Simple Supper: Pimp your Pasta

Today's Simple Supper is really several ways to ramp up the flavour in a bit of a cheat's dinner - shop bought filled pasta. I've got a bit of a weakness for this (it's my go to meal whenever I'm home alone) and love adding a few treat-y extras to make it even more delish. It would be hard for this to be easier so next time you're in need of a no-brain, no-fuss, one pan-er why not give one of these combos a go...

Wedding Wednesday - How Sweet it Is...

Our sweets table - photo by Tino&Pip

Hello lovely readers! My apologies for the radio silence of late - I have had a series of problems with my back which had made sitting at a computer pretty painful. This combined with singing work all over the country has meant I have been a lax homespinner! Very glad to be back today (excuse the unintentional pun) with a Wedding Wednesday for you - a tutorial for the lovey Boho Wedding Blog. This time it's some tips and ideas for creating a Sweets Station for your wedding reception. We had one of these as an alternative to cake and pudding and it went down a treat - I was amazed how many people managed to remember their sweetie bags at the end of the night when shoes, jackets, cameras and handbags got left in abundance! It also meant that we saved money by not having a traditional wedding cake and serving up our centerpiece, the gorgeous croque en bouche, with raspberries and cream for pudding. This was great fun to "cut" (read absolutely terrifying in case the whole thing fell over!) and absolutely delicious.

Honeypie - Raspberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Icing

I made these little cupcakes for my friend's baby shower, wanting something sweet and pink and light and yummy - they went down pretty well so I would recommend making a big batch!

This recipe should make 24 UK sized cupcakes - which would translate to about 12 US sized ones. There will be lots of icing which you can of course make any colour you fancy. Decorate with white chocolate shavings, sprinkles, fresh raspberries or sugar work roses - gorgeous!

The Honeypot - w/c 03.09.12

Well, what a gorgeous week of weather we've had this week - just in time for those going back to school to be able to enjoy it from inside a classroom. It's been a busy one for me with a few jobs coming in for me and my boy, singing with a new band last night and getting myself ready for another term of Monkey Music, teaching babies to sing and play stuff (it's pretty cute). What have you been up to?

And before you know it here we are at another Honeypot, my weekly round up of the yummiest, craftiest and most gorgeous blog posts I've seen this week. Enjoy...

Wedding Wednesday - The Gift List

2012, the year I got married, is also the year I became the model wedding guest. Knowing how much I appreciated an early RSVP, an up for it hen and a trouble free wedding guest has made me want to be all those things for my friends on their big days. Having been the lucky receiver of many a gorgeous wedding gift, I have also wanted to be a giver of such gorgeousness for many years to come.

The Honeypot - w/c 27.08.12

Welcome to another Honeypot - a patchwork of my favourite posts from the wonderful world of blogs this week. I hope you've all had lovely weeks and are enjoying your weekends - do drop me a comment to let me know what you've been up to. I've been blogging for nearly a month now and are thrilled by how many of your have dropped by - thank you! Here's my round up of delicious looking recipes, crafty projects to try and weddings with  homemade spin, plus a reminder of what I've been blogging this week...

Simple Supper: Spicy Beef Noodles

For anyone who has met me or has read the About Me section of this blog, you'll know that I am a bit of a chilli addict. It's rare that I cook a meal without some sort of chilli and I seem to go through them at a ridiculous rate - luckily I live in an area of London full of Asian shops which means I can pick them up for next to nothing. This simpler supper is a particular favourite of mine as it contains both dried and fresh chilli for extra levels of heat. Enjoy!

Wedding Wednesday - Supplier Success


Welcome to another wedding Wednesday post - how are all you brides, grooms and interested others doing? This time I thought I'd make it all about the people you choose to help produce your wedding: your suppliers. No doubt if you are newly engaged this will be one of the first things you're thinking about, once you've got your venue and date sorted. It can be a daunting prospect with more wedding suppliers out there than ever and all of them claiming to be 'the UK's best' 'multi award winning' 'loved by' various blogs or 'amazing value'. If you're a bit further along the process you may have bookd most of your suppliers by now but need to make sure they know how you want them to fit into your day. I'm going up run through the suppliers you'll probably need to think about, when to do what and how to keep them in the loop as your wedding progresses. Being a recent bride and a wedding supplier myself, both as a service with my band, The bb Collective, and as a product with my homemade favours and décor, I have a pretty good understanding from both sides of the client / supplier relationship. There's a nifty spreadsheet you can download to help keep track of them all and make you feel all efficient too - gotta love a spreadsheet!

The Honeypot - w/c 20.08.12

Hello Homespinners, how have your weeks been? I've had a good one, turning...eek...31 in style -  attending the boy's press night for his new play An Incident at the Border, lunching and dinner-ing around town with various chums, singing at a couple of lovely weddings and today having a BBQ (don't tell the sunshine) back at my mum and dad's. Lovely! And now here comes this week's "Honeypot" - a round up of the best blog posts I've seen around the web - crafty DIY projects, weddings with a homemade feel and recipes to try. 

Simple Suppers: Scallop and Chorizo Salad

This week's Simple Supper is a surf 'n' turf salad that's substantial enough for even my dinner - the potatoes help with that! You could, however leave the potatoes out for a carb free supper that still has some texture and interest. The dressing is optional - you could always just squeeze some lemon and drizzle some olive oil over the finished salad, but I do like the extra flavour burst the dressing I've suggested I've suggested gives the dish.

Tipi-tastic - Our wedding tipis

Happy Wedding Wednesday lovelies! After last week's post sharing some pictures of our wedding, which was featured on Boho Weddings I thought I'd write about our venue choice today, gorgeous tipi marquees from Beautiful World Tents.

Tipis have been getting more and more popular over the last few years as a great alternative to a traditional marquee for weddings and parties. One of the main reasons we chose to go for them is that I sing at weddings most weekends of my life and didn't want our own wedding to feel like a night at work. I've seen more billowy white marquees than I can count but knew that we definitely wanted to have the reception in the field at my parents' house, so when I found out about the tipis I was excited that there was a non traditional option out there. I showed them to Tom and he was instantly sold so we started to investigate further.

Honeypie - Triple Chocolate Cookies

I've got my first Honeypie for you today - posts which focus on delicious sweets things to make, usually baking but sometimes puddings too. Today we start things with some triple whammy chocolate chip cookies - because I like some chocolate with my chocolate, don't you?

This makes 12 cookie monsters (COOKIE! - obvs the option I went for) or 20 dinky cookies if you're feeling more refined, or making these for children. I've adapted this recipe from this one on Nigella's website, in turn she was inspired by Elinor Klivans - a lovely melting pot of ideas. And chocolate.

The Honeypot - w/c 13.08.12

Welcome to this week's "Honeypot" - a round up of the best blog posts I've seen around the web - crafty DIY projects, weddings with a homemade feel and recipes to try. Here comes my second pot of sweet stuff to eat, make, inspire and admire...

Honey I DIY... Lavender Hearts

Good morning and happy Friday! Some of you may have seen my first guest post for Boho Weddings this week - I'll be doing regular DIY tutorials for Kelly over the next few months. Check out the full post here.

These little hearts were the favours at our wedding and my bridesmaids and I made 80 of them in a couple of sessions. They were a huge hit - almost all of them were taken home despite all sorts of electrical items and bits of outfits being left as people stumbled off the dance floor.

Our wedding hits the Boho Weddings Blog!

Hello lovely homespinners. For today's Wedding Wednesday I thought I'd share some photos of our wedding, which were featured on one of my fave wedding blogs, Boho Weddings yesterday. Our photos were taken by Tino&Pip, the fab photographer duo of Penny and Martin and we are totally thrilled with them - they caught all the emotion, laughter, personal touches and happy tears of the day and were a delight to have around!

For the full post and our wedding story do pop over to Boho Weddings and have a gander. In the meantime, here are a few more of my favourite pics...

Scrapbooking for the Modern Miss (or Mr!)

I'm all for traditional scrap booking - I've got scapbooks for holidays I've been on, recipes I want to try, family events that deserve commemorating and am currently working on a bit of a spesh one for my wedding. But when I saw that 4homes have come up with their new online scrapbook I was pretty excited - the boy saw an advert on TV and recorded it to show me later - he knows me well!

The Honeypot - w/c 06.08.12

Each weekend I'll be posting a "Honeypot" - a round up of the best blog posts I've seen around the web - crafty DIY projects, weddings with a homemade feel and recipes to try. Here comes the first pot of sweet stuff to eat, make and admire...

Simple Supper: Mexican Chicken

I'm planning to give you a Simple Supper each week - here's what we had for tea last night. You can mix and match the different elements but they went really well together and there was even guacamole left for my lunch today!

Making the post wedding blues a bit more pink...

For my first weeks's Wedding Wednesday post I'm going to kick off with the question I've been asked the most since we got back from honeymoon - 'is it really depressing being back in the real world?' My answer is a resounding 'um...no?' People seem to expect you to get hit with the post wedding blues and I suppose there's an element of feeling sad it's all over. But the way we have always seen it is that all the planning, designing, making and dreaming we went through on the run up was for one reason: to have an amazing day which celebrated our love for each other and to spend it with our favourite people in the world. We achieved this and the day itself was better than either of us could have hoped for, genuinely the cliche of the best day of our lives. To be blue that it's happened and went so brilliantly would, in my opinion, be churlish and a little bit ungrateful.

Besides, there are so many things to look forward to after your first night as mr and mrs. Here are my top ten tips for keeping the feel good factor alive and well in the days and months following your big day...

Shoe Designing Dilemmas

Photography credit: Upper Street

I was lucky enough to get a voucher for the fabulous Upper Street for my last birthday from one of my besties. A year of wedding planning, honeymooning and quite a bit of real life too has meant I've been unable to make a decision on which shoes to order and the voucher expiry date is fast approaching. Cue me spinning into a Louboutin frenzy and managing to further confuse myself with multiple shoe designs - all of which I now need in my life!

I can't recommend the Upper Street website enough - their easy to use Shoe Designer is a fabulous way to spend an hour...or two conjuring up your dream shoe wardrobe. Here are a few of my favourite designs that I've come up with so far...

Cupcake Cavorting with My Chocolate and my wife

I have a confession to make. I am a bigamist. As well as being recently wed to my boy, I have had a wife for the past few years. She's the other "b" in my band, The bb Collective, and we have been each other's work wives since we started singing together. Alright, so it's not strictly a legal marriage, but thought it best to get my secret out in the open.

Good wife that I am, I had bought her a Cupcake Course for her birthday. With a lack of dates and then a couple of very annoying last minute cancellations by Cake Boy, who we originally booked with, I changed the plan and we went to My Chocolate, in Farringdon, for their Chocolate Martinis, Whoopie Pies and Cupcake afternoon.

Welcome to my Craft Room...

When I moved in with my now-hubby then-boyfriend I expressed a concern for where my 'pink' stuff would live. I've got a pathological inability to throw away any piece of paper with someone's handwriting on, bit of ribbon, button, scrap of material or end of wool ball and this had resulted in a huge amount of, admittedly pretty, space filling paraphanalia that needed a new home. I also had a lot of girly furniture and decor that I loved but didn't think would go down too well in our new shared habitat. Tom gave me ownership of the second bedroom in our new home and my "Craft Room" was born.

About this Homespun Honey

Hello and welcome to my fledgling blog. I hope we will be spending more time together, all be it virtually, as this blog progresses so thought it only polite to introduce myself. My name's Bex and I'm a makeaholic.

I love to make things - dinners, scarfs, music, tea time treats, decorations, skirts, gifts, curtains... you get the idea. I have spent the past year producing all sorts of things for my own wedding and have been further bitten by the making bug in the process. During the preparations and after the day itself I've had quite a few people asking about my experiences and wanting to know if they can borrow items I made. This made me think there could be more people out there interested in such things and so I've made the step from avid blog reader to blogger... who knows how it will go?!