With the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee now just around the corner, it seems the nation is gripped by Street Party Fever! The whole idea of street parties is so lovely and nostalgic - I think we still go for inspiration back to the post war pictures of the Queen’s coronation in 1952, and use that as a template. And - appropriately - it’s such a British institution: our version of the Spanish Fiesta is tea, sandwiches and plenty of cake with the neighbours!

Here in  Great Haseley, we’ll be pushing the boat out, with our own street party as the crowning event. In preparation,we’ve been making our own bunting for the village at A Right Royal Bitch & Stitch workshop - tea and a good old catch-up whilst actually doing something useful too!

If you’re not terribly handy with a needle, there is some wonderful bunting around to buy at the moment: here at Velvet Brown we’ve gone for a lovely distressed wooden Union Jack version, with little heart-shaped pendants which will look great even if it’s raining cats and dogs on the big day! And for around the house or garden, to set the mood, try our matching hanging distressed wooden Union Jack hearts  - they’ll double up in later in the year for the Olympic celebrations too!

On the catering front, seeing as this is the most traditional and British of occasions, we love the idea of an old fashioned English tea: quick and simple to do, with little sandwiches and pretty cakes, perhaps fittingly displayed in our crown cupcake stand.

If you’re making your own (and you know you should!), good old M&S have some sweet little cupcake decorations, which we particularly like for the little Corgi flags! And needless to say, if you’re NOT making your own, I suspect M&S can help you out there too….

Easter is our favourite Bank Holiday: a lovely long weekend, without the pressure and stress of Christmas and (we hope) with better weather – wonderful!

The amazing weather recently has really got our creative juices flowing here at Velvet Brown, both indoors and out.  We’ve been hard at work making our ever-popular Spring and Easter wreaths for orders, and the garden has burst into life at last,with everything poised to flower, blossom, shoot and bloom. The anticipation is wonderful,  you can’t help but be filled with optimism!

After a fit of serious gardening, including laying our new garden path, I gave in to a spot of March Hare madness in the form of – ta da! – an Easter Tree!This was actually a dogwood tree which we needed to cut right back – a biannual Spring attempt to retain control of it! I popped it in a pot and hung it with some of our lovely pastel coloured hanging eggs and actually it looks quite lovely. I’m planning to transport the whole thing in to the village – I think we’ll be the only village with an Easter Tree! Perhaps we’re witnessing the birth of a whole new tradition!

Apart from Christmas, Easter is the best excuse to decorate the house and a great opportunity to go pretty, pastel and cutesy temporarily!  We’ve been making Easter bunny bunting, which has been fun to make and which you can see on this little video here.

Whether you’re pottering in the garden, making your own bunny bunting or simply curling up for a peaceful weekend, have a very Happy Easter.

The first sign of Spring, and the press is full of florals - floral prints on everything from cups to cushions.  We’re not really chintzy girls but, we do LOVE flowers. In fact, we have a bit of a secret life as florists: as well as the wreaths we make for Velvet Brown, we do from time to time take on commissions, and really enjoy it. It’s another outlet for our creativity!
Flower arranging used to have a horribly fuddyduddy image, and was seen as strictly the preserve of the WI.  But over the years our attitudes towards our homes has changed and we’ve become much more interested in creating an appealing home environment - and this is reflected in the flowers we’re buying. Just look at the gorgeous blooms on offer in supermarkets these days! And along came people like the late  Jane Packer and Paula Pryke - fabulous for inspiration - using bold clashing colours and innovative design and making us feel less inclined to make do with a bunch of chrysanths from a garage forecourt.

Like any form of art, one of the lovely things about flowers is that there’s no right and wrong way to do it - if you like it, then it works! And it’s such fun to do.  I particularly enjoy making wreaths: for some reason we tend to think of wreaths as funeral flowers, but they can work for any occasion, and seem so much more interesting than a traditional arrangement.  With a wreath you have the best of both worlds - they provide a basic structure for an arrangement without it being too polite:  you’ve got your basic shape, but from there you can go pretty much anywhere you like with it. It’s also a good way to lengthen the life of the flowers - tucked  unobtrusively into a moss-covered frame they will often last longer than in a vase.

You might have seen the one I was asked to make for Country Homes & Interiors magazine recently: I have to admit that because it was important it stayed fresh for a photoshoot I ‘cheated’ and mixed some artificial flowers in with the real. But that’s another thing - artificial flowers are amazing these days, and if you choose carefully you can get away with murder - especially if you do mix them in with the real thing!

If you’d like to have a go at making your own wreath, I’ve made a little ‘how to’ video that you might find useful - you can see it here: I talk you through the basics of making a wreath. But beyond that, the only limit is your imagination!

Have fun!

‘I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes’ - hm, it must either be Valentine’s Day or frostbite, both equally appropriate this week with all the papers full of images of snowdrifts and romance.  What do we think about Valentine’s Day? Personally I find it hard to get enthusiastic about it, but it’s a tricky one to rail against without sounding horribly ‘Bah! Humbug!’ And the bottom line is that even if you’re not a fan, it’s still sort of nice to get a card, perhaps some flowers or a pressie. Although in my experience restaurants on Valentine’s Day can be the most dismal of places, even if you’re there with The One You Love.

A friend of mine has the right idea I think: each year, she and her husband open what has come to be known sarcastically / enviously / affectionately* as The Love Café (yes,  singles and cynics stop reading now!) – in their own dining room, clientele = 2. They cook their favourite food together, have their favourite music playing, get a little bit Kirstie Allsop on the décor front and actually have a lovely, intimate, relaxing time. Much nicer than being guilt-tripped into buying pink champagne and then brusquely ejected to accommodate the second sitting!

Maybe it’s just that Valentine’s Day is a bit like Christmas: it can be pressured and plastic, commercial and doomed to disappoint, or it can be an opportunity to give each other some proper time and attention, whatever shape or form that takes…

So, never let it be said that we at Velvet Brown are not romantics! We appreciate a love heart as much as the next person – but ours will be in natural materials and muted colours, of course! There’s more than enough pink fluffy nylon in the world already…

*delete as applicable

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.