Honey, oat and cranberry cookies {recipe}

On June 5, 2026June 5, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn baking3 Comments

Hey friends, I hope you are well!

I thought this week I’d share a new recipe with you!

I’ve got a set of specific recipes I always go to and with the prices for pre made baked goods going up and quality (sometimes) going down I’ve finally realised that I genuinely prefer my own baking over shop bought alternatives and its great having a cupboard full of fun ingredients that if the need arises I can just grab and bake myself into a happy place.

Personally I find baking to be rather soothing as something I really struggle with in life is anxiety (I get so upset and spiral if I think I’ve done something wrong or let people down) and I find one of the things that helps me calm down is baking, specifically baking biscuits or cookies. I’ve shared one or two of my recipes before and kinda thought why not post more of them and maybe make like a mini digital recipe book and share the ones that help my mental health the most (on the off chance other people find them helpful).

To be fair I don’t bake particularly complex things.

So, I figured I’d start with one of my favourites a chunky honey, oat and cranberry cookie decorated with lashings of dark chocolate that even has a chocolate base!

These cookies do contain egg so they aren’t vegan (but egg substitutes are available). I’m a vegetarian and I don’t like the taste of cows milk so I use oat/plant based instead and I’ve got a free ranging duck and a chicken for fresh eggs (I try to contribute as little as possible to intensive animal farming).

So with that in mind lets bake some awesome cookies…

Makes 13-ish decent sized delicious chunky cookies.

For the biscuit –

225g unsalted butter (proper solid butter not spread and straight from the fridge)
55g Caster Sugar,
55g Light brown soft sugar
1 Large Egg
275g plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp organic Rowse honey
100g dried cranberries
1 tsp almond flavouring
90g plain chocolate, cut into chunks
170-200g dark chocolate (or milk if preferred)

Top top! Use an ice cream scoop to portion the dough, it make great chunky cookies!

The method –

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, gas mark 4; line 2 large baking trays with baking parchment.

Chop the cold butter into cubes and lightly combine with both types of sugar using an electric whisk on a low setting.

Add the flour, bicarb, almond flavouring, honey and the egg and whisk to combine.

Mix in the cranberries and oats with a large spoon until distributed evenly through the dough and then rest the mix in the fridge for an hour.

Use an ice cream scoop to create chunky cookies (or use a spoon that works too!) and spread them across the baking trays.

Bake for 10 minutes until golden at the edges, remove from the over but leave to cool on the trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Decoration –

Once totally cool, lay the cookies back on the baking paper and melt 170-200g dark chocolate. Put a good spoonful of melted chocolate on the baking paper and then place each cookie on top for a decadent chocolate base. To use up the extra chocolate use a fork to flick it back and forth over the tops of each cookie.

After about an hour the chocolate will be set and you can peel them from the paper and enjoy them with a cup of tea!

They’ll store in an airtight container for 3 days!

Overall I’m always overjoyed by how yummy these cookies are.

These are so, so good and don’t take too much effort…the hardest bit is leaving them while the chocolate sets! I really quite enjoyed writing this, I love baking and I really hope you like this recipe (let me know if you give it a try).

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

Raising Small White Butterflies

On May 29, 2026July 4, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography, Raising Butterflies2 Comments

Hey friends!

I’ve got a brand new Butterfly Tale for you this week which is always exciting, it actually began last August when I spotted a tiny two leaf wild cabbage growing in my front garden totally at random. I only even really noticed it because a cabbage butterfly was paying it so much attention. When I went out with my watering can to feed my plants I realised that she had laid thirteen eggs on this teeny tiny plantling! I just couldn’t leave it where it was – directly underneath the bird feeder, so I carefully dug up the cabbage and moved it into my butterfly house.

It was only a few days before the eggs hatched and quite quickly they began to eat both leaves of the cabbage, at this point in the year I didn’t even have any other plants to give them so I resorted to buying organic ones from the supermarket! By the middle of September they had grown into these handsome green chaps.

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Hello! (A little bit about me!)

On May 22, 2026May 20, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Photography4 Comments

Hello my friends!

Welcome back to another edition of ‘What have I been up to!’

I figured I should finally introduce myself, because I think it’s nice to be able to know a little bit about the person behind the pictures.

I can’t believe I’ve not done this before, although I really don’t like having my picture taken so thats probably got something to do with it! Basically I made these slides for insta and thought why not post them here too!

Ready here goes…

So hey, my name is Katie and I’m a UK based nature nerd, I’m also a book nerd who likes to do embroidery, paint, and is trying to create a little slice of happiness in my garden. I like raising caterpillars and giving them a safe place to complete their life cycle, which I’ve been doing since I was a kid. I use this account to post pictures of bugs I’ve seen, things I’ve painted or created, caterpillars I’m raising and trees (very important!).

I’d really like to give a special thank you to anyone reading this whether you’ve only just started following me or have been here for a while, it really means the world to have found such a kind corner of the internet.

I really hope you’ve enjoy following along on this journey. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

ps. Trying to take selfies with butterflies is really hard, you have to be so quick!

Raising Emperor moths (2026 edition)

On May 15, 2026July 4, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography, Raising Butterflies6 Comments

Hey friends! Welcome to my third Butterfly tale of 2026!!

Do you remember last year I wrote about my experience over wintering 3 Emperor moth cocoons I found in the garden? They emerged mated like crazy and flew away, well this year I’m continuing that story…

So my three Emperors from last year were a richly coloured male and two gigantic grey winged females, I really fell in love with them and was thrilled that they survived the winter (I found them on a plant that was damaged during a winter storm) I created them an enclosure with different heathers and a giant meadow sweet plant and they were obviously quite happy as the girls laid like 250-300 eggs!

Sadly Emperor moth eggs need really specific humidity and temperatures to develop and although I was hopeful only a single egg hatched. I was gutted to be honest I kinda thought I was going to be releasing an army of them.

Just to point out my butterfly raising disclaimer, I’m only rescuing the ones I can identify as eggs as some caterpillars can be tricky to raise or are protected species. If I don’t trust that I can look after them properly and give them the right food plant/proper environment then my plan is always to just leave them alone.

So my very precious caterpillar began to eat her way around the enclosure. These moths have fascinating caterpillar, each time the caterpillar grows or ‘moults’ a stage in life where they rest for a few days and shed their skin causes significant changes in their appearance.

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Happy 100th Birthday Sir David Attenborough

On May 8, 2026August 29, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Art2 Comments

Hello my friends!

I hope you had a good week!

This weeks post is a little different, today marks the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough and while I had many things I was thinking of posting this week (including another butterfly tale!), a tribute to the worlds greatest naturalist on such a momentous birthday seemed poignant.

I then couldn’t think of what I could do to celebrate such a life, I did briefly flirt with the idea of drawing his portrait but just could do him justice, so instead I illustrated a miniature Sir David Attenborough in his signature blue shirt with my favourite quote of his.

Sir David has lived such a long, important life and been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember, he’s given rise to many famous quotes my favourite of which is –

Cherish the natural world, because you’re a part of it and you depend on it.

I’ve always loved nature and I blame Blue Planet – I was hooked as a child and even as an adult actually find his documentaries to be very soothing, caring for our planet takes so little and if we all did just a tiny amount we could change the world.

It was how I started raising caterpillars, I wanted to protect them and figured that if I was feeding the birds it was okay to protect the caterpillars. I’ve never been very good at the naturalist motto of ‘don’t interfere’ in my opinion humanity interfered when we started polluting the rivers and the skies, over fishing and chopping down the trees – we cause enough harm so we’re already involved, trying to help should never be considered a bad thing.

When Wild Isles was released I literally binged the whole thing and then bought the book! Its funny how someone you’ve never met, but known your whole life can alter the way you see the world.

So I do really with all my heart wish Sir David Attenborough one of my heroes a very Happy 100th Birthday thank you for being a true light in the universe. Your tireless love for the natural world has inspired countless amounts of people to care for our world and everything that resides on it.

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely weekend!

Embroidered denim jacket {FINISHED!!!}

On May 1, 2026April 28, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Art6 Comments

Hello my friends!

Well I’ve done it!!

I’ve finally finished my Wonderland flowers jacket embroidery (happy dance).

It looks so much better than I thought it would now that I’ve finally washed away the stick and stitch paper, I did have a moment were I panicked and got scared of rinsing it incase the printed design underneath ran into the threads and stained the lighter colours – which thankfully it didn’t!

In the end I decided to create an arch of bread-and-butterflies to just ‘finish’ the image. They’re quite funky aren’t they!? I worked all of them at once – all the eyes/all the bodies/all the wings etc.

Now that its finished I literally can’t wait to start wearing it! This jacket has taken a solid nine months of work, I’ve used miles of thread and gone through several needles. But I’m so pleased it’s finally finished and the colours look so much more vibrant now it’s been washed.

Also seeing as I’m going the happiest place on earth this summer I can now take it with me! My brother has even bought me a super cute Wonderland themed pair of ‘Minnie ears’ to wear in the park. As a side note I had no idea about disney ear headbands and I just need them!

I’ve already got a new project I’m going to start although I’m hoping it won’t take quite as long as this one has!

So that’s a wrap for my denim-jacket-project posts, and a rather labor intensive project complete…I really hope you’ve enjoy following along on this journey. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

Raising Orange Tip Butterflies (2026 edition)

On April 19, 2026July 4, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography, Raising Butterflies8 Comments

Hey friends!

I’ve got another brand new Butterfly Tale for you this week which is exciting and has been a whole year in the making. When I planted my Honesty seeds last summer I did so in the hope that Orange tips would come and lay eggs in the garden – in 2024 I only found a single egg and cared for her as much as possible, so I was thrilled to find not one but eleven eggs in the spring of 2025!

They were spread across several plants, Orange tips do this because the caterpillars are cannibalistic when small although I’ve never worked out if that means they eat all caterpillars or just their brethren). I sleeved each egg in a mesh bag to keep them safe from predators and checked on them after about three weeks.

Eight of the eggs had hatched into tiny green caterpillars!

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Raising Speckled Wood Butterflies

On April 11, 2026July 4, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography, Raising Butterflies5 Comments

Hey friends! I’ve got a new Butterfly Tale for you this week!!

This is very much a surprise butterfly tale, last year I decided to weed the grass out of my birds foot trefoil pots and I found three little cream coloured eggs!

I felt really bad about disturbing them and popped the little stems of grass into an enclosure in my butterfly house with (don’t judge me) a new pot of fine stem grass…thats right I actually potted up grass (my brother thought I’d lost my mind).

After really studying the eggs I guessed they were either going to be Speckled wood/Meadow brown/Gate keeper or a type of grass eating moth – I figured that if they were actually going to eat birds foot trefoil then the eggs wouldn’t have been laid on the grass.

They were really very happy with their pot of grass and before I knew had grown into rather handsome green caterpillars.

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Embroidered Butterfly #20 & 21 {Meadow Brown & Gatekeeper}

On March 21, 2026September 12, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs

Hey friends!

Firstly, I skipped posting this last week as the building work needed on my house finally happened and it was so super stressful…I packed up a whole bunch of stuff to clear as much room as I could to be out of the way of the builders and managed to tidy away my laptop charger, for the life of me I couldn’t remember where it was!

Still its over now and my heating is finally working properly!! (Yay!).

A few weeks ago I posted a couple of photos comparing the differences between two of our most common (and overlooked) butterflies Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper. I really love these two butterflies and kinda think they’re like the Sparrow of the butterfly world, brown, unexciting and everywhere. Obviously I wanted to create a needlework version of both of these happy chaps.

I decided to make females of both as there isn’t masses of difference between the sexes.

So, Meadow Brown – #20 on my embroidered butterfly challenge. Is basically a brown butterfly with orange patches on the upper wing, identified by the one white dot in its eye-spots. With a real life wingspan of 50mm (male) and 55mm (female) it means my needlework version is around 11cm across.

While Gatekeeper – #21 on my embroidered butterfly challenge. Has much more orange within their wing patterns ad is slightly smaller than Meadow Brown with a real life wingspan of 40mm (male) and 47mm (female) giving my twice life-size version a 9.5cm-ish. Gatekeeper is identified by having two white dots in their eye-spots.

I’m so unbelievably pleased with these two!

I have actually made a Gatekeeper before, way back when I was practicing the design process. Boy have I improved the process is so different now (if you wanna check it out the link is at the bottom!).

As usual it has a very thin stainless steel wire concealed in the edge of the wings to help the keep their shape.

That’s a wrap for this week…two more butterflies down only 51 still to go!! Stay tuned for the next instalment on my butterfly creating adventure. Thank you so much for checking out this post!

Hopefully you’ll be back next week!

Ps. If you want to have a look at my other butterflies they’re HERE!

Psps. My first attempt of an embroidered Gatekeeper butterfly from 2022 is HERE!

Psps (again). Also if you want to see my Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper photos they’re HERE!

Floral folklore #3

On March 7, 2026March 21, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends!

As you know I love discovering the quirky myths, folklore and random stories about the plants I’m growing in my garden (I’m a total plant-nerd) and those that I find on my walking adventures. So seeing as it’s been a while since I posted one of these I thought I’d look at three of my favourite plants to see if there’s any fun stories relating to them!!

I love a thistle (Cirsium vulgare) they are plants in the Asteraceae family (which believe it or not is the daisy family) and are noted for having prickly leaves and purple, pink, or white flower heads. I grow many, many thistles in the garden and even a random one thats (for some unknown reason) growing in amongst the grass that I don’t have the heart to mow over.

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