Recipes, DIY, travel, health, random lifestyle thoughts & more.
Month: Jul 2020
Of all summer recipes there are two that belong to this season the most. The first one is ice cream – something I’m yet to attempt – and the second are ice cubes. You could say that ice cubes don’t need a recipe – you just freeze some filtered water and that’s it. And that’s true, you don’t need a recipe, but you can use one for a nice, fancy result.
If you’ve been following my blog for a long time, you probably know that I’m an animal person. My huge hobby is learning about reptiles, but I’m generally interested in all types of animals. I love watching nature documentaries, I love visiting zoos and I watch loads of YouTube videos about keeping exotic animals as pets. When my life situation allows it, I plan to get some snakes and lizards and a few high maintenance insects – but for now, I became a mum of two six-legged girls.
I love seasonal summer fruits. Who doesn’t? Winter gets so boring when the only fresh, tasty, widely available fruits are apples and bananas. That’s why in summer my each trip to a supermarket ends with some fresh fruits in my bag, and a few days later I have a bunch of very ripe fruits that need to be used as soon as possible. And what’s the best way to use ripe fruits? Making a smoothie, of course.
The card making season 2020 has come to an end – at least when it comes to cards for family occasions. The last card I needed to make was a birthday card for my mum. I decided to continue with the watercolour adventure for this final project. I’ve been enjoying playing with watercolours and I already have a few ideas for future watercolour crafts – I finally feel like I understand how to work with watercolours a bit more.
One of my favourite things about London are the parks. When you look at Google Maps, they may seem like small patches of grass, compared to the size of the city. In reality though, London is so big that what looks like a small green dot on the map can in fact be a pretty big park. I’ve been to many of them and I definitely plan to continue exploring London parks, so I thought I’d share those adventures here. Today I’m taking you to a not so popular West Ham Park.
It’s been a while since I posted a layered cake recipe. This one is a great idea for when you need an impressive looking cake that’s simple and fairly quick to make. I generally love carrot cakes, but carrot cakes alone are often pretty dry, and get even drier the next day. This cake is fairly moist, and the white chocolate cream adds to it. It stays moist and tasty even one or two days later.
The pandemic forced the majority of the world to stay at home at some point. The longer the lockdown was, the more boring it felt. Even the nearby park with cute, friendly squirrels wasn’t enough to fill all of my spare time. It felt a bit like long, dark winter evenings, just with considerably more sunshine. One of my favourite time killers in winter are jigsaw puzzles, and it was one of the things I did a lot during lockdown.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will know that I love porridge. It’s quick, it’s healthy, it’s nutritious, and you can experiment with the flavours and toppings, so it’s never boring. Just like I love my porridge, I love my sweets. I used to hate coconut as a child, but as I grew older, I began to love it. Now, I love coconut in both savoury dishes (hello, delicious curry) and sweets, and Bounty chocolates are high on my personal top tier sweets list.
Lockdown has definitely made me look for entertainment primarily in my local area and it helped me realise yet again that happiness can come from small, simple things. One of the parks I visited most often at the beginning of the quarantine was Ruskin Park. A small park in southern London, not much different from your regular city park. A big, grassy open space for picnics, a cute little pond, trees, flowers and sport facilities. But the natural inhabitants of the park are one of a kind.
Alphe's Corner 