Spineless Classic from nottheusual.co.uk

I love it when I have the chance to grab a book, find a quiet place and read (normally until I fall asleep!). I love reading anywhere - in the bath, living room, on holiday, bedroom etc. So when nottheusual.co.uk got in contact with me and showed me their new range of Spineless Classics I was really excited. Spineless Classics is a new range of 'art' that consolidate a whole book onto a single page! I call them a piece of art because I believe they are, a high quality poster with eligible text from a whole book would be perfect framed in a living room, study, children's playroom/bedroom - anywhere! There is a vast range of books available from Spineless Classics including: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Lost World, Romeo & Juliet, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Jungle Book, The Hobbit, Oliver Twist, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, just to name a few! There really is a Spineless Classic for everyone. They would make a perfect unique gift, treat for a book or art lover or simply for yourself.

 

When I saw them I straight away thought the children's stories (The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, The Complete Peter Rabbit and Friends, Black Beauty etc) would look amazing framed in a child's bedroom or playroom. What a perfect way to make children aware of books, reading in a unique way, words and classic stories! The more adult stories (Romeo & Juliet, Pride & Prejudice, The Hobbit, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Around the World in Eighty Days, Life of Pi, Moby Dick, The Phantom of the Opera etc) would be lovely framed and hung up in a study, office, living room, bedroom etc. They are such talking points and would be for years!

I especially love the Pride & Prejudice story, which is available as a Spineless Classic. This is what nottheusual.co.uk say about the Pride & Prejudice Spineless Classic:

'Arguably Jane Austen's most famous work, the tale of Elizabeth Bennet's romance with the dashing Mr Darcy is one that has thrilled young ladies of the realm for two centuries. Colin Firth in a wet shirt may have been the hearthrob of the 90's but this, the original work will be topping best loved novel lists for generations to come. Pride and Prejudice is not a short work and was originally published in three hardback volumes. Reducing this to a single sheet means it has to be full A0 size. This design is a single sheet at 1189 x 841mm (46¹³/₁₆ in x 33¹/₈ in). All Spineless Classics are printed on heavyweight paper in sharp, lightfast ink which will not fade.'

I was kindly sent the Pride & Prejudice Spineless Classic (£55.99) from nottheusual.co.uk (a brilliant website FULL of unique products - you should go and check them out!), so I could see for myself how stunning they are and I wasn't disappointed. The delivery was quick and the posted was carefully packaged, as not to ruin it. I can read all of the words on the poster, though small they are eligible. The poster isn't a typical 'boy/girl band' poster, it's much better quality than all my Spice Girls ones from years ago! Also on all of the Spineless Classics there is an image related to the story book on the poster too.

What do you think?

Feel free to leave me a comment below :)

Who would have thought?!

I was trying to find something to store all those little 'bits and bobs' I have in the same bag as my jewellery and make up bag. It's so time consuming hunting through all the little bits and bobs to find what I'm looking for (usually a pair of earrings!). After trying out some containers that were much too big I came across the idea of using a TIC TAC box! It's genius - well I think so anyway! So I searched for anything small that needed a home and tried them in a Tic Tac container. It also makes for a great place to store things when you are travelling and so cheap too!

Take a humble Tic Tac container...

You can store cotton buds..



Hair grips...



Odd earring backs...



Stud Earrings...



Cocktail Sticks for nail art....



Ribbon for craft projects...



These are just some ideas - the options are endless! You could even decorate the Tic Tac case to make it fitting with your other make-up containers :)

Are you going to have a go?

Finally I found a powder highlighter!

If you follow me on Twitter (@Treasure_E_M) you might have noticed that on a number of occasions I have asked the #bbloggers world about a powder highlighter. About 5 years ago now I received a red 'case' of Ruby and Millie make-up, in which had THE most amazing powder highlighter! It made my skin look fabulous and flawless, everything I could ask for from a highlighter. But as I loved it so much, it soon ran out prompting a search for the Ruby and Millie highlighter. This proved difficult and then Boots stopped stocking most of their Ruby and Mille cosmetics, so I gave up and turned to liquid highlighters. But recently I've really wanted to find a powder highlighter again, after many trips to Superdrug, Boots and other typical places to buy make-up from, I had no luck! There wasn't ONE! Maybe I wasn't seeing them but I couldn't for the life of me find one.

But during a trip to Skegness this weekend I nipped into the Superdrug their and found a powder highlighter, wooo! Best of all it was only £3 from Makeup Academy. It had a 'new' sticker on, so I don't think I've been walking past it all this time!

This is a great reasonably priced powder highlighter from Superdrug and I really like the pretty way the powder is pressed. It is quite shimmery, which is nice for the evening or weekend but for everyday wear I would only use such a small amount lightly brushed over the apples of my cheeks, bridge of my nose and under my eyebrows.

This is with a subtle sweep of the highlighter and as you can see it is quite shimmery. Ideally I think I'd prefer it if it was a bit less shimmery but for £3 I'm not complaining!

What do you think?

Have you got a great powder highlighter you use all the time?

Who doesn't want a pretty home?

I met my boyfriend at university up in Durham about 5 years ago now, we were just friends for a couple of years and then decided to risk our friendship and make 'THAT' change into a relationship. Luckily it worked out and we've now been going out for nearly 3 years! But after 10 month's of being in a relationship our degree came to an end and there came a massive decision, do we move in together or not?! It wasn't actually a hard decision for us, we knew we wanted to live together, so we started looking for a house we could rent. The first house we looked at we fell in love with and took the plunge to sign a 12 month contract! Then it dawned on us, we have to pay for everything to go into the house, rent and bills!

During the summer after our last year at university we searched, shopped and made a lot of the main furniture - wardrobe, bed, sofa, book shelf, chest of drawers etc. I never wanted to see another flat pack after that summer, we practically lived in IKEA. Having said that, it was such an exciting time, creating a home together is such a magical experience! But when funds ran low we stopped buying things and now almost 2 years later we still haven't 'finished' any of the rooms.

Currently we are very lucky to be looking to buy a house but haven't found a suitable house yet. I am so excited to have a bigger kitchen (my biggest priority!) because the kitchen at our house now is very small, with barely any cupboards or surface space. Searching for a house that we can decorate, style and change is very exciting and prompted me to search for pretty house accessories. Also, as it's my birthday on Sunday so I wanted to find some things for the house I could ask for my birthday :)

I thought I'd share with you some of the cute, pretty and shabby chic house accessories I've found....

H&M Bakery Cake Tin - £7.99



dotcomgiftshop.com Bontanical Non-Slip Doormat £19.95



H&M Tea Towel £2.99

  

melodymaison.co.uk Cream Post Rack £9.95



melodymaison.co.uk Postcard Cushion £12.95



melodymaison.co.uk Set of 3 Vintage Floral Suitcases £23.95

 

amazon.co.uk Gisela Graham Wooden Recipe Book Stand Holder £10.80





spottybutton.co.uk Patchwork Bunting Cushion £9.95

This final item is my biggest dream at the moment, I really want a KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in Ice Blue! Problem is, they are edging on £450 - very expensive! But they are such an iconic kitchen accessory, I love the way they look and as I do a lot of baking it would be so useful too! How pretty is it?!

John Lewis £429.95



What do you think?

Do you like decorating your bedroom/home?

Style at M&S

Recently I have had the chance to watch This Morning again and have to say I LOVE most of Holly Willoughby outfits. They are sophisticated, stylish and cover up all the right areas! So I decided to try and find out where Holly's gorgeous dresses are from, expecting them to be designer or from high end shops but was pleasantly surprised when I found a lot of her dresses at Marks & Spencers! I couldn't believe how many beautiful dresses there were on the Marks & Spencers website, I always thought it was the kind of shop my Mum and Auntie went to! Oh how wrong I am! I'm not sure if this is a relatively recent change from Marks & Spencers or it's always been like this and I've just been oblivious! There are a range of dresses for everyday wear, work and for special occassions, I especially like the fact that the dresses are past the knee. I've mentioned a couple of times on my blog that I don't really like my legs, so I am always on the hunt for dresses that go to the knee's, which unfortunatly places like Topshop rarely do!

TODAY ONLY: There is an online offer with 20% off certain womenswear and FREE STANDARD DELIVERY when you spend over £35! The prices below are including the 20% off.

Here are a range of my favourite dresses from Marks & Spencers...



Per Una Panelled Floral Print Shift Dress £39.60

Cotton Rich Floral Print Prom Dress £55.20

Petite Peter Pan Collar Skater Dress £28.00

Slash Neck Floral Shift Dress £36.00

Petite Floral Lace Flare Hem Skater Dress £47.20

Do you like these dresses?

A Trip to Skegness :)

I have to admit up until three years ago I had never been to Lincolnshire, possibly the biggest county in the country! As it's not a 'through route' to anywhere I had been before, I just hadn't ever visited. But when I started going out with my boyfriend that all changed! He's from the middle of nowhere, somewhere in Lincolnshire and his family still live there. It's lovely actually, most of his family and extended family all live with 20 minutes of each other, which means they see loads of each other. I had never had that growing up my extended family are all over the country, I lived in the Midlands and they all lived in Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford and Devon. So a lot of the time we only saw them twice a year, summer and Christmas! So it's lovely seeing my boyfriend's family being so close and they've lived there for so long they know everyone and everything that's going on! I love going to visit them because they do live in the middle of nowhere, it always feels like all the stress and worry of the real world disappear and that nothing can reach you! It's very theraputic :)

We visited his family this weekend, which included a trip to Skegness! This is the second time I've been there and it's everything you'd want from a typcial seaside location. There are LOADS of amusments, arcades, cheap shops, ice-creams (a '99 Flake' ice-cream is ACTUALLY 99p! I've not been anywhere else that they are that cheap anymore!), fish and chips, crazy golf, candyfloss, donkeys and hot doughnuts - a childhood seaside haven! We arrived there at about 3pm, so the sun was starting to go down but it had been a lovely sunny day on Saturday there.

Some snaps I took over this weekend.....

Did you do anything nice this weekend?

Have you been to Skegness?

Feel free to leave me a comment below, I love hearing what you think :)

I MADE: Hand Iced Biscuits

As a massive baking fan I have always loved baking cakes, traybakes and biscuits, so I thought I would try and teach myself a new skill - icing biscuits! I have seen iced biscuits more and more in the shops, especially high end shops, as they are 'in fashion' within the food world. I had to use whatever I had in the house to make these biscuits, which makes them a great rainy day activity.


I used the biscuit recipe in the first 'Cake Decorating' magazine....

I used any cookie cutters I had to make a variety of different shaped biscuits, so that I could practise as many icing skills as possible. But if you were making these biscuits for an event you could theme them, for instance make an 'Afternoon Tea' set with biscuit teapots, cups and saucers, scones, little pots of jam etc.

I chose 5 colours of icing to make up (green, pink, purple, white and blue). The consistency of the icing was quite firm but still able to be squeezed through the piping bag. Ideally you would make a firmer icing and a runnier icing in the same colour but as I wasn't icing that many biscuits I didn't want to waste any icing. You need a firmer icing to make an outline on each biscuit, this acts as a seal for the runnier icing. You place the runnier icing in the middle of the outline and either use the back of a teaspoon or a cocktail stick to gently push the runnier icing to the firmer outlined icing. As I didn't have any piping bags I used sandwich bags; if you push all of the icing into one corner and then snip a very small hole in the corner. There you have it, a very cheap piping bag!

Firstly you need to ice around the edge of the biscuit with the firmer icing and let it set completely. Once it's hard using the 'flood icing' (runnier icing) in the middle of the outline, making sure it touches the icing outline and let that dry completely.

If you want to create patterns then you need to do this when the flood icing is still wet. To make a polka dot pattern just squeeze on dots in a different colour, on to the wet icing. This will settle into the wet icing and once completely dry will be a smooth surface. You could also change the polka dots into hearts by dragging a cocktail stick from the top of the polka dot, through it and out the other side. I am by no means an icing expert, in fact this is only the second time I have ever iced a biscuit but I thought I'd share the basic knowledge I do know :)

Here are some of my creations using this method...

Do you like learning knew skills at home?