Beautiful Gift Books

Something that has always caught my attention in book shops is books with wonderful production value; thick paper, glossy images and gold embossing. If a book has gold embossing, I need it in my life. While run-of-the-mill paperbacks can be great purchases if you’re an avid reader, when it comes to giving books as gifts I feel there’s a need to choose something a little more special. If like me you are at a loss for what to buy someone this Christmas, read ahead and behold the beautiful gift books of my choosing.

  

The Barnes and Nobles Leatherbound Series

 

An affordable and wonderfully produced collection of books. Ranging from the classics to science fiction and non-fiction, you can tell a lot of thought has gone into the cover designs for each individual book. With an extremely reasonable RRP price of £25 a book, there’s no reason not to have several of these on your shelf. Many of the editions have several books within their pages, and the quality of production almost makes you feel bad for paying so little. The image to the right is just one example of the illustrations that can be found in these books. This particular one is from Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

 Mister Finch, Living in a Fairytale World

 

This book showcases the best of his work with wonderfully photographed, glossy full colour images, and the cover could be considered art itself with the intricate metallic embossing. For anyone interested in quirky art, this is the book for you. Mister Finch is a textile artist from Leeds who creates fabric fairytale creatures ranging from huge bees to dead canaries. Have you ever wondered what it might be like to have cat sized moths in the world? Mister Finch has.

     

 Folio Society & Gollancz H.G.Wells Classics

 

The Folio Society prides themselves on their extremely high standards of book design and production. Amongst my favourites is this collection of H.G.Wells Classics complete with illustrations. This lovely edition is however out of print, but can be still be found through online retailers with a price tag of around £65.

If that’s a little over budget, Gollancz published a series of cheaper but equally as charming H.G.Wells books. This edition of The Shape of Things to Come was recently featured in the hit TV show, The Walking Dead.

  

These are just a few of the many particularly special books in circulation that could make fantastic gifts. If these aren’t quite what you were looking for, I hope this post gives you the inspiration to find something suitable for that book-loving friend or family member.

Feta and Broccoli Pasta Frittata Recipe

Ingredients (serves four):

4 large eggs

60g pasta (uncooked)

Half of a broccoli stalk. 

40g Feta Cheese

A little red Cheddar for the top.
Olive oil

Salt

Water

Instructions: 

• Cook the pasta in salted water for the time advised on the packet.
• When the pasta has cooked for 5 minutes, add chopped broccoli to the same pan and cook for the remainder of the time.
• Drain pasta and broccoli when cooked and put aside.

While the pasta and broccoli are cooking you can make up your egg mixture.

• Crack the four eggs into a bowl, add a pinch of salt per egg and whisk.
• Crumble the feta into the eggs and then add a touch of water to the mix.

Add a generous amount of oil to a frying pan and put on a medium heat.

• When it's hot, add the egg mixture to the pan and then quickly spread the cooked pasta/ broccoli evenly over the top. Allow to cook for 12 minutes. 
• While this is cooking, prepare the grill and grate some red cheddar over the top of the frittata.

Once the frittata has cooked for 12 minutes, take it off the hob and place the frying pan under the grill. Leave until the frittata is golden brown on top (about 6 mins). Upon removal from the grill, a gentle shake of the frying pan should unstick the frittata from the pan and you can slide it onto a plate to cool.

And then, enjoy! ｡^‿^｡

Animal Crossing Anniversary!

Today marks the passing of a whole year since I received my Nintendo 3DS and began my Animal Crossing journey. I've played this game almost daily since starting it up and it has to be one of my all-time favourite games, so I thought I'd do a commemorative post on it!  ｡^‿^｡
 
When you first start up the game your character is riding  on a train. A cat called Rover approaches and asks a series of questions which allow you to name your town, choose a layout and influence your character's appearance. When you reach your destination, several town residents are awaiting the arrival of the new town mayor; and yeah, they think it's you. Despite your insistence that you have no idea what they're talking about, you suddenly find yourself mayor of a town full of animal villagers.Your duties include keeping the town tidy, building public works projects, attending town events, developing relationships with your townspeople and working on your own home. There's also plenty of bug/ fish/ sea creature catching to be done.

There are a lot of things I like about this game; the bright, colourful graphics, the huge number of cute villagers that could potentially move to your town, and the fact that it plays in real time. Something that surprised me was the range of interaction you can have with your villagers. They'll randomly visit you in your home, or invite you to visit theirs. You can exchange letters with them, be tasked with finding fruit or furniture, be invited to play hide and seek and more. The huge variety of dialogue options usually makes for amusing conversations which are often influenced by the villager's personality type. I've been playing for a year and even now on occasion a villager will say something brand new and surprise me. This individuality does make it strangely easy to become attached to particular villagers. 
 
    My current residents are :    Chow
                                              Tangy
                                              Melba
                                              Wendy
                                              Pecan 
                                              Deirdre 
                                              Beau 
                                              Katt 
                                              Sally 

Anyway, this game has been great fun over the last year. I found that when I was swamped with dissertation stuff it was nice to be able to visit my town for fifteen minutes and enjoy the simple, light-hearted nature of the game. Sadly this means that I have now experienced all that New Leaf has to offer. It was however a big success, so I'm hopeful for another game to be added to the series in the near future!    ｡^‿^｡

           

Visit my town! Dream Address: 7800-2563-9048

 ♥

Update

Well I think it's about time for an update here! Last month was pretty busy. I now officially have a BA with Honours in English Studies, and I was accepted into the publishing course which starts next semester. I finally feel like I have some sort of plan for the future laid out which is a relief. I also visited Palma. The apartment was perfect for my friend and I, and it was in a lovely part of the city. I mean this was the view from our balcony:

We had our itinerary planned and visited a variety of places (once we sussed out the bus system) including the aquarium, Marineland, the cathedral and the palace. We also shopped and consuming copious amounts of ice cream. I did also get a fair bit of reading done.

Red Dragon: I particularly liked this one. I had been under the impression that the TV show 'Hannibal' was based on this, but the events in the show actually lead up to those in the book. Also, curiously, many of the characters who are portrayed as woman in the show are male characters in the book. It was fun to compare the two.

Heat Wave: This book troubled me a little. I think it's best not taken too seriously as a novel in its own right. I couldn't quite manage to separate the show from the book and I found myself getting confused because I began trying to apply the show's characters to differently named characters in the book. It is true though that it was written clearly in the voice of the show's main character. That was mildly amusing. I don't think I'll be reading the rest of the series though.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris: I'm glad I finally finished this. It's an interesting read. It would also be a great tool for writing exercises; choosing a person that Perec briefly describes and featuring them in a short story or writing a character profile for them.

Anyway, I've got a few things lined up post-wise in the next few weeks, so stay tuned! ｡^‿^｡

Holiday Reading

For the next week I'll be staying in sunny Palma with a friend, and for me, one of the essentials for any trip abroad is reading material. These three should be plenty for the week, because I'm sure we'll be doing lots of sight-seeing and exploring too. Perhaps when I get back I'll do a little book review to pair with this blog post. First of all though, I'll share with you the reasoning behind my choices. 

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec: This little book was something that I was recommended when I was doing my dissertation. I looked at it briefly but never really got a chance to go through it closely, so now's my chance. I do know that in 1974, Georges Perec spent three days in a part of Paris, observing his surroundings and taking detailed notes. This little book is an English translation of these notes which detail everything from people that passed him by to the behaviour of pigeons on the street. 

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris: I've been wanting to read this for a while, but I've been saving it for this holiday. I'm a fan of the television show 'Hannibal' which is based on this book. As with any good television show or film that's been adapted from a book, I started getting curious about the source material. So let's see how the show and book compare!

Heat Wave by Richard Castle: I find this amusing because Richard Castle is actually a fictional character from the TV show 'Castle'. In the show, his character is a writer living in New York. His latest, extremely popular, book series is about a NYC police detective called Nikki Heat. So in connection with the show, these books have been released and maintain the idea that Richard Castle is a real person. I mean, they even have his photo on the back cover. Having read a sample (the first ten pages or so) it looks like the writing style is very true to the character's voice in the show, so it should make for some fun reading. I find the whole idea rather clever, but I have to wonder who really wrote the books?

Journals

I don't know what it is about journals and notebooks. Or stationary in general, really. In primary school, the highlight of starting a new year was gathering up a nice new stationary set; the cuter the better. Now, I still love browsing the likes of Paperchase for notebooks and pens which I may not even necessarily need, but can't resist buying. I just get some sort of satisfaction out of having a pretty notebook/ journal to carry around in my handbag. I bought the one photographed from Paperchase a little while ago. It's pretty much the perfect size for my handbag, and looks rather lovely too with its gilded page edges and oxblood colouring. It is now home to lots of little notes for writing projects, crochet patterns and plenty of other things that have come to mind when I've been out and about. 

 

If you can't quite justify buying yourself yet another notebook, they also make perfect birthday gifts. Not only does it encourage the receiver to write traditionally (as opposed to typing with some piece of tech), but it's also nice to give something that can be personalised depending on what content the receiver chooses to fill it with. So yeah, if you're stuck for birthday present ideas; consider a journal! ｡^‿^｡

Retro Circle Cushion

So I thought I'd share this cushion even though I made it quite a while ago. The squares were very simple to make; a tutorial can be found here at Three Beans in a Pod. I joined my squares with slip stitches and made a double crochet back with a zip sewn in. I'm tempted to re-visit this pattern but make the squares smaller (because smaller = cuter, right?) Perhaps only two rounds to each circle rather than four would make a nice size? 

Rowan by Amy Butler Colours : SH00002 and SH000017

Fab 100% Acrylic in cream.