I have found a series of new blogging loves over the past few weeks, and one of my favourites is One Pearl Button, which is written by Alli, otherwise known to me as inspiring-creative-genius-lady.  I was particularly drawn to her ’20 Minute Skirt’ tutorial (link here), and decided to try it out last night using an old dress, the fabric of which I love but the shape of which I’ve never been a fan of.  Here’s how I got on!

I don’t have a proper ‘before’ picture because I actually unpicked the top half of the dress last week, when I decided to do this, and neglected to take a photo of it.  So here’s the bottom half of the dress, cut to the length I wanted (v jagged like – I’m not great with those huge sewing scissors) and ready for a new lease of life…

…and here’s a snap of the project halfway through.  Alli explains it much better than I can, but you really just make a waistband from a thick strip of elastic, sew two lines of loose-ish stitches around the top of what will be your skirt and gather it together until it’s roughly the same size as your waistband.  You then sew the waistband to the skirt, using a zig-zag stitch all the way round.  My finished stitches are atrocious – I don’t think my machine appreciated being worked so hard!  Nevertheless, I got there in the end and…

…ta da!  One new skirt, all ready for an evening out!  As I said, the stitching around the top of mine is terrible, so I’ll probably wear a thick belt or a scarf around my waist to hide them.  Overall, I’m pleased as punch with the effect.  I’ve always been in two minds as to whether to give this dress away, given that I really love the pattern and the feel of the material (very sheer, with a silky lining on the inside).  Perhaps somewhere in the ether of my subconscious I knew that it was destined for a new beginning.  Thanks to Alli and her fantastic tutorial, here it is!

Well the infamous fruit and veg box finally arrived last Thursday.  I behaved like a petulant child all day at work, itching to rush home and see what had arrived.  When the clock finally struck five I was off like a shot.  The sprint home was well worth it, and I was delighted with what I found.  My box of goodies contained the following:

Veggies

1 bag of deliciously dirty potatoes (I can still smell the earth on them)
6 carrots
1 HUGE courgette (seriously, I thought it was a marrow)
8-10 small onions
1 box of mushrooms
1 large green lettuce
1 bag of assorted green leaves (yep, I can be that specific)
6 ruby red tomatoes
1 large bundle of what I think are broad beans
1 cucumber
1 aubergine

Fruits

8 crunchy apples
3 tangy oranges
3 kiwis (which I’ve yet to try)
1 grapefruit
7 bananas

I think that’s everything – it seems like an awful lot when I write it down that way!  I actually did a rough calculation of how much the equivalent amount of food would cost in Tesco and was surprised to find that I’d actually made a saving (and that wasn’t even thinking about the Tesco ‘organic’ range, which is always more expensive than their bog standard stuff).  The quality is also astounding – I half-expected some things to taste a bit bland, but the flavours really jump out.  The tomatoes are tangy and delicious, and the apples are some of the sweetest I’ve ever had.  It’s also nice (and comforting) to know that I’m putting fresh, local goodness into my mouth and not something that’s been packaged into oblivion and transported halfway across the globe.

As for actually using the stuff, so far I’ve made a vegetable crumble (dinner Friday night) and three large salads (Friday and Monday lunches, Saturday dinner), incorporating various other bits and pieces where necessary.  The fruit I’ve been munching inbetween meals.  On tonight’s menu is a spicy sausage and bean stew, followed by a mushroom and butternut squash risotto on Wednesday and parmigiana later in the week, which will see off the aubergine.  I’ll get round to the potatoes at the weekend, and will definitely be consulting this site for some ideas.  Happy, healthy days ahoy!

Image above from Flickr – RozSheffield.

One of my favourite ways to daydream the working day away is to think about what I might have for dinner (we all do it, right?).  Aside from making me feel exceptionally hungry, such musings usually centre round the idea of using up whatever ingredients I already have at home.

Today’s primary left-over is…the classic British spud.

I bought a rather chunky bag of white potatoes last week for soup, but ended up using only a couple (for some dreamy leek and potato…mmm).  I’ve been casually wondering what to do with the remaining spuds which have been sitting somewhat morosely in the bottom of the fridge ever since.  They’ve had me slightly perplexed – I’m on a spring and summer flavours-style binge at the moment and am using tonnes of spring onions, cherry tomatoes and lemon juice – the season just seems all wrong for stodgy bangers and mash, or stodgy haggis and mash (the stodgy leek and potato soup was a temporary ‘I want some comfort food’ blip).  What I needed was some reassurance that potatoes can be cool, light and summery, and that they don’t always have to come laden with butter or smothered in mayonnaise.

So in a bid to broaden my horizons I randomly typed ‘potato recipes’ into Google earlier on and this *amazing* website – Love Potatoes – was one of the first things to pop up.  There are some delicious-looking recipes (summer chicken, orange and potato salad anyone?) as well as a whole bunch of useful information including details of the various types of potato, which varieties work best in which recipes and lots of interesting facts about just how darned good for you the little beauties are.  The design of the site is really cool as well – quirky, fun and wholly dedicated to our best-loved national carb.  I couldn’t have asked for more!  Newly-inspired and bursting with culinary energy, tonight I’m going to try a fried potato salad with prawns, spring onions and soy sauce.  Results tomorrow!

Image above from Flickr – cuorhome.

While reading yesterday’s Sunday Times Style magazine this morning (which I can do because, y’know, I’m on holiday and all that) I noticed a reader letter about wedding lists – the subject of last Friday’s post here on TC. Here it is in full:

“I am attending a wedding in the summer, and the bride and groom, while saying “Your presence is enough”, have given details of an upmarket online travel company, so that contributions may be made towards the cost of their honeymoon. I have, over the years, spent a small fortune on John Lewis gift-list purchases of china and crystal, however, I find it rather distasteful to be asked to contribute cash towards a honeymoon, especially when they do not even have the decency to say what we would be contributing towards. I have no idea whether they are planning on spending their honeymoon building an orphanage in Rwanda, or gorging themselves on pina coladas on the Costa del Sol. If I do not wish to give cash towards the holiday, do you think it would be acceptable to give a honeymoon gift, such as a good book to read on the beach or earplugs?”**

This letter appears on the ‘Mrs Mills’ page of the magazine which, as any regular readers will know, is pretty tongue-in-cheek at the best of times (in fact, it’s usually downright hilarious). But the underlying theme of the question is an interesting one. Is it acceptable to mandate that your guests contribute towards the cost of your honeymoon in lieu of a material wedding gift?

My initial guess is that if you decide that dictating to your wedding guests is an acceptable thing to do in the first place then asking for cash contributions to your honeymoon is actually quite a smart idea – particularly if the couple concerned already lives together and has no need for traditional wedding presents a la John Lewis’ over-priced, aspirational consumer chattels. Perhaps having guest contributions means that a couple can afford to go on the honeymoon of their dreams or, in some cases, that they can go on a honeymoon at all. Which isn’t really something I’m inclined to sniff at, truth be told.

On the other hand, if you are stubbornly opposed to the idea of the wedding list in the first place (as a not-insubstantial part of me is) then the chances are you’re probably equally, if not more, appalled by the prospect of being asked to stuff a few tenners in a card to bankroll someone else’s jaunt abroad, even if that someone else is your best friend, sibling, boss etc. I can relate to this – call me a prude all you will but there’s something about the thought of being asked for nothing other than money that sits rather uneasily with me. I’ve never been into either the giving or the receiving money as presents at all – I usually think it’s a bit of a cop out of the time and effort it takes to give someone the perfect gift – ‘I saw this wad of notes and thought of you dear.’ Charmed, I’m sure.

So again, I’m not sure which camp I fall into here. While I’m firmly in favour of the idea of giving experience-based gifts as opposed to material ones, there’s something telling me that slipping some cash into an envelope with the words ‘Bon Voyage’ written on the back is most emphatically not the solution to the wedding list problem, even if you are told exactly where the money is going and what it will be used for. Perhaps by the time I come to get married myself I will have formed a more concrete opinion on the subject of wedding lists. Or perhaps I will adopt what is undeniably the best idea I’ve heard so far. Apparently some friends of Holly @ Shopaholly asked their guests to give a single copy of their favourite book as a wedding present so that they could get their collection going. I have to say, this is probably one of the most charming things I’ve heard in a while – it really does warm my heart to know that, contrary to everything I’ve read and heard about £400 toasters, matching side plates and five types of bath towel, there are still people out there who are actively willing to do things differently when it comes to planning their nuptials. Good on them.

That, I think, brings wedding week to a close. I’ve not covered absolutely everything – I’d probably have ended up smothering myself with the nearest pile of organza if I’d gone on much longer – but I at least hope I’ve done enough to make it clear that getting married doesn’t have to mean that thrift suddenly takes a back-seat to financial promiscuity. In fact, it is now becoming my solid belief that the thriftiest weddings can be the most beautiful, the most original and by far the most memorable. In my book at least, over-the-top hen parties, mono-style designer dresses and John Lewis wedding lists are each over-rated, unimaginative and above all, expensive. Undertake any or all at your financial, creative and spiritual peril!

**For anyone who’s interested, Mrs Mills’ reply took the following, ever-so-slightly sardonic form:

“This is a deplorable trend, almost as bad as those people who expect you to sponsor them for a charity bike ride across Barbados in aid of the Help the Orphaned Donkey Fund. Do not give in. Buy them a toaster and eat the receipt.”

Image above courtesy of Flickr – vipeldo.

I was recently invited to a friend from school’s hen party.  Or should I say hen weekend.  For that’s really what it is.  A Friday-till-Sunday all-consuming drink-fuelled, money-sucking bonanza.  I don’t want to say too much about this particular event here as I really don’t intend to upset anyone.  But the whole episode has got me thinking generally about hen parties, and how much they seem to have morphed from a simple gathering of close friends to these costly, neon-tutu-clad weekends of mayhem and hysteria.

Edinburgh seems to be quite a popular destination for hen parties – if you take a walk around town late on a Friday or Saturday evening, I guarantee you will see at least one or two.  They are usually pretty conspicuous – all you need to do is look for a big group of women, all wearing several bizarre items of clothing in common and all screeching at the tops of their voices, usually at innocent passers-by.  This makes me *cringe*.  It’s commonly pretty clear that these groups are radiating from other parts of the country, judging by the diverging accents drifting out of the various fluffy pink scrums – so not only are the people in question paying for a night out, they are also probably paying to travel to, stay in, and survive in Edinburgh (meals and drinks probably being the main expenditures) for a whole weekend.  It’s also my guess that in 9/10 cases each person pays for herself.

So just when did it become acceptable to demand that your friends fork out hundreds, yes *hundreds* of pounds for your hen party/weekend/week-long trip abroad?  Call me a killjoy but THAT AIN’T FAIR.  Of course I’m happy that my friends are getting married, and of course I want to be involved in the celebrations, but does that automatically mean I’m willing to part with an obscene amount of money?  No it doesn’t, simple answer.

And it’s not only the money.  Is it really reasonable to assume that your friends are willing to sacrifice whole weekends, or even longer periods of time to travel to another part of the country (or the world) just to celebrate your getting married?  Something weird seems to settle over a certain type of female when she becomes engaged – like the placing of a rock on her left hand is the key to unleashing the selfish ‘it’s all about me’ monster that has hitherto been lurking just beneath the surface.  And some bridesmaids take the responsibility of organising and executing a hen party as a rush of blood to the head, which gives them the authority to prescrible what happens, where it happens and how much it costs everyone.  A friend of mine is also in the midst of some testy hen weekend negotiations at the moment, with the bridesmaid (from hell, I should add) in question mandating that everyone not only pays their own way but that they also pitch in to pay for the bride!  Yes you read right.  So as if it wasn’t galling enough to pay for travel to another city, two nights’ accommodation, meals and drinks, those involved have also been burdened with paying for someone else to do just that as well!  I find that more than just slightly infuriating.  But what happens if you decide (quite rightly) to stand up in the face of this tide of emotional blackmail?  Well, as my friend has experienced, a severe guilt trip of the ‘you’re ruining the happiest time of her life’ variety, followed by a severe cooling of relations.  People can be so charming, can’t they?

Now I fully understand that to some people I probably sound like a complete spirit dampner, and for this, I do (kind of) apologise.  But in truth I’m not fundamentally anti-hen party at all.  I was bridesmaid to one of my best friends in November, and for her hen organised a brilliant (if I may say so) mad hatter’s tea party, followed by food, drinks and games back at her place.  The cost was roughly £15 per head, and the event took up a single Saturday.  It suited the then bride-to-be perfectly, and it meant that everyone she had wanted to come could be there – there were no qualms about money, and family members who without doubt would have rejected a boozy weekender were able to join in without feeling either awkward or uncomfortable.  And isn’t that the whole point of the exercise?  Spending some quality time with your closest females, chatting, laughing and generally having a great time?

What I hate is the expectation that we should all be willing to throw bags of our money and great chunks of our time away at someone else’s whim, as though we don’t have our own lives to lead and better things to spend our hard-earned cash on.  Saying no to over the top hen parties doesn’t mean you’re not happy for your friend to get married, it just means that you won’t be subjected to the kind of emotional bullying that goes on by haughty brides and bridesmaids up and down the country.  People need to realise that yes, you love and support them in their life choices but no, that doesn’t mean that you are willing to bankrupt yourself to help them celebrate those choices.

There are so many fun-filled ways to have a hen party that don’t cost the earth.  Have a sleepover and paint each other’s nails, have a movie night with your closest friends and make your own snacks, go to a show, have a barbeque, have a night out in your own city and create a kitty for the drinks.  My favourite idea (which one day perhaps I will put into practice) is to have a big game of rounders in the local park, followed by huge plates of low-cost grub and a few glasses of wine back at someone’s house or flat.  Cheap, fun and with the added bonus that everyone can go home when it’s over.

So any brides-to-be (or crazy bridesmaids for that matter), listen up: will the wedding really suffer if you can’t jet off to Dublin, or Magaluf with your girlfriends to celebrate it?  Of course it won’t.  Give your friends a break and stop being so demanding.  They will still have to pay for a wedding present (we’ll get to that later); transport to and from your venue and possibly accommodation for that matter as well.  Then there’s the small matter of an outfit.  Take this into account when planning your hen parties and try not to forget that other people have lives, and financial responsibilities as well!

Thankyou.

Image above from Flickr – Express Monorail.  I used this picture because everything that came up under a ‘hen party’ search made me feel nauseous.