This week has felt like an extension of my birthday. On Monday, I received a box of awesome treats from Medusa’s Make-Up and then my purple heart-shaped Daisy Rock bass, and then on Tuesday Sarah sent a package of awesome birthday treats, including a super cute Momiji doll with a really sweet note inside.

I love love love my bass. It’s looks even prettier in real life and it’s really easy to play because it’s designed for girls fingers. Tom and I have been playing Desaparecidos, McClusky and Paramore… hehe!

This week’s work included making Make-Up tutorials for Medusa’s Make-Up.

This is the first one I’ve made, so I hope I described everything properly.

I got a lot of purple things for my birthday, including this awesome Canon camera from Tom. It has a wide-angle lense, so all my photos will be 16:9 and it’ll look like I’m in a movie.

I couldn’t resist taking minature-style photos of Camden.

It looks so cute, like a toy-set complete with miniature drug dealers and punks.

Ross invited us along to their party in a really cool pub up in Belsize Park.

His band, Mars Patrol were using half the room to shoot a music video. We were too scared to go in it but there were break dancers, sumo wrestlers, dogs and lots of crazy people.

Today, we’re off on the hunt for weird ice cream. Last week I made some lemon sorbet, which was sooo easy and really tasty!

It was Louise’s birthday yesterday, so I made her a whoopie pie cake and we attempted to surprise her with it on her way home from work. I made muesli whoopies with honey and raisin buttercream, ginger whoopies with chocolate buttercream, plain chocolate whoopies, rose flavoured whoopies and peanut whoopies. I wonder if she managed to eat them all on her own?!

We all went for dinner at Jack’s again in Queen’s Park.

I also made her a newt bracelet because she loves newts.

On the subject of crafting, I bought a bunch Liberty fabric scraps, which I’m going to turn in to owl cushions. I love the prints.

I also got a really cute robot watch necklace from eBay but within the first 24 hours, one of his arms fell off and got lost in the streets of Soho. Luckily a replacement arrived today.

My Mum was browsing through a sewing magazine and spotted this article on me after recognising our bed. She was so unfazed she didn’t even buy it!

I love my new cake stand. Tom brought home some macaroons and they look so pretty on it. I tried baking my own again and I almost have it perfected, I just need to buy more eggs. There was a heatwave last week which meant it was way too hot to work in the mews, so I went to work with Tom at Leap in Soho. He’s hired Tony as his second-in-command tech guy, so it was nice to see another friendly face (and play on his new iPhone).

I got Tom this awesome Vivienne Westwood sailor top. I spotted it a while back when it was £160, so I waited for it to go cheap in the sale. It looks so good and he wore it…

… on Saturday with his Sailor hat. King Charles said he should dress like a sailor everyday!

Saturday was Louise’s Mad Hatter’s tea party in Queen’s Park. The first of many events stretching over a week for her birthday.

Can you spot the person who forgot to wear a hat / animal ears?

I wore a fascinator that I made in hat making class.

There was no actual tea but lots and lots of food. I baked whoopie pies, which everyone liked, yay!

They were super easy to make and I’ve posted my recipe for peanut butter whoopie pies on CO+K:

On Sunday we all watched the World Cup and supported Spain because Paul the Octopus said they’d win. Yesterday, Tom and I went to see Rhod Gilbert’s new radio show. We had to hand in comments about things we don’t like about shopping and Rhod read mine out and tried to find me in the crowd but I hid.

My parents came down to visit on Thursday, so after voting, we headed to Westminster to see the results being projected on to Big Ben.

The south bank was lit up all pretty for the evening.

There were only a couple of results in while we were but I bet it looked amazing at 5/6 in the morning.

Tom and I had made some peanut butter pretzels for my parents the night before and they were so tasty. Plan 9 sells American peanut butter, which promises to be the “no. 1 choice of choosy moms”.

On Friday, we went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Globe.

This adaption was set in Elizabethan times, so it was really different from the other versions I’ve seen of the play but that made it even more interesting.

Louise is down in London job and flat hunting and I’ve been trying to help her out (though I think I may have been more of a distraction).

She came over on Tuesday and we drank wine out in the sunshine on the Mews, sang karaoke while wearing animal ears and made nest cakes (the shops were out of mini eggs, so we had to settle for dolly mix).

In the evening, Metaxa had a BBQ on the balcony of her amazing apartment in Notting Hill. I munched on veggie burgers.

By the end of the week Louise left with a new job and place to live!

This weekend was Easter / Ben & Dave’s housewarming party, so I put on some blue bunny ears and made some of my Nana’s classic nest cakes to take along to the party and they went down very well.

On Sunday, Emma invited us all over to her place for lunch. She made me yummy fish fajitas and chicken ones for everyone else (the plate was awesome).

For dessert we had waffles and choco vine, which made us sleepy but tasted like Easter in a glass.

Tom didn’t manage to get me an egg in time for Easter but he made up for it with this amazing £34.99 egg (which he got reduced), that had a pretty painting on and was filled with amazing chocolates.

On Sunday, Emma had tried to plan a surprise brunch / engagement party, but our reservation at Fifteen fell through so we all ended up at The Diner in Kensal Rise, which was equally as awesome.

The hard shakes went down really well. The stress of planning had driven Em to margaritas at breakfast.

My breakfast was a cheesy sweet waffle (odd but nice combination) with hash browns, baked beans and scrambled eggs. Yum!

After we headed back to the Mews for absinthe champagne cocktails and Tiffany box cakes.

I had managed to make them the night before and they tasted really good. Check out the how-to on CO+K.

Our neighbour, Barney popped by with a bottle of champagne.

We spent the rest of the evening playing Buzz, singing karaoke, drinking and planning a trip to Amsterdam (which I really hope happens). Emma brought a huge box of red velvet cupcakes from Hummingbird, which tasted soooooooo good and made up for a lack of dinner.

Last night, Barney came over to drink the champagne with us, while we nibbled on cheese and crackers and listened to records.

If we’d  known being engaged was going to be this much fun, we’d have done it ages ago. Thanks so much to all of our amazing friends, we love you xxx

I seem to craft so much faster when it’s cold outside. This week I finished my patchwork quilt, which I had started back in the summer. I had the bulk of the work finished in two days and then left it for months until Monday, when it was so cold, I decided to get it finished. It’s really cosy having the extra layer on the bed and it’s good to snuggle up with in front of the TV and knit.

It’s been another busy crafty week. I’ve finished knitting my scarf, but I want to add pockets and John Lewis have ran out of my shade of yarn, so I’ll have to wait until I’m back in Scotland to get some more. On Wednesday, Tom’s boss Malcolm was hosting an evening at the office, where he showed off the video of Hugh Grant shaving off his moustache. It was really funny and I’ll post it when it’s live.

Alex gave us an early Christmas present last night, which is a really pretty candle holder made out of a tree trunk.

We’ve been making eggnog and ginger beer for our December party this weekend. I’ve also finished my Christmas shopping, which I’m really happy about. I do more shopping in December than I do in the rest of the year.

I really like the cheery guy at Warwick Avenue tube station who writes the notes on the service information board. He always writes things like “Hey Folks, had a bad week? Don’t worry it’s only 24 hours until the weekend” and “isn’t it funny how time flies by?”. Sometimes he stands there and greets everyone as they pass through the barriers with a “have a good day folks”. He must be the happiest person in the world. Someone posted a photo of one of his signs and you can see the cheery man himself just to the right (thanks Danhon on flickr).

Did you do anything for pancake day? I was back in Scotland, so my Nana made me my all time favorite pancake – funnel cakes. She use to make them for me every pancake day, and any other day I requested, when I was a little girl and they’re so much tastier than normal pancakes because they’re really crispy. You can try them out for yourself, I’ve posted the recipe on Cut Out + Keep.

Brini Maxwell sent me one of her awesome embroidery flower kits, so I’ve been stitching it up as a present for my Grandma.

The dish of this week has been pesto omelettes. Check out the recipe on CO+K, it’s so simple.

Also, I’ve fallen in love with Eylure Tokyo lashes. Here are some of the ones I bought…