I've moved from here to a new place

If you'd like to read more about my general adventures or thigns film ans TV based them please visit: www.thegirlwiththestarwarstattoo.com

Or if you're here for sewing a making things then go to www.staceystitch.com 

In the meantime, if there's anything you'd like to ask please email me (see my About page). I'll be updating this blog sporadically.

2013

I was going to write a few blogs about Christmas and New Year but to be honest I don’t really feel like it. 

The cheeriness I would have written with is sadly absent from my thoughts at the moment and I just feel very sad.

My Uncle Ken passed away unexpectedly last week. He was a great man, he lived a great life and he had a brilliant sense of humour.

He’s been in my life since my folks got together, so since I was around 6ish. He used to get me to stand on his feet and he danced me about at family gatherings until I was too old to do it anymore. I used to visit him and Aunty Sue in Manchester and stay with them. If we stopped at a little chef on the way he’s speak klingon to the waitresses to make me laugh. He’d tell silly jokes and constantly take the piss out of me and always have me laughing. He was a great man and I feel incredibly lucky to have known him.

Uncle Ken, right hand side. 

 Life is incredibly fragile and can be taken away so quickly.  Do the things you keep putting off, don’t have regrets, forget about the small things that seem like such a big deal but put into perspective aren’t. Cherish those that are close to you, hold onto them and make sure they know how much you care.

I’m going to make it count. No more moaning about stupid, inconsequential stuff. Taking responsibility for the things that are stopping me from living my life the way I want to, debts included. Time to be the best person I can be. 

Christmas is on it's way Stage 5: Christmas Tree Time!

Now I only have one photo of me and the tree and that's in the dark and after an hour and a half of decoration. There will be a better photo soon but at the moment I'm performing at the weekends and I leave the house when it's dark and arrive home in the dark so it'll have to do. 

Our tree is magnificent. We again did the old "shall we just get a smaller tree this year?" thing and then opted for the biggest one. 

Excuse the extremely tired face...I was, erm, tired. 

This was all Tim could see of me in the car as we had to squish the tree in and put the eats down in the back.

 It's 7ft. We live in a terrace. It's pretty much taking up a third of our living room BUT it's blummin gorgeous!

I bought some gold baubles and sparkly snowflakes to add this year as last year Tim decorated it and went with just red and green and I like a little extra sparkle. 

Can you tell how excited I am? 

I'll get some proper pics nearer to the day, I'm off to visit my Nana this weekend in Sunderland and next weekend I'm performing in Torquay on Friday and Chester on Saturday! A little whirlwind of fun for me this year!

And one last photo, I am actually being a christmas tree at the moment. Here is me in my costume (minus star hat and without the lights switched on). Gangsta Treepin' (yep...I did just say that).

Christmas is on its way Stage 4: Bake something suitably Christmassy!

Sorry for the non posting of late, I've been a bit poorly but I'm ship shape and ready to go again and I've been baking.

I decided I'd give gingerbread a bash. I am disastrous when it comes to baking any sort of remotely biscuity based thing so I was very surprised when it all turned out extremely yummy and tasty!

If you're after an excellent recipe try the Hummingbird Bakery book (I love this book so much I can't even begin to put it into words!). Everything I have ever baked from this book has turned out perfect and absolutely delicious.

Next time I think I'll cut them a little bigger, they were more of a ginger cookie than gingerbread as they weren't very soft in the middle, but you live and learn.

Christmas is on it's way: Stage 3: Gawp at Weird/Amazing Food

It's always an odd one isn't it? Things you normally wouldn't even begin to believe anyone would put together start to come alive in the aisles of local shops.

I know I'll look at something and think ewwww..... but if it looks remotely Christmassy before I have time to think it's in the trolley and being carted away to the checkout or I spend my days puzzling over what it would be like (even if the thought is disgusting) only to buy some just to see...of course.

Take the following two for example:

Mince Pie popcorn, yup, I can see how that could work. 

Christmas pudding and brandy butter crisps. I have no idea why this seems apetising. 

Yet along with the odd things there is always the old favorites coming back into play, such as (drumroll please): 

Pork, pickle and cheddar pies. This to me is a sign that Christmas is coming. I will not be able to stop myself from stuffing my face with these until Christmas. 

Slow Cooking: Spicy Beef Stew

As you might remember, or maybe not, I mentioned a few blogs ago that I'd bought a slow cooker. I was keen to get to grips it and thought I'd make something quite simple, filling, spicy and tasty as the winter is drawing in.

Based a little on a goulash of sorts, I added the following copped ingredients to the pot, left it for 9 hours on low and voila, lovely stew.

3 onions
3 potatoes
2 green peppers
2 carrots
600g casserole steak
2 cans chopped tomatoes
500ml beef stock
1 tbsp squeezy garlic
3 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp hot chilli powder
1 tbsp mixed herbs
salt and pepper to taste

Although I make the rookie mistake of not par boiling the potatoes before so they were a little hard but as I was taking this into work each day and re heating in the microwave it meant that it softened them up a little. Just something to note for next time.

Halloween Filmfest

Last Saturday saw our Halloween filmfest where, as I'm sure you have guessed from the snappy title, we cerebrated Halloween a little bit early in suitably scary fashion but watching back to back horror and stuffing our faces.

I dressed up (ish) in my new Shaun of the Dead inspired t-shirt from Qwertee


 We laid on a little food some of it Halloween themed (such as the snake sandwich below!) and I made swamp water punch which pretty much tasted like lilt.



Everyone carved pumpkins (mine and Tim's in the middle) and a prize went to Joe and Chelle for the best - second from left in the below photo.




We settled ourselves down with lots of popcorn and we watched:

The Sword and the Sorcerer (not strictly a horror, not strictly any good....thanks Tim)
The Blob
The Shining
 The Mist

 The Shining was my choice, I still find it just as scary as when I first watched it as a young teen. There's still something horribly chilling about it and it's a masterpiece in how to shoot a beautiful film.

 The axe swinging shot of Jack it so ridiculously well filmed and the bit of trivia that goes along with it: the fake door originally used was replaced with a real one when Nicholson chopped through the fake one too quickly, having volunteered as a fire marshal. Impressive and terrifying in equal measure.

 Hope whatever you're doing tonight you have a spooktacular Halloween!

Halloween Filmfest: Costume-ish

As you may remember today is the day of the filmfest .

As I thought was appropriate I bought a new tee from Qwertee  added some crappy red eyelashes from Tesco's dubious Halloween section and will be sporting what can only be described as a boufantt hair do.

I'll be blogging fully about our filmfest soon ;D

Christmas is on it's way Stage 2: Bling Up The "Tree"

I realise I may have been a little quite this past week or so. I did have plans for blog but a couple feel through...

1. The Halloween wreath I attempted to make went disastrously wrong, so I gave up on that....and it could have been so pretty....

2. The walk to find sloes to make gin resulted in no sloes whatsoever, but we did have a very lovely long walk in the sunshine.

So that was that. I do have one currently in the process but everything takes a little longer now husband is back at Uni full time as I have no access sat home to the pc as he's usually in the spare room til late working every night.

So what have I been doing with my time? I have in fact been making my Christmas tree costume a lot more bling. I decided it was far too sparse of baubles so spent four nights happily sewing baubles onto it and sleigh bells to make it jingle as I walk. That and adding lots of tiny sleigh bells to the gloves too.

Ta-da - the finished product!

This one is from last year but I will be a lot more baubly and jingly this time round :D 

If you're confused as to why I might have  Christmas Tree costume in the first place, may I direct you here, to my other website. I know it's not something I blog about a lot but I did say I'd update here if I did any kind of craft stuff related to my other part time career!

Christmas is on it's way: Stage 1: Christmas Cakes

I make Christmas cakes for my family every year. This is now a grand total of four.

When I was younger my Great Nana Wilde use to do this and we'd lovingly tuck into a slice of extremely boozy cake every Christmas. I took over the tradition after a long period of shop bought cakes and thought it would be a nice thing to do for the relatives.

I don't see them very often (most are in the North East) and now the family has expended somewhat I wont be spending Christmas at my Aunty Kathleen's as she has an ever expanding number to cook for with four grandchildren, three children plus partners and that's a lot of folk to be running about after on Christmas Day!  It's my way of contributing to a family Christmas without actually having one.

So this week I started on the epic bake-a-thon that has become quite the tradition in our house, although we were leaving it a few weeks late, we usually have it all done by mid-September.

I always use Delia Smith recipe from her Christmas book and I use 3 barrels brandy as it's a good mid range brandy for cooking and feeding the cake (especially with four, it just about wont break the bank).

So here are the pics of the progress of the first three...the fourth will be complete tomorrow evening (i ran out of baking paper last night!).