Velvet Brown - Home Accessories

As regular readers of our blog will have noticed, we do have rather foodie tendencies here at Velvet Brown, which go into overdrive at this time of year. These days British food really comes in to its own in the winter months, and especially at Christmas. Thanks to King Jamie and Queen Delia, overboiled sprouts are things of the past: with the  nation obsessed with cooking and baking, they’re more likely to be served deliciously al dente with bacon and chestnuts - check out Red Online’s easy recipe.

Incredibly, it seems that Heston Blumenthal’s Christmas pudding from Waitrose is a better investment than anything on the stock market: for the second year running they are changing hands for up to £250 on eBay, causing Waitrose to order in extra ‘emergency’ supplies when they sold out in November. We like our food, but even we think a pudding ‘emergency’  is perhaps a little melodramatic! 

 The Telegraph’s Rose Prince came to the rescue at the weekend with a recipe for a similar pud (it’s the orange in the centre which makes it so sought after, it seems) and she will show you how to do it on the Telegraph website. Oddly, she doesn’t seem terribly impressed by her own results, although it looks delicious and very authentic.

But we think this is not the time to be slaving in the kitchen any more than we have to,  and we’re always fond of a cookery cheat or two, especially if it tastes good. Back in the summer we made a gorgeous cheat’s ice cream - no ice cream maker required! - with summer fruits, and it crossed our minds that it would work just as well with Christmassy flavours. So -  purely for research purposes of course -  we gave it a test run, and yep, it was delicious! This is perfect if you prefer a lighter dessert than Christmas pud, and is a lovely change from mince pies.

 You will need a tub of double cream, a tin of condensed milk, and a jar of decent quality mincemeat. And that’s it. Whip the cream until nice and thick, then stir in the condensed milk. In another bowl, break up the mincemeat a little and fold in to the cream and condensed milk mixture. Stir gently until it’s all combined, pour into a shallow dish and pop it into the freezer. Leave it for perhaps 4 hours till firm and then serve. Serves around six people or four greedy ones. Heaven – we were much more impressed with our efforts than Ms Prince seemed with hers! It would probably work just as well with leftover Christmas pudding – if you’re inspired to experiment let us know how you get on.

And on that note, I think all that remains is for us to wish each and every one of you a very happy and peaceful Christmas, and a wonderful New Year. See you all in 2012!

We’ve restrained ourselves from getting into the whole Christmas thing prematurely, but now it’s December perhaps it is time to start thinking Christmassy thoughts. We had a really fun afternoon recently trying out ideas for Christmas table dressing - think Kirstie Allsop meets Santa’s elves! The food is quite rightly always going to be the star of the Christmas table (with a little luck), but a bit of creativity with decorations really makes for a festive atmosphere, so we thought we’d share a few ideas with you. It’s something children would love to help with too - almost as much fun as decorating the tree!

We started with the chairs: it’s the backs of the chairs that you see most of, until you’re sitting down, so we wanted to make sure they looked pretty. We wrapped a piece of suitably sparkly wide ribbon around the back and tying with a bow, then adding our little copper glass baubles and a sprig or two of ivy.

Then on to the table itself: centrestage we used miniature Christmas trees, simply decorated with our mini red baubles, interspersed with  twinkly lights. These LED lights are brilliant, battery operated so they’re perfect for the table (and for outdoors, simple but really stunning) - and as the day darkens they really add sparkle. We piled ours into glass cakestands, but they’d look great in bowls too.

Then candles - you have to have candlelight at Christmas! So plenty of little tealights dotted around, with a scatter of sparkles across the table. Pretty little red glittery name card holders add a splash of colour and stop any last minute arguments about who sits closest to the turkey.

Christmas does bring out our inner Martha Stewart - she has some lovely ideas for table dressings too - although, frankly, life is too short in our view to make your own tree shaped candles! But we do like her wintry centrepiece and you can almost smell her citrus pomander even over the internet. Country Living have some lovely inspirational ideas too.

W e think the point is though to keep it fun, personal and simple - you don’t need perfection, and who needs added stress at Christmas?If you’re feeling the pressure, there’s a stress-buster guide in Marie Claire, although our recommendation would be a decent sized glass of wine!

Despite the occasional extremely unseasonal heatwave, it seems that Summer is well and truly over…

Alongside the end of season sadness though is always a little shiver of anticipation of proper fires, morning frosts and the perfect excuse to hibernate a little. Autumn sometimes seems to get overlooked somewhat - shops, newspapers and magazines seem to hurtle from high summer into Christmas - so we suggest you take a moment, before all the festive shenanigans take hold, to notice and appreciate the glories of the season, both outside and indoors.  After all,  John Keats and Edith Piaf can’t both be wrong! Soft golden mellow light and leaves turning astonishing shades of gold and apricot - beautiful. And at home, long evenings mean an excuse to cosy up with films and books as well as an opportunity to cook all the foods that just don’t appeal in the warmer months - stews, roasts and puddings! (Note to self: extra long walks on fine days obligatory to compensate!)

Talking of cosying up, we were delighted to see our throws in the November issue of Ideal Home magazine  - both our lovely grey luxury merino and lambswool throw and our red block throw were featured. Somehow throws, especially in drapey fabrics like soft new wool and merino, manage to be cosy yet elegant and glamorous at the same time, quite an achievement! Perfect for wrapping round your shoulders on a chilly night.  So many thanks to Ideal Home, who also have a new website (with their sister magazines) called HouseToHome - great for a bit of laptop shopping! (Just noticed their recipe for a Pear and Chocolate Betty - haven’t tried it yet but it sounds delicious, and just the thing for an Autumnal Sunday afternoon.)

Perhaps this is the human equivalent of a squirrel gathering nuts ready for the winter, but I have been consumed by an urge to do some serious baking! Here at Velvet Brown HQ we’ve just had a lovely new glass cake stand in stock - I needed to photograph it, so like all good photographers I rolled up my sleeves to bake my props, a batch of biscuits with a buttercream filling.  I’m not sure I would have been voted Star Baker on The Great British Bake Off (compulsive viewing, on BBC2)  but they did the trick and tasted delicious, post-”shoot”!

Cooking to photograph new Velvet Brown stock is a bit of a habit - it’s a good excuse to get baking. You can’t really show off a Homemade Cookie stamp without the Homemade
Cookies, can you? And we were delighted to see the stamp on the Emporium page of this month’s Country Living magazine.

I hate to be the first to mention  Christmas, but I whizzed up a batch of biscuits to show off our Christmas cookie cutters  - they look really sweet and festive, and children love them, both to bake and of course to eat.

I’ve also recently baked a wonderful cheese tart, from the lovely Lotte Duncan’s recipe book.  It has a beautifully crumbly cheesy pastry, and I made it with chard and chives from the garden. Gorgeous, if I say so myself.

Another unusual one which worked really well is this chocolate and cardamom tart: I actually made it and took it to a “pudding party” (brilliant idea!) with my book club members and it was divine - very unusual flavours but not too sweet and lighter than it looks. If you’d like to give it a go, you can find the recipe in February’s Delicious Magazine - let me know how you get on!                            

There’s nothing lovelier than eating outdoors on a summer evening, although those long hot summer nights seem rather elusive sometimes.  Even if it’s just family,
eating outside somehow feels more sociable - a step away from the humdrum! And it doesn’t have to be scorching hot to be enjoyable - as some pragmatic person once said, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing (bet he was a Brit). As the evening draws on, wrap yourself in a cardi, or even better, pull a soft throw around you.

If you’re lucky enough to have scented plants in the garden, the evening is when many of the are at their most fragrant, so you really should make the most of them! If you don’t have jasmine, honeysuckle and nightstock, you can cheat with a scented candle - Geodesis do some gorgeous ones, they look and smell divine.

Candlelight is sort of essential anyway, I think: whether you use tea lights dotted around the table, or hanging from nearby trees, nothing adds a little magic more effectively. If it’s rather breezy, cheat with our battery-operated pillar candles and tea lights - great if you have children around the table too.

And if there is a gentle wind, these sweet little weighted birds below will keep your tablecloth in place.

For some reason everything tastes better outside, from breakfast bacon sandwiches to the delicious bouillabaisse we made recently for supper in our   own garden.  If you’re looking for inspiration, try Sweet Paul, a gorgeous online magazine from the US, which covers the lovely combo of craft, design and food - this month  Sweet Paul has some beautiful recipes for summer fruit and veg, plus some non-alcoholic summer drinks which sound mouth-wateringly good! He has a great blog too here - definitely worth a browse, but be warned, he’s addictive!

Using 3M command Products within the Home

We have made seasonal door wreaths for many years now and frequently come up against the problem of how to hang these on the door if it is made of UPVC or can’t have a nail banged into it. So we were delighted to learn of the range of Command Products by 3M.

Command Products are a range of hooks and strips that feature a revolutionary double sided adhesive, which enables almost anything to be mounted or hung, without the need for nails or screws, pins or sticky-tack. The adhesive is quick and simple to remove, leaving no holes, marks, residue or stains. They can be a temporary hanging solution for a seasonal decoration or a long term solution without the need for nails or screws.

They can be used on flat clean surfaces such as wood, tiles, metal or painted surfaces. If you don’t want to use it all year round the hooks can be removed simply and cleanly without leaving any marks or damage to your door or wall.

We used the Command Large Bath Hook for this Easter Wreath.

The door was made of UPVC and after use we simply removed the hook without a trace of a sticky mark or any damage. This hook will hold a weight of up to 2kg (5lbs) and is waterproof.  It will even tolerate temperatures down to   -10c so would also be ideal for a Christmas door wreath.

For more ideas on how and where to use Command Products visit their Facebook page -  www.facebook.com/inspiringtransformations.  We’ve demonstrated how to make the Easter wreath in their Command video section too.

There is a wide choice of hooks within the range and you are sure to find an appropriate hook or strip for the job you have in mind.

There is something truly lovely about driftwood. I find it really evocative - it brings back memories of childhood holidays messing about in rockpools on Cornish beaches – quite often in the rain, wearing an anorak and wellies!

It’s the ultimate eco-friendly material: recycled and organic, irregular shapes formed and smoothed by the elements, colours softened by light, air and water. And when it is transformed into accessories for the home, you know that each piece is unique.

Driftwood accessories have a wonderful rustic quality: they have a natural simplicity which along with the neutral colours mean they work well in almost any home, although I like them best against plain whites and creams, or perhaps soft greys - so they fit in perfectly with the Velvet Brown colour scheme.  I think it’s their natural affinity with the sea and the coastline that makes them look so lovely with all those gentle shades.

Driftwood pieces look really lovely in coastal homes, where they’re close to their natural habitat! But they do bring a breath of fresh sea air inland too, providing a hint of the nautical wherever they are used.

This hanging heart shown above is lovely on a mantelpiece or hung on a bathroom or bedroom wall. Try these stars, left,  on a front door, where they offer an earthy welcome into any home, and make a striking and longlasting alternative to wreaths - they’d be particularly lovely at Christmas.

And this beautifully rough-hewn driftwood bowl (right), in the shape of a heart, is perfect for displaying salts and smellies in the bathroom - or fill it with small gifts for a lovely personal present.

Not long now until  Easter. I love to have that opportunity to decorate the house again.  I shall make an Easter wreath to hang on the door,  pretty floral arrangements with spring flowers around the house and  an easter tree in the hall to welcome guests as they come through the door.

Hopefully the garden will be full of colourful tulips, narcissi and hyacinths  - we have masses of bulbs in the garden  - largely from left over bulbs from the days when we had a flower shop and of course there will be  a certain amount of chocolate in the cupboard!

Then of course this year we can enjoy a nice Easter break in the safe knowledge we have another bank holiday coming straight up for The Royal Wedding!

Late last year we appealed to the population of Great Haseley village to help the village hall committee to re-decorate the interior of our lovely old village hall.  We’d recently raised enough money to install some lovely posh loos and now this work was completed we felt the paintwork everywhere else was looking a little shabby.

We asked for help in with an appeal in our parish magazine as well as a leaflet drop and posters around the village.  We knew we’d be about 8 strong on the day with committee members  but were staggered when we actually had close to 30 people turn up to help us throughout the day!

This was an ambitious project as we were determined to get the ceiling painted along with all the walls and skirtings.  Our village hall is beautifully beamed with very high ceilings and we’d been fortunate enough to borrow a couple of painting towers for the day to make it safer to paint so high up. 

With all this fantastic help we had the whole job finished ahead of schedule. By 4.30pm we’d just about got the job done.  Of course we rewarded everyone for all their hard work and free labour from the day with a lovely spread of pizzas, wine and beer!  Well done Great Haseley - wonder what society challenge we can come up with next.

 Back down to earth with a nice bit of glossing.

Every one rewarded with pizza and beer at the end of a good days work.

Last Saturday saw the 29th Pumpkin Show in Great Haseley Village in Oxfordshire.  It’s a major annual event in the village. Many local people spend the year growing pumpkins - the local allotments abound with orange bunyons in the late summer! 

A huge marquee is tagged onto the Plough pub, encompassing the pub terrace and much of the carpark area to accommodate all the crowd.  The pumpkins are assembled in the marquee during the day with a big weigh-in to see who’s grown the biggest one but the real merriment starts in the evening.  All the pumpkins are auctioned off to raise money for village amenities. Prior to the auction Ali and Matt at the Plough put on a fabulous barbecue and pull in all the staff they can find to deal with the thirsty and hungry hoardes efficiently.  The fantastically deep, and juicy  home made burgers and saugages are barbecued and served in delicious home made buns and there’s pumpkin soup and pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting to add to the feast.

The auction starts around 8.30pm and it’s not unusal for some pumpkins to go for £75 or more if there’s a fierce bidding war - no doubt fuelled by a little of the beer! We are fortunate to have some great businesses near the village (including Raymond Blancs Le Manoir au Quat Saisons) who are generous at giving great prizes to be auctiond too. If you don’t want to bid in the auction you can always buy a raffle ticket which also has some fantastic prizes. Thanks to Lynda and her team the raffle table has to be one of the most creative displays in Oxfordshire with beautifully carved pumpkins and autumn hedgerow arrangements - it’s a feast for the eyes even without the prizes displayed amongst it.  

Rumour has it this year’s Pumpkin Show raised around £4,000! Well done to Mr Pickett for organising another successful and enjoyable pumpkin show.