Coffee and Cakes

We had a very successful morning at Treetops, on behalf of Asthma UK. My younger sister is running the marathon for them next month, I can't support her in the running stakes, but I can bake. So bake I did ... til late at night and first thing this morning! There were delicious Chocolate Cakes (Grandma's recipe), my boys' favourite Banana and Choc Chip loaves and lots and lots of Colourful Cupcakes!

The sun was shining (hard to believe at this wet heavy rain moment) and friends and neighbours arrived to drink, eat, chat and enter the raffle for a £50 Gift Voucher towards a class at Treetops.

The grand sum of £200 was raised, thank you everyone. It will definitely give Katy a boost in her final few weeks of preparation.

Artex 10 - Art Exhibtion

A sale of paintings, drawings and prints takes place this weekend at East Woodhay Village Hall, Heath End, Newbury, RG20 0AP. (Southwest of Newbury, A34 Wash Common Junction and A343 via Ball Hill. Further info 01635 253489)

Saturday 13 March 10am to 6pm
Sunday 14 March 11am to 3pm

Entrance £2 to include Exhibition Catalogue, refreshments are available.
All profits go to St Martin's School and St Martin's Church.

Two Treetops Tutors are exhibiting, Claire Warner our watercolour tutor and Jo Andreae, our photogaphy tutor.

Watercolour - Spring Flowers

We had a lovely class today, beautiful sunshine and a table full of pretty Spring Flowers.

After a quick initial sketch Claire showed us how to create a loose and free painting, trying not to get too "botanical" about it. We masked the outline of the white flowers and after our first wash we stopped for some lunch.

The afternoon was spent mixing some darker colours followed by some negative painting, dropping in some dark colours to lift the flowers and to create some shapes.

As you can see, they were all brilliant!


At the end of the afternoon whilst tidying up, I spotted Bambi helping himself to my Spring Flowers!

Spring Cookery - Places available!

There are spaces available on Vanessa's next class, which is Spring Entertaining on Thursday 18 March. The class starts at 9.30am and finishes at approximately 3pm, the cost is £75 and this includes all ingredients, recipes to take home, a 3 course delicious lunch (that you have helped cook!) and also something that you have made to take home with you.

The classes are great fun, full of top tips, ideas of food that can be prepared ahead or frozen, and also amazing presentation ideas.

Book now, as Vanessa won't be teaching during the Summer Term, so this is her last class for a while!

Tasty Thai Class

Treetops smells amazing this evening!

It was a very busy class today, millions of ingredients and plenty of chopping. We were roasting cumin and coriander seeds, chopping chillies and lemongrass, being introduced to galangal and turning our noses up at the smell of shrimp paste!

Everyone made their own green curry paste in the morning to take home with them, it smelt so fresh and delicious.

We had a feast of a lunch with thai fish cakes, green mango salad with prawns, a green chicken curry with thai rice, chicken satay with a delicious delicious sauce, thai beef salad with cucumber, and a beautiful fruit platter of pineapple, papaya, mango, dragon and passion fruit, served in a lovely syrup with coconut ice cream, with a huge sparkler on the top because we were celebrating 3 birthdays today - Judith, Steve and Jon. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

June Flower Class - Vintage Style

Susanna is back on Tuesday 15 June for Vintage Style Flowers.

Vintage style is very on trend at the moment, especially at Weddings, using beautiful pale and old fashioned flowers, styled in teacups and old china pieces.

The flowers Susanna is hoping to bring with her on the day include sweet peas, roses, including Secret Garden, Metalina, Old Dutch and Amnesia and hopefully some English roses too, astilbe, sweet William, astrantia and herbs.

The day will be useful if you are planning on a wedding, a summer party or you would just like to decorate your house. Perhaps you just want to spend the day surrounded by sweet smelling flowers!

Susanna demonstrates a variety of ideas, that always amaze, then everyone has the opportunity to create an arrangement to take home after the class. Everything is provided and included in the cost of the day, which is £75. A light lunch is also included.

The class runs from 9.45am - 2pm. For bookings please call me on 01635 44850.

A French Scene - Watercolour

We had a very intense day creating our French Market Scene on Friday, all artists had been on a Treetops Watercolour class before, so Claire seemed keen to stretch us that little bit further!

We spent quite a while sketching our scene, whether we wanted parasols, menu boards, plants, and discussed the characters sitting around the table, it really helped us to create a picture that had a possibility to be brought alive by paints later on.

I made lunch with a french influence, we had Chicken Chasseur and a delicious French Tart.

Recipe:

Roll out a rectangular piece of puff pastry, before placing it on a lined baking tray sprinkle some demerara sugar onto the lining. Lay out the pastry, sprinkle a little semolina over the pastry (this will help absorb excess juices) and position thinly sliced apples over the pastry (I used large coxes). Leave a 2-3cm border around the edge.

Sprinkle caster sugar or vanilla sugar over the top, if you don't have vanilla sugar you can sprinkle some drops of vanilla extract over the apples. Dot some small pieces of butter across the tart before you put it into a hot oven. It will take about 15-20 minutes. Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream.

Below you can see the finished painting from the above sketch, amazing work in just a few hours!

There are a few places left on our Simply Venice class on Tuesday 16 March.