this moment

I'm joining Soulemama (and many others) this week with the Friday ritual of 'this moment' - a moment from the week to pause, savour and remember. Happy weekend to you.


A lizard in the hair of my lizard loving girl!

Quilt for my boy

At Christmas time one of the kids' aunts presented us with this lovely quilt she'd made for our little boy. She had previously made one for each of the girls which they've loved playing with, using them for putting dolls to bed, making cubby houses and sleeping under.



I have quilt-envy of my sis-in-law because I am so quilt challenged. I'm scared to start my first one, though I have ideas of what I'd like to do... one day! There's an incredible amount of hand stitching in this lovely quilt that must have taken ages to complete. I'm grateful to have lovely quilts in the house without the stress of trying to make them myself!



When I placed this new quilt on my boy in his cot for the first time I got that lovely feeling you get when you use something that's made with love and care. It made me think that there should be a name for that feeling. Any suggestions? Whatever, it's a lovely feeling and I think reinforces the theory I subscribe to that it's good for the soul to live with things you love.

Egg-free choc chip cookies

We've been making lots of biscuits and baked goodies here over the holidays, but they don't last long between our snacking, play dates and visitors dropping by.

Lately we've made honey jumbles (from the Country Women's Association cookbook), Coconut Sticks (from Lottie+Doof) and today these choc chip cookies. Of course all of them are egg and nut free so that my big girl can eat them. These are a good standby, the golden syrup and brown sugar add a nice caramel-ish flavour and as long as you've got choc chips in the cupboard they should be able to be made without a trip to the supermarket for ingredients, which is sometimes very important for me :-)



Egg-free choc chip cookies

180g butter
125g brown sugar
3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp golden syrup

180g choc chips (white or brown)
250g self raising flour

Cream butter and sugar with electric beaters.

Add milk, golden syrup, choc chips and flour to the bowl and stir til well combined.

Place spoonfuls onto baking paper lined trays and flatten slightly with fingers.

Bake in 180 c oven for about 10 minutes until golden brown and cool on wire racks.

Makes around 30 cookies, depending on your assistants' techniques!

Oven mitts - back on the gift list

After saying I wasn't going to make oven mitts as Christmas presents as they were fiddly, I decided to anyway and made one pair each for 2 of my sisters-in-law. What I didn't do (but had been part of the plan originally) was to print my artichoke print onto linen and use that to make the mitts. Just a tad too ambitious for my Christmas list!

This first one is made from an Ikea cotton bird print that I thought was a little humorous and might amuse the recipient, sis-in-law A. I had that lovely (though scary!) feeling of anticipation when she commented to me on Christmas morning, while putting her turkey into the oven, that: "I really need new oven mitts!". Little did she know what was inside her present under the tree, hee hee! So obviously watching her surprised face when she opened her present a few hours later was one of the highlights of the present opening :-)



For the outside I used an Ikea cotton print fabric, bound the edge (grr, not fun!) and made a tag with an oatmeal coloured linen, and for a little extra personality I lined them in a bright orange thick cotton.

For sis-in-law B I used "Gunilla" Ikea fabric, which she'd seen on the chair I recovered and commented that she'd liked.



As with the other pair, I did my haphazard machine quilting around whatever shapes I thought would suit it, which was really fun, then bound them again in the linen. I also used that linen for the reverse side of this pair and did some quilting to visually mirror the pattern on the other side.



Aside from the tricky bits again (binding, curves, turning inside out with lots of bulk) I did enjoy making these, not least because I imagined them being used and enjoyed (fingers crossed!).

Not burger

Photograph: About.com

Granted, this is may not appeal to you Northern Hemisphere dwellers who are battling snow at the moment. But for all those in sunny climes, can I recommend this mushroom burger as perfect holiday fare?

While staying with family over the Christmas break, my sister-in-laws found this recipe, bought the ingredients and cooked it for me, and it was fantastic. I realised a while ago that as a family we are not so easy to cook for: there's me as a vegetarian (lacto-ovo: eggs & dairy, no seafood) and then my big girl with allergies to eggs and nuts. So that counts out quite a bit. Though, the Mr would eat an old boot if it was presented nicely! Not once over the years have my inlaws whinged at me for being difficult, and that is much appreciated.

So if you feel like something different (or have a vegetarian coming over!) at your next BBQ give this a try. The flavours balance beautifully, it's easy to cook and looks great too. What more could you ask for ;-)

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Incidentally, this recipe is my staple Christmas day main course. Just thought you'd like to know in case you have a vegetarian coming for dinner next Christmas!

Hand printed tea towels

I totally fell in love with stamping during my Christmas preparations. I stamped everything. If you came to my house and stood still long enough you were in danger of being stamped yourself! After printing some Christmas wrapping paper I suddenly thought of my huge roll of linen and knew it would make great tea towels, trivets, table runners and oven mitts (more on those later). I could design my own little stamps, cut and print them, sew the fabric and voila, Christmas presents!

Well, it didn't quite go like that of course!! For my first design I'd decided on trying an image of an artichoke, one of my favourite foods of all time. The first few stamps I made were awful. The line work was terrible and the design was just all wrong. So I sketched and sketched, thought about it some more, then dragged all 3 kids to art shops til I found a good cutting tool and bought extra supplies of the rubber cutting mats. Then I couldn't find the right colour fabric paint so had to buy several colours to mix, needed to work out how to make a stamp pad for fabric paint, kept getting patchy prints from my stamps, and on and on... you get the picture.



On the verge of giving up, it finally all came together and I ended up with some tea towels I was pretty happy with. Wow, it seems so much effort now I look back on it - I guess every new craft venture is a steep learning curve.

The first tutorial I found invaluable was from the very talented Gennine's art blog, tutorial here. And the second was from the excellent jezzeprints blog. It was invaluable for learning how to make a stamp pad (and for tips about all sorts of detail). You can find her tutorial here. Jesse makes the most beautiful prints. I am in awe.



So here are some of the patterns I made with my beloved artichoke. I did some in white (forgot to photograph) and some in green, and added the red twill tape as a nod to the Christmas season.



My favourite design turned out to be one I came up with in the small hours of the night before we were going away for Christmas (hastily ironed and tumbled dry to fix the ink!). Isn't that always the way, inspiration at the last minute! An artichoke Christmas tree, topped with a white star :-)



And here's one packed up and ready to be posted to a dear friend who I worked with for a number of years who I know will 'get it' :-)



It was fun coming up with the different designs but not really so much fun doing all the printing as it was so laborious and time consuming. The design part of the process was definitely my favourite bit!

There are a few dodgy tea towels lurking around on my sewing table that didn't make it to friends and relatives due to their gross imperfections. I hope to put that frustratingly gathered knowledge to use and overprint some in the hope that I can save them from the scrap heap. Wish me luck!

New year fun

Hello hello, happy new year! I hope you've had an opportunity to spend some time with your families and relax (although those two don't necessarily go together in my house!) and have some fun.

Around here we have been:


Playing with a new birthday dollhouse happily filled with gorgeous Le Toy Van painted wooden furniture, a Christmas gift...



Cooking and eating plum jam made with these cute little plums collected on a recent foraging trip with friends (thank you Penny :-) ...


making parcels of sweets for neighbours and decorating them using pom poms (great finger tutorial here)...


and finding a little frog under our garbage bins! Very exciting given that we thought we didn't have a 'green' enough environment for them here.


Also I've made a few little changes to my blog. I thought it was about time I changed the pic on my header, then I looked at what a crazy mess my lists on the right had become, and though technically challenged, have tried to simplify it. My aim is to work out how to simplify it further while keeping it easy to navigate. Hmm! And as I've totally ignored my Etsy and Madeit shops lately I've taken them off til I can get some stock back up, which will hopefully happen soon so I can buy more supplies. You know how it goes ;-)