I like baking when I get the time but I enjoy eating the results of my baking a lot more! Here's a really easy chocolate brownie recipe from a great little book that I was given last Christmas - The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. They describe traditional brownies as chewy, chocolatey and dense. Well, these are tick all three boxes. 

Gather together:

200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
175g unsalted butter
325g caster sugar
130g plain flour
3 eggs
icing sugar to decorate 
33 x 23x5cm baking try lined with grease-proof paper

Preheat the oven to 170ºC (325ºF) Gas 3

Put the chocolate and butter in a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (do not let the base of the bowl touch the water). Leave until melted and smooth

Remove from the heat. Add the sugar and stir until well incorporated. Add the flour and stir until well incorporated. Finally, stir in the eggs and mix until think and smooth.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking tray and make in the preheated oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until flaky on the top but still soft in the centre. Be careful not to over cook otherwise the edges will become hard and crunchy. Leave to cool completely before dusting with icing sugar, to decorate.

Makes 12 (although I easily made 16)

I do like our garden. We're lucky to live in London and have a decent amount of outdoor space to enjoy. Soon after moving in, we levelled the garden, clearing everything out completely, even cutting down a huge tree that was rotten. We then installed a new fence and went about landscaping the garden from scratch. This is how it happened...

images © Ebury Home & Garden

The back of the house was a bit of a sight. The beautiful yellow London stocks completely covered in pebble dash. And all but one of the original wooden sash windows had been replaced with louvered windows, which were very drafty and insecure. You might notice the large steel pole in the middle of the garden. This was to hold the other end of the washing line from the house. Little did we know that it was held in place underground having been set in a barrel of concrete!

So, stage one complete. A 5 and 6ft high fence around the garden with doggy-proof wire installed all the way around the bottom to prevent our little Houdini digging his way out! The large dark bit in the middle is where we had a bonfire.

As our garden pretty much faces north, we chose to have a seating area at the end of the garden, which gets the most sun. Rather than go for traditional decking, we decided upon new oak half sleeper planks, which would turn a silvery grey colour over time. 

Here it is all finished. I put slate between the steps, however later replaced it with thyme, which would grow and spill over the wooden steps. 

The same view about a year later...

Once the seating area was complete, it was time tackle the lawn. It wasn't a good lawn, as the large tree and privet hedge that we'd had removed had sapped all the moisture out of it and it was just full of weeds and very uneven. So we decided to take it all up and put down a new one. 

In the mean time, we also dug the foundations for the new curved wall at the front end of the garden. 

Our template for the new lawn, using an old hose pipe...

The finished wall, built with new London stocks and the huge pile of old turf.

The garden was ready for the top soil and new turf. We also replaced the upstairs windows for new wooden double glazed sash windows. The bottom ones stayed until we completed work on the kitchen/diner. 

And off comes the pebble dash! We only had the top half taken off as we have great plans for the bottom half. Have you noticed my levels in place for the top soil? It's got to be right. Right?

New turf laid, and shaped. Even some plants are in. Can you spot Houdini (aka Charlie)? Sadly no longer around. We miss him a lot. 

And here you have it. The finished garden, including the kitchen/diner alterations, which included large oak sliding doors to the garden, hence why we didn't put in new windows. We also installed a decking area just outside and finished it off with an all-weather wicker sofa and Cotswold buff chippings. Hard work but we're really thrilled with the results. 

Now, if we had a lot more space, I would definitely dedicate some of the garden to wild flowers and more box hedging. I'm going to share some inspiration about that another day! In the mean time, below are some pics of the garden, which I took between rain showers today. The grass needs cutting and some of the shrubs need a trim now, but you can see how much it's established.

We've recently decided that we're going to change our £5 lampshade that currently hangs from the ceiling light in our bedroom, to something a little more glam... a chandelier.

Here are a couple of photos of our bedroom, which was recently featured in Heart Home online magazine. It's quite a light room, painted in White Tie from Farrow and Ball with the wall behind the bed papered in their Silvergate paper. 

I don't want anything too big or dramatic, but likewise, it can't be too small, otherwise I think it can look lost. Having said that, small chandeliers can work really well in a bedroom if positioned low over bedside tables. One of the images below shows a really good example of this. 

So here's the style I've narrowed it down to... I'd love to know what you think.

Image source:
top left - Dreamy Whites
top right - Piorra Maison
bottom left - 79 Ideas
bottom right - Houzz

This house literally makes my heart sing, and I'm not kidding. When I logged into Rightmove today to grab some of the images for this blog post, my heart sank when I saw it was under offer. Not that we would have been able to afford to buy it, but each day it remained on the market, it was still always a dream.

And while we're on the subject of the price, I think it's pretty good value for a 7 bedroom, detatched house! 

Not only is it in such a beautiful and apparently tranquil setting, with a church at the end of the garden. It just oozes potential. I love the huge stone fireplace in the bedroom and the enormously wide floorboards, which, I hasten to add, should be kept as a feature and definitely not covered up! There's a huge Aga in the kitchen which would also be another keep for me, although I suspect it would need a good old service. And look at the old servants bells on the wall in the kitchen! 

And to help pay for what will be some pretty large renovation bills, there's a stable block outside, which would make the perfect holiday cottage...

I hope the new owners are sympathetic to the character of this house during their renovations. It needs a lot of love but will make a fabulous family home.

Click here to view the property on Rightmove

Imagery ©Rightmove