocolate to 600g of cream cheese until fully combined - I then added a handful of white chocolate drops to the cheese mixture to add a bit of crunch and stirred to combine evenly:

...before adding 50g of icing sugar to thicken it a little and add a little sweetness.

I removed my base form the fridge, which had now set and transferred the cheese mixture on top,

 then leaving to set in the fridge:

Once set, I decorate the top with a little whipped cream around the side and cut up a handful of strawberries for the top:

I'm away next week and I am definitely not organised enough to have schedules posts or planned

 posts, so I hope you'll come back on the 15th July when I will hopefully have a crochet blanket 

update for you and a nail polish-related post that also involves plastic animal figures.  

Hope to see you then - have a great week!

4th July

I thought I'd take a little time-out from Wimbledon (I need to after that Murray match) and
wish all American visitors to my corner of the Internet a Happy 4th July!

 

 

Chocolate breadsticks made just like these and using sprinkles and writing icing pens
 from Sainsburys and Dr. Oetker.  Some marshmallow skewers thrown in for good measure x

Wimbledon Eton Mess

If I had to pick a favourite dessert, I think an Eton Mess would be it.  Simple - my favourite and perfect for Wimbledon watching, along with this, this and this.  Eat them all, why not? and if you have time, I recommend these too.

So that this was easy to serve, I had the components ready separately so that they just needed to be thrown together.  With the leftover whipped cream I had from my pavlova, I piped swirls in to a freezable dish and froze them, chopped my leftover strawberries and had my flavoured kisses ready:

Chuck them in a serving bowl with icecream and you are good to go:

...don't forget the strawberries:

I also squished some of the cream with meringues, so I could add one to a scoop of icecream for a prettier version:

Doesn't get much easier than that - Good luck today, Andy - come on!