Milkshakes In The Sunshine

My little 3-year old niece asked if we could come into town on Saturday to meet her and her big brother after they'd been to the pictures with their Grandma. So, naturally, we made our way to town. I mean, how could we resist a request like that?? I was too distracted though by the all the noise and commotion in the toy shop and in the eatery we went to to remember to take any photos of the wee souls, but we still took some photos of each other in the sunshine after buying milkshakes. We're not quite as adorable as my niece and nephew though. 

I thought I'd wear my new Barbie t-shirt and new purple scarf since it was such a nice day and I wanted to show them off.

And here's my husband, looking disturbingly like a men's fashion model. The jumper over the shoulder probably doesn't help actually.

I found this teeny wee necklace in Accessorize the other day too. They had it in months ago, I didn't buy it and regretted it ever since so when I saw it was back in stock I had to snap it up. It has a black plastic heart with a little gem inside and, although it's gold rather than silver, it's so tiny and cute that I don't even mind. 

Various Recent Photos

At the cinema the other night just before going to see Riddick.

Having a break with a good book and a hot chocolate

I bought a myself scarf the other day (a purple one, of course). I'm trying to get the hang of a pin-up hairstyle with it. As you can imagine, my first attempts at it aren't very good so any tips are welcome!

I made parmesan crisps the other day with some left-over parmesan. You place slices of it on top of some grease-proof paper on a baking tray, making sure there are no spaces in between, and bake it in the oven. When the resulting of parmesan cools off and become hard, you break it into 'crisps' and eat.

I love how weird and vampirey my eyes look in this photo. I used to hate having light grey eyes when I was a kid. I thought it was so boring. Now I love it!

'Cupcake Secret' Silicone Cake Mould

I've recently been eyeing this baking tray in a shop in town. I had decided not to get it since we don't have much space for things in our kitchen cabinets and it's a bit of a gimmick after all. However, seeing it reduced from £5 to £3 the other day, I gave up trying to resist. 

The idea is that the tray has little space-filler "cups" in each indentation. You fill up the tray with cake mixture and, as the cakes rise in the oven, they rise around the little cups and you end up with a finished cake that has a ready-made reservoir in it perfect for pouring in icing, jam or chocolate etc. Sounds neat to me anyway. 

It seemed a huge box for just six cake indents so I figured they were more muffin-sized than cupcake-sized, but that's no bad thing.

I should say the actual contents were not like photo on the box at all. The little pins were underneath the bases instead of sticking out of them. For three quid, I ain't gonna complain though! I managed to make it work (sort of) by squeezing the pins up inside the silicone and stretching the hole inside the cups so they fit over the much wider plastic sticky-uppy bit (Sounds painful, I know...).

Okay, so I was a doofus and filled the moulds way too high with cake mix. The cakes had totally enveloped the little cups by the time I took them out the oven. No need to worry though...

... I managed to dig them out with a spoon (Okay, now I'm realising that I maybe should have just made cupcakes the normal way and dug holes out of them with a spoon, but hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Once that was done, I spooned some chocolate spread inside the holes (behave yourselves).

I decided to top them with coffee icing to make them into nice (if a little large) mocha flavoured treats. I got the recipe from a book.

After spreading the icing on, I topped them with the left-over crumbs I had from digging the cups out earlier.

And, just like every good biology lesson, I'll finish with a cross-section. These cakes are flipping huge, by the way (but very, very tasty).

Making An Eyeball Flower Brooch

I picked up some very cheap flower brooches from h&m the other day and decided to give them a bit of the old diy treatment. This is by no means a tutorial, since the method is incredibly self-explanatory, but I think it's nice to document these things anyway to show that you can make things like this instead of paying lots of money for them.

I cut some of the stamens out of the flower first for room, then glued around the edge of the eyeball (which was bought as a set of 12 from ebay) before positioning it onto the flower and holding it while the glue dried.

Not the trickiest thing in the world I've ever made although I might add some red diamontes around the edge to fancy it up a bit. I know it makes me look a bit like a clown, but I love it anyway! And, besides, what's more gothic than a clown? Clown's are terrifying!

Recent Instagram Pictures

I thought I'd share some snapshots of  life than I've taken lately. I also included some snippets of recent drawings I've been doing too so if you're into that sort of thing, you can keep up with what I do on my art blog or my tumblr if you like. Also I'm on instagram as @alisonlisahorn

1. Having dolmades (very tasty stuffed vine leaves) and a pot of yogi yogi chai outside Tchai-Ovna on a rainy day. 2. On the same day, we stopped by Nardini's for coffee and what turned out to be the biggest chocolate ice-cream cone I think I've ever seen.

3. I've been working on new designs for Too Fast clothing lately. I'll also soon be getting the ribcage high heels I designed for them! They have a heel shaped like a spine and you can them here, along with a pair with my eye logo design on them. Neat. This one's for the back of a hoodie. 4. Been listening to a lot of Poisoned Electrick Head again lately.

5. Having coffees at Fornette's. An awesome cafe here in a slightly run-down shopping centre (which makes it seems like some kind of magical secret). 6. A close-up of one of my illustrations for this recent article on the Something Awful website.

7. Trying out different teas. The liquorice and chai tea bags are winners, although the Camomile & Maple doesn't really taste of anything unfortunately. 8. I came home on Saturday with popcorn and a bunch of movies for a film night. We ended up watching Cronos (and eating all the popcorn).

A Wee Bit Blue

Did I ever tell you about the time I got my hair dyed blue recently? No? Well, that's because it was a bit of a disaster. It faded to green and yellow after one wash. Ach well, at least I got my skeleton hand hair clasps from ebay to make it look a bit more exciting! I'm back to purple now anyway. I don't think I could ever get sick of having purple hair. 

Metallic Green Eyes With Purple Glitter Underneath

Here is a make-up look I tried out this summer. It's lots of metallic greens on the lid and purple glitter underneath the eye. I wish the photos showed off the purple glitter properly, but I'm sure you get the idea. I was wearing my little bird skull ring at the time too.

Once Upon A Tart

Tim's had some time off work lately which has been awesome since we've had lots of time to do things together. One of the things we did a lot over his holiday was go out for lunch. Here are the photos of the time we went to a place called Once upon A Tart in town. We didn't get served for 45 minutes so that wasn't great but at least we weren't in a rush. Actually, it worked out really well because it gave us lots of time to chat and have a good look at all the people in strange costumes going past the window (I think there was a steampunk event on that day). Anyway, the amazing cakes and even just the look of the whole place was enough for us to want to go back, maybe on a weekday though so it's not so busy!

Tim's camera makes me look weird and small

It's difficult to get a photo of him where he's not making a face

Coffeeee

The obligatory close-up montage of my make-up that day. I went for pale blue, purple and pink colours

Mightnight blue nails

Bright Blue Eyes & Leopard Print Skirt