Tag: Featured

Infused gins are easy to make, taste delicious, look beautiful and make fabulous gifts.

Firstly, find yourself an appropriate 1.5-2L jar (Kilner & Ikea are both fantastic). Next task is to add your sugar and fruit to the jar. I use around 200g caster sugar per 1L of gin. You can adjust this according to your pallette but be sure not to use golden caster sugar as this will obscure the colour.

Give your infusing ingredients & sugar and good shake and leave for around 24 hours – this will help draw out all the flavourful juices from the fruit.

The next step is simple. Pour over 1L of gin and leave your jar of joy in a cool dark place for around 4-6 weeks.

After your gin is sufficiently infused – drain it using a muslin cloth and decant into bottles ready for tasting (the best bit).

Here are a few favourite flavour combinations…

 

Cranberry & Clementine

300g Cranberries pricked with a fork to release the juices

The peel of 2 clementines avoiding the bitter white pith

A cinnamon stick

 

Christmas Spice Gin

300g Cranberries with a fork to release the juices

The peel of a large orange – again avoiding the pith

A cinnamon stick

5-10 cloves

2 star anise

 

Rhubarb Gin

400g of the pinkest rhubarb cut into 1 inch pieces

 

 

All thats left left to do is grab a glass & enjoy! Let me know your favourite infusion xxx

The kitchen / dining room was the first room in our house to get a makeover.  We are a family of food lovers and life centres around the kitchen. Whether it’s baking with the girls, preparing a weekend feast or enjoying a glass of fizz with a friend, this is our most used space.

Prior to moving in, the previous owners had extended the rear of the property creating a large kitchen-diner. New and inoffensive, but cold and lacking character…

While I sometimes have mixed feelings about feature walls, I fell in love with the simple, floral and almost dreamy quality of Laura Ashley’s Pussy Willow wallpaper in Dove Grey.

As well as a large dining table, we decided we wanted to create more storage (we have A LOT of kitchen gadgets!). As a child, my mother had a old traditional Welsh dresser and I dream of it still. I set about searching for something similar and came across this custom designed 7ft beauty from Farmhouse Furnishings.

We opted to have the dresser painted in Farrow & Ball Cornforth White which toned in beautifully with our wallpaper.

As our girls are still so young, many of our social events and dinner parties happen in the house as friends come & join us while the little ones sleep. This in mind we wanted a big dining table. We opted for the beautiful chalk table stocked by Homebird (oh, how I love this shop!). The chalky colour of the wood blends beautifully with the grey tones in this room without being too ‘matchy’.

Not only is this table stunning but it is infinitely practical – marks, dents and scratches just add a story and some character to the distressed wood.

 

In the meantime, we installed Hilary’s shutters throughout the house. We had these in our previous house and I’ll write a full post on them later – but, needless to say, we love them. They add such a classic look in any room.

To finish off, we added Ikea Ingolf chairs (with a toddler version for Isla – a perfect bridge between a high chair and a full sized chair) and a simple grey table runner from M&S.  The dresser was filled with labelled jars of flours, sugar, oats and pasta (a cooks dream) and no table centrepiece will ever beat a simple jug of fresh flowers (I love Aldi  for these).

 

Grab a glass & pull up a chair…