A day at Duxford

Yesterday we  headed up to Camridge to the Duxford Aviation museum, to look at the planes and also to watch the airshow. This was mainly for the benefit of our daughter who is aeroplane obsessed.  The weather was glorious, and it was a most enjoyable day.

Admiring the Lancaster

These aircraft are just magnificent and breathtaking, it's to hard imagine that they can even get airborne.

My daughters favourite is the Lancaster bomber, she has been fascinated by aeroplanes since she was a baby, and has seen the Lancaster in flight a few times at our airshow in Southend, and screams in excitement she is so in awe of it!

Concord

Sadie liked the colour of this one below:

Loop

Prime view

Memphis Belle

EX RAF Fellows

Always a humbling experience to think about what these gentlemen  have been through.

A very happy girl flying her inflatable plane who has now been named Bertie bomber.

 Just before we came home I had a stroll and looked  through the stalls and the bookshop, with the faint music of  Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields playing in the background, such a fascinating and nostalgic time, we romanticise it, but must have been extremely hard.

I myself came away with with a small greetings card above, I have resisted these so far based on all the silly slogans, as they are so common now, so just a small traditional one for my kitchen wall will be fine.

Hope you all had a good weekend. x

Nude Artwork in progress

This is my latest oil painting in progress. I love painting nudes, really like this pose, here are a 3 stages of it.

This is just referenced form a pose on google.

First stage

This is stage 1, blocking in rough shadows.

Stage 2, improving, getting colours and blends in.

Stage 3

This is my favourite stage, getting lots of detail and definition in, and warming all the tones up and getting nice soft blends with a big soft brushes, My paintings are totally smooth, no brush marks,although I do want to experiment with techniques. I do have a go and then going back to my old ways, old habits die hard!

I have one more stage to go on this , but it won't look much different, just little thongs that irk me.

A painting is NEVER finished you know......

Melting moments

Melting moments? These biscuits had me in a bloody meltdown for an hour and a half this morning!

 For those of you that watched the Great British bake off, you may recall  Mary-Ann making these in Episode 4, which was primarily biscuit week. I for one really enjoyed the show, and thought it was a real close call between Mary-Ann and Jo, both of whom I thought were brilliant in their own ways. I am now following both of their blogs, as they have some fantastic ideas.

 These biscuits were a damn bugger to make despite following the recipe from Mary- Ann's blog  here, mine didn't quite turn out looking as lovely as hers, but they do taste really good! Maybe I will try the Croquembouche next...err no .

I had real trouble getting the mixing to pipe from the bag, it was far too stiff, god knows how she managed it, I beat the butter until it was really soft, but the volume of flour and cornflour made it just like pastry ready to roll, which is correct for biscuits ( it should be very short) I had to add some milk just to get it soft enough  so as to be able it to squeeze through a big star tip in the pipe bag, even then it was still really difficult and I gave up and  rolled and cut the rest out into heart shapes, they still looked nice. I just made some ordinary buttercream and sandwiched them together with that and some strawberry jam.

Draw a line of gel food colouring, liquid is no good

Ready to pipe

Not bad for first attempt

The kids are sorted for a treat today then.

Happy baking!

Remembering Steve Jobs

COMMENCEMENT SPEECH AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 2005

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.''

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.''

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."