First Attempt at Protein Balls

Warning; I am going to be saying 'balls' a lot in this post, so please refrain from giggling, I am being serious people.

I've been trying to get back to the gym recently, and I've been seeing recipes for protein balls everywhere, so I decided to give one a go. I found a really simple recipe which I tweaked slightly, and luckily I had all of the ingredients. They turned out pretty good

Each ball has just over 8 grams of protein in it, which makes them perfect for eating on the go just before or after a work out.

This recipe below should make 8 protein balls.

Ingredients;

4 tablespoons natural peanut butter

2 scoops (50g) vanilla protein powder

4 tablespoons coconut milk

Sesame seeds

50g dark chocolate

Method;

Mix the peanut butter, protein powder, coconut milk and sesame seeds in a bowl. Once mixed it should form a dough like consistency. I rolled mine out into a snake shape so that I could split the mixture evenly up into 8, then I rolled them into small balls.

Heat the chocolate in a pyrex dish over a pan of boiling water. Once melted dip each of your protein balls in and coat with the chocolate. Place on a plate and pop in the fridge until cool. Et voila! They are done! 

It was such an easy recipe, I'll definitely be using this as a base to try out lots of different variations! Have you got a good recipe for protein balls you'd like to share?

Laura xXx

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Shopping at The Handmade Fair

A couple of weeks ago I went to The Handmade Fair at Hampton Court, and I thought you crafty lot might enjoy hearing about it!

When we bought tickets to the fair we had the choice of signing up to loads of different classes. In the end we went for a furniture painting session, a gift wrapping class, and finally a talk in the super theatre about quilting.

I particularly enjoyed the furniture painting class. To be honest I rather thought that I already knew all of the tricks, but Out Of The Dark had tons of fantastic tips for us. My favourite was that you can re-use sand paper again and again if you just hoover it! Who knew!?

Aside from the classes there was a huge amount of awesome food and drinks suppliers. Of course we had to stop off for a glass of prosecco on our travels.

But obviously, the main event had to be the shopping! There were SO many amazing crafty stalls, I ended up spending a small fortune!

First of all I spotted this fantastic dress pattern from Sew Over it, based on Betty Draper from Mad Men.  Unlike normal sewing patterns, this one has a step by step tutorial on the Sew Over It blog, so I thought that it would be a good one to try as a novice dress maker!  I also bought myself some fabric to make the dress out of from a separate stall.  I didn't realise at all until I got home, but the fabric I bought is identical to the fabric they have illustrated on the front of the pattern!  Weird!

I stopped by Designosaur's stand as I follow them on Instagram and I love all of their jewellery. It was great to meet them in person.  I decided to treat myself to a mammoth necklace after much deliberation. Pretty cool huh!?

Whilst in the Etsy tent I also had a nice little chat with Alice Tams from Birds in Hats. Her illustrations are super cute, and as you might have guessed, they all feature different birds in different hats! I am seriously taken with this Walking Dead inspired crow!

I also said hello to Zoe from Ladybird Likes, who I had met once before at a Southampton Etsy party. I bought my friend one of her lovely butterfly necklaces for her Birthday. I didn't get a chance to photograph it myself so this is the picture from Zoe's Shop on etsy.

I've been looking for prints to go in our new study, and when I found this ice cream print by Ros Shiers I decided it must be mine!  I am a bit of a sucker for ice cream and ice lollies. Mainly twisters, feasts, and Ben and Jerrys mint chocolate chunk.

If you are an avid TV series watcher, and you haven't come across Kate Rowland yet, I seriously urge you to check her work out! From Breaking Bad to Twin Peaks, she has got some amazing pins and jewellery!  I spent an age deciding which one I liked best, but I eventually settled on this Nights Watch badge from Game of Thrones. I could wear every single one of them!

I had such a lovely day, which was made all the better by wonderful company. I even managed to catch up with Claire from  Claireabellemakes , who, by the way has written a great post on the day, and was much better than me at capturing pictures of the actual event! So go and check that out if you want to see some more.

I hope you have enjoyed living vicariously through my shopping experience, if not, go and buy some for yourselves! 

Laura xXx

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Wedding Photos - At The Church

This week our wedding was featured on Love My Dress, which I was very excited about!  If you want an overview of our whole day go take a look over there, but of course I will be recalling it all in minute detail over then next few posts here!

When I left you last I was walking to the church and Chris was driving over along with his ushers in Pip.  And finally, the big moment had nearly arrived!

We got married in All Saints Church in Martin. I kept the order of service simple and typed out and printed them off myself at home.

The boys were obviously in the church well ahead of us to greet the our guests, and they would also be providing some music. Here's some nice pictures of a few of the boys before the service got underway.

There was a slight mishap before I arrived.  We had given my brother-in-law-to-be, Alfie, the very important job of signalling to the best man when I had arrived, so that they could start playing my entrance music. Unfortunately he got it slightly wrong and actually signalled to them when my mum arrived with the bridesmaids. Apparently much hilarity ensued, and my Mum still thinks she nearly married Alfie!  Since I didn't get to see it myself, I think the picture below captures the moment terrifically, Alfie's face is a picture!

We gave Best Man Ollie a rather tricky job when I decided that I'd like Elbow's 'One Day Like This' to be my entrance music, and I wanted him to play violin! He had some serious multi-tasking to do, but he did a fantastic job.

I must admit, I did get rather teary walking down the aisle. Partly because of my Dad setting me off, but also it was quite overwhelming walking into a room with so many of your friends and family, some of whom you haven't seen for a while, and of course, I was about to get married!

I was quite nervous about the service itself, I didn't really know what to expect. Luckily our vicar was amazing, he told lots of jokes and made the whole service really chilled out. In fact, I think Chris and I spent the entire service giggling away like school children!

As I got the the alter I realised I still had my engagement ring on! I had to pass it to my Dad in a bit of a panic and I don't think he had a clue what was going on since we hadn't rehearsed that bit!! So remember that ladies, maybe even take it off the day before if you can!

During the service my now Sister-In-Law Rosie read us A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton.  We picked it because it is a bit silly like us, but still has a really sweet sentiment.  My Uncle Danny also did a reading for us which was lovely. I really wanted to get him involved in the day as he and his family live in Canada, so we don't get to see them as often as we'd like at all.

During the signing of the register the band played, Africa by Toto, and Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac.

At the end of the service the band followed the procession out whilst playing which a lot of the guests commented on.  Then we had them sang 'the confetti song' in order to get the guests to pick up some confetti on their way out. It was basically them singing 'come on and get some confetti' to the tune of The Conga.  Meanwhile Chris and I nipped round the back of the Church and went in the back door, so that we could re emerge through the front for everyone to cover us in confetti!

Everyone said what a great service it was, so we were really pleased about that. I am so glad we decided to have lots of live musicians play though out the service, I think it really made a difference.

Laura xXx

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Secret Cinema - Back to The Future

By now you have probably heard of Secret Cinema and their amazing film showing of Back To The Future, complete with recreation of the entire town of Hill Valley!  I decided that this was something we HAD to go to, and booked tickets to surprise Chris.

If you haven't heard of Secret Cinema, they describe themselves as an 'immersive film-experience company'. Their events are pretty frequent, but you have to be on their mailing list to get an invite to their shows. The Back To The Future showing has been the biggest one they have done yet, and it was slightly different in that you could get tickets even if you weren't on their mailing list. I know that in the past they have also based events on Alien, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, and The Grand Budapest Hotel to name a few.

It was all very elaborate, we were sent new identities and professions as well as printable business cards with all of our details including a phone number on!  I was now Miranda Conway and I worked for the Hill Valley Stationers. Chris worked at the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company. We were also told to dress the part in 50's attire, so of course we abliged!

Before we went in we had to hand over any cameras or phones. Obviously because they want to keep the whole thing as secret as possible, they didn't want people instantly posting pictures all over Facebook and Instagram. But also, I think it was to really get people into the spirit of the 1950's, and modern technology would have ruined that somewhat. I think it was a really good idea. They did ,however, sell disposable cameras inside, and I made sure to snap one up quick before they sold out.

The other day I FINALLY got those photos back, so I thought I'd share them with you.

There were so many shops and companies that you could visit, all with different things going on inside.   There were lots of actors and actresses scattered around, some of them characters from the film. On our way to the venue we ran into Biff's friends and Chris got bullied by the guy who wears the 3D glasses. What a meanie!

There was a great fun fair, but there was just so much to do we didn't get a chance to go on any of the rides.

There was a little school advertising the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance, which you will remember from the film. In the school hall the dance was happening, and there was an amazing band playing, which we thought were so good we have now put them up on The Band Boutique here.

There was a male vocal harmony trio performing intermittently called the Texatones, they also worked for the garage, hence the outfits! They were great!

There were houses of all the main characters from the film that you could have a look in. Here I am posing outside one of them with a pram!

And here I am at George McFly's House!

The film was projected onto the front of the clock tower, and there were actors performing all the main parts of the movie alongside it.  We saw Marty catch a ride with his skateboard on a van, with Biff and the gang chasing him. We saw the Delorean emerge in a cloud of smoke, and Doc brown risking his life hanging from the clock tower in the finale! It was all very dramatic!

Really, there was too much going on to mention it all, but I did come home with a few souvenirs.  The postcards and the newspaper were free to pick up, and I bought a Town Fair flag for £1.50. I also bought myself a T-Shirt.

It really was an amazing experience. You could tell that everyone there had totally bought into it, nearly everyone was dressed up in 50's clothes. It was a blast. I would definitely recommend signing up to their mailing list, as any future events are sure to be awesome too! You can register for future events here.

Did you go? If you did what did you enjoy most?

Laura xXx

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