Archive for 2015

Life has been pretty manic over the last few weeks – I’ve moved house (for the second time in 6 weeks!) and been without internet.. and then I went and broke my phone too. To say I’ve felt a little cut off is an understatement!

Aside from life’s little wonders like the above, Christmas has hit and I’m packing orders like crazy (seriously love you guys for your support and custom) and I’ve taken on an amazing role as one of the Leaders in our local Etsy community, Etsy Team Leeds.

Our team is pretty awesome if I do say so myself: we have monthly meet ups in person with a cup of tea, craft parties, a hugely active Facebook group where all our members can get support and the information they need to grow and we have so many great plans!

I’ve taken up a role as part of the events and marketing sub team so that’s me you’re talking to most of the time over on Twitter and together with my fabulous Yorkshire Etsians we’ve been planning our very own awesome Christmas craft fair as part of the official Etsy Made Local.

This Sunday we’re opening our doors at the Leeds City Museum with 100 goody bags stuffed full of handmade wonders for the first 100 folks through the door ready to shop. We have over 30 stalls where you can meet and shop with real Etsy sellers in person and we are transforming the place into a bright, fun handmade wonderland! There’s also going to be crafty workshops, talks on how to get involved with Etsy and join our team and the Pop Up Booth is coming along in the afternoon, so make sure you drop in to get some silly photos taken with your pals against our Etsy Photo Booth wall!

I hope to see you all at Etsy Made Local Leeds on Sunday (6th Dec, 11-4pm), all the info is in our Facebook event. Do come and say hi if you read my blog – I’d love to meet you :)))

Loves x xx

The lovely folks at Old El Paso sent us a little box of goodies to try out and see if it made our busy lives a little bit easier. We’ve been having a bit of a tough time of it recently, a few struggles with our house purchase on top of usual weekly stresses has left us little time for cooking and planning recipes so we were really thankful to grab one of the Soft Taco Kits one evening and throw a delicious dinner together with minimal effort.

The kit includes 8 soft tacos (which I’d never tried before and would probably still rather use a tortilla wrap instead) a cooking sauce and this Cool Herb Topping Mix pictured above. I’ve never been a huge fan of sour cream but actually when you add the mix it’s super tasty. I’m kind of gutted you can’t buy this separately.

As the packs were all very mild we were concerned there wouldn’t be much taste, so we added an additional taco seasoning mix to the onion, chicken and sauce from the soft taco kit. The result was a very rich, very tasty sauce so it probably wasn’t necessary… but I still recommend it. Yum!

Once the chicken was cooked we spooned some mix into each soft taco. There wasn’t too much to go around, but once we added all your typical goodies: avocado, guacamole, jalapenos, peppers, salsa, sour cream, cheese – they were full to bursting! They actually recommend on the pack not to over fill them too, because the filling does squirt out when you bite into them.

I love food like this that you can build yourself; it works great for fussy eaters, families and just those that like to play with their food like me! Old El Paso has always been one of my favourite cooking brands and with their new kits (there are tonnes!) they remain to be the best home cooking Mexican brand, in my opinion. I love their refried beans and I’ve got a tin of their black beans in the cupboard for my next culinary adventure as well as some left overs from my lovely care package. Thanks Old El Paso!

You can find Old El Paso at most supermarkets and they have a great website with recipe ideas too!

Loves x xx