This is a short post to share a Hallowe’en card I made a few years ago for a friend. It was around the time I first saw and loved Shaun of the Dead. Five years later and it’s still my favourite film. I used a template from Zombie Pumpkins and raised the cutout to put Happy Halloween confetti behind it. I stuck on acetate too to make a window from which you could view the confetti. Needless to say, my friend loved it.

I knew it would be quite a grumpsome day when I was awoken five minutes before my alarm went off. I hate that. I work on my own schedule dammit.

I got up anyway and once breakfasted and ready we made our way to Bedford for my sister’s graduation. Unfortunately, I had to get back to work for meetings so we only had time to get photos taken and didn’t actually get to see her go up on stage and collect her degree. It was her second degree however and I was there for the first so I guess a 50% strike rate isn’t too bad.

I said to Sol I’d drive home so he could get a bit of kip before his long drive to Brighton later on. He was wearing his eye mask and I’m pretty sure many people thought I was kidnapping him or something from the weird looks we got. Though how they thought I overpowered a six foot massive bloke is a conversation for another time.

Two hours it took us to get home from Bedford to London! Traffic was mad and all those loathsome average speed cameras were dotted along the roads, jeering at me, “You can’t drive fast, nah nah nah nah nah nah!” Bastards. To make it worse, I was feeling sleepy. I’m pretty sure it was that extra five minutes I was deprived of this morning that did it. I had to resort to listening to cheesy pop in hopes of keeping awake and not crashing the car. Though if I did plough into something I’d hope it’d be one of those average speed cameras and that would recompense as some sort of sick silver lining.

When we did get back I was straight to work for back to back meetings until about 8pm. In most of the meetings we talked about the unpopular changes we’re going through right now and I got a general feeling that none of us knew our arses from our elbows.

Before jumping onto the cross trainer for my daily exercise, I popped the chicken Sol had marinated last night into the oven. We have a Tupperware box full of dry chappati flour for when we make roti that normally lives in the grill above the oven. I checked to see if it was in there before putting the oven on of course but couldn’t see it so assumed it had been moved. I assumed wrong. When I went back into the kitchen after half an hour, I smelled something weird…burning plastic? Shit, the damn box was hiding at the back of the grill and now was melted all over the bottom and back of it; an annoying obstacle between me and that delicious chicken. I tried my best to remove it without getting burned and was somewhat successful.

When I finally had the chicken it was really nice and I didn’t even need any Nando’s sauce with it. All’s well that ends well.

It’s been a while since I talked about cupcakes but then I saw the new Next Christmas gift collection and my love for all things cupcake came flooding back. Throw in pastel colours and Russian dolls and I’m totally on board.

You know how kids play less with toys and more with the boxes they come in? Cut out the middle man and get them this awesome cardboard house. It’s pretty much a blank canvas so they’ll have great fun colouring it in and using the stickers that come with it.

Magis – Villa Julia Small Cardboard House

Of course if you prefer a whole village of cardboard houses you can always go for this Smallest Village calendar from Anthropologie. Within the large mansion, there are six smaller houses with pieces of the calendar printed on them. Ingenius and cute!

Smallest Village Calendar

See those cuckoo clocks grouped together in the colorTHEORY picture below? I love that idea.

In fact, I am generally loving all cuckoo clocks right now. Must have one. Perhaps when I next redecorate? I couldn’t find those lovely silver clocks above but here are my other favourites.

Cuckoo Clock True Orange

Cuckoo Clock Vinyl Decal

Fair Isle Sweater Clock, Wolf

No matter how many iterations of these sketches I see, I always find them funny.

Ever since I came across this freestanding vintage shower, I’ve been dreaming about it being in my house. I must have it though I think the £12,950 price tag might put a dampener on things.

So you know that palaver every Eid where you don’t know what day it will be and you feel like a right tit explaining to your boss why you might have to take Monday off but then again you might not? Well this Eid that worked out well for me.

Eid may have been on Sunday or Monday so I booked the Monday off work anyway. It ended up being Eid on Sunday so we drove down to Brighton that night and spent all of Monday cycling around the most bike friendly place I’ve been to. (By “we” I mean me and husband, Sol. By the way, have you met Sol? Say hi everyone.) I’m not sure how many miles we ended up cycling but according to my bum, it was quite a lot. This was also our first time cycling on roads, with other much scarier vehicles so hooray for us. Plus, just days before Sol had surprised me with a basket for my bike and this was great for carting around my camera.

I’ve been to Brighton many times before (see Flickr sets from 2005 and 2006) but each time I visit I enjoy it as much as the last, if not more.

Lowlights: There weren’t many. Only that the hotel we stayed at on Sunday night stank like a pet store. Take note Travelodge Brighton Seafront. Also, I guess I could count seeing an old man’s junk as a lowlight but it served us right for sitting on the border of a nudist beach.

Highlights: The Lanes are a great place to explore but of course navigating a bike around the tight corners isn’t really ideal. We chained ours up and explored the area, stopping off for lunch at Henny’s in Brighton Square and then buying some amazing cupcakes from Angel Food Bakery. They were the best cupcakes I’ve ever had (even if they were a bit squished by the time we ate them) and I’ve recently been to Magnolia in New York so that’s saying something.

In the olden days (2005) we would have at some stage popped into a random fish restaurant for dinner and then moaned about the sub-standard service and food. But this is 2009! So we Googled the best fish restaurant on the BlackBerry and then cycled over to Bankers for fish and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce. It was well worth the Googling I tell ya. We also happened upon Octopus stores, the same chain as Pylones that I had seen in New York except this one was much cheaper than the one over there. I ended up buying these bad boys.

By the time the sun set, we had purposefully made our way to the old burnt out pier as I thought it would set the scene perfectly for some good pictures. I wasn’t disappointed and took a bagillion photos as the sun set rather rapidly. We grabbed some fresh hot doughnuts and then made our way home. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Wouldn’t these be great for a tea party or after dinner coffee?

Blaue Blume Milk Jug

Brown Sugar Hearts

White & Brown Sugar Ducks

I fell in love with this idea when I saw it on Sweet Paul’s blog. Isn’t he mega talented? I hope you all had a great weekend!