Baking...

Since having my new oven installed earlier this week, I have spent some time rekindling my love of baking as well as getting to know my new oven!

I made raspberry and white chocolate muffins on Tuesday as well as roasted some chicken pieces that night.

I made a quiche for the kids' lunch on Wednesday, which served as a hot lunch for Mick yesterday at work.

Yesterday I made some muesli bars from this recipe...

I followed the recipe this time, but next time I will make it with nut free peanut butter and sesame seeds so its school friendly.

Today's plan is to make cookies...

I've bought the cookie cutters, some squeezy bottles for the kids to use for the icing and am borrowing a recipe from here.

Sounds like an afternoon to keep the kids busy! They will be decorating cookies while I finish off another wholesale order :)

LOTS of fun!!!

I'm also going to roast butterflied veal for dinner. Oh how I love my new oven!!

Out with the Old....

... and in with the new...

Apparently there was a very very secret squirrel mission going on around here for my birthday. I had mentioned to a friend that I had intercepted some calls and eavesdropped so I knew there was something coming and thought it was for my sewing room...

BOY WAS I WRONG!!! On Saturday afternoon, my lovely boyfriend called me into the other room and there stood a new oven. I was completely shocked! And also taken by surprise as I was expecting something else, I don't know what I was expecting, but a new oven, I wasn't expecting that at all!!

My old oven still cooks stuff, but it needs a new element in the grill and a new thermostat as that has never worked and I am constantly burning things in it. A new oven was on the bottom of my needed things list as I knew we couldn't afford it, so I was just making do. 

I can't even begin to express how grateful and spoiled I feel to have a new oven. I LOVE to bake so I will most likely do a lot more of that from now on! 

Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou to my lovely family for getting this for me, I am a very lucky lady.

As for the old oven... not sure what to do with that... I'd love to donate it or give it away, all it needs is a new thermostat and a new grill element. Not sure where to even start looking to do such a thing, might look into it :)

Don't forget about the auctions either... Links in the far right side bar :)

Naughty little Blogger!

I am currently the most neglectful blogger in existence. I do have excuses though which I will hopefully be able to shed more light on soon as I have been talking to some stores about stocking WeePantz. And very soon hope to be announcing my first official stockist.

I have also been accepted to start selling at a few new markets :) and that is something I am very excited about, but the last few months of the year are now OFFICIALLY booked out for me. Very busy, but busy is the way I like life. Especially since my PND I learned that if I dont get bored, then I wont give the depression headspace, very important for me, because (as my therapist put it) I tend to make the depression like a cd on repeat and struggle to move on once it is taking charge of my mind. So busy is GREAT!

So as I said, I am forever busy with WeePantz really taking off, so I dont make it into the forums much anymore. In fact at all, which is very sad, but I am still reading the blogs of my beautiful sewing friends when I can. And have met a few new bloggy crafters lately as well :). I hope all of my crafty friends still pop by here every so often as well. :)

A few things Ive been up to...

Well mainly sewing nappies, wetbags and bibs to be honest. I have a focus group sample to finish by friday of 14 nappies, and a market on Sunday so I hope to make at least 30 nappies this week. I am well on the way to completing that goal too. :)

Ive been doing alot of organising for Reusable Nappy Week. Not many of you know that I am the Australian Nappy Network coordinator for Victoria, so its also the business end of the year RNW wise and I am organising static displays and an information session.

I have been baking... yes... that is something I am constantly doing isnt it? Yesterday I made eclairs... DELISH!! Im not an eclair person, but I filled them with yummy custard cream and I think the fact that they were nice and fresh and crisp made them just delicious!

I tried a few recipes for this, but I found that winging it in the end and using my own judgement worked the best. I watched a video on making choux pastry, and noted their consistency prior to baking, so made the butter, water flour mix, allowed it to cool and then added one egg at a time until I reached the right consistency. I think the recipe called for 2 eggs and I used 1 and a bit, Im not sure if perhaps my eggs are just bigger than theirs...

I have been sequinning as well. Ruth's callisthenics competitions are about to start, so its the home run now with costumes with the first comp in 2 weeks.

I'll show you all finished photos when I have them. I may have to wait until after comps, as she is not really meant to be wearing them until then aside from fittings. But the costumes have definitely been an educational journey with sewing on my first sequins. The red outfit pictured above took me quite a long time to finish. I also sewed lycra for the first time. LOTS of googling before even putting pattern to fabric there as I was so afraid!

Amongst that, I have finished my winter coat, which I started a long time ago. It worked out so well and I will update the blog with pics soon I hope! 

I also completed (well my version of complete) the coffee date dress. I had to add so much to the pattern due to my height and also my bust (which is by no means ample) that Im not sure it still is classed as the original pattern, but I will give credit where it is due :) I was STUMPED by the all in one facing, it was slightly crazy, but now that I have figured it out, I am sure I will do this style of facing again as its easy once you know how!

I have also been doing the usual parenting tasks. Oliver is getting very cheeky now and is learning how to push his mother's buttons to make her cranky! Ruth is turning into a gorgeous, and very strong willed little girl and loves her callisthenics and also her reading. 

So I will tentatively say that I am back. I hope to attempt to be regular blogging when I can to keep you all updated. But for now, I am off to put the nappies on to wash, bake some bread and maybe eat an eclair hee hee. Then I need to update the website. 

Catch you all later.

School Holidays Day #1

I struggle to keep my children occupied. They both love creating as I do, so when I'm busy sewing, cutting, designing, blogging etc. They get quite bored. I have been really blessed since Ruthie started school, as I have been able to use Olly's nap time for my blogging, sewing, cutting and designing time, it has been working out well :-) Then... along comes school holidays. I swear it snuck up on me and that she surely has only been going to school for like 6 weeks... Turns out its only been 8 so I wasn't far off!

So in order to keep miss Ruth entertained I have decided to do something fun with her every day that Olly can join in on, so that she can have quiet time when he is sleeping and I don't miss out on my sewing cutting and designing time!

Yesterday we made Mini Hot Cross Buns from a fairy tale cook book that "Santa" brought her for Christmas last year. Baking might just be my daughter's favourite thing ever, but then I introduced her to kneading, she might be now addicted and will be begging me to make bread, which I don't mind as I love making bread myself.

The recipe was pretty basic, and didn't really taste that good, so I will be searching for a new recipe for This Friday as we will have to have hot cross buns for Good Friday.

kneading and rolling the individual balls of dough into the pan.

we were singing a roll the dough song and he was rolling his hands like we were, it was very cute, but do you think he would do it for the camera?? don't be silly... Olly was having a great time watching though :-)

Piping on the crosses. This mixture was very thick and quite difficult to pipe, and I've piped some difficult stuff in my time as a bakery lady when I was pregnant. Next time calls for more water in the mix, even though you aren't meant to!

the finished MINI hot cross bun. It is very tiny. 

The buns might not taste very nice, but Ruthie loved baking for the day. Now to top that today!!

Amy 

My Creative Space

Okay so today I have 2 creative spaces. The first of which being my dining table where I sat hand sewing some applique for my Christmas secret santa swap on EB. The photo is sneaky for a reason hee hee.

My hand sewing is improving. Funny how now that I know how to do it, I have been adding little handsewn bits to everything!! :-)

The second creative space for me today was in my kitchen. I am making the greatest spag bog ever! I am quite good at combining flavours and before you start inspecting the ingredients, the secret ones that make it so amazing ARENT in the photo! :-D If I went showing that to people, my boyfriend might just leave me for someone else who can cook as good as I can!! haha!!

Hmm so anyway, my laptop is broken **CRY** thus why I am unusually silent. It can be assured that I am keeping busy with sewing and have completed one dress for the markets coming up in December. Its on the 20th so I have a bit of time to fuss around and make them perfect :-) Yes so the master of the house (mister weepantz himself) has told me that Im not allowed to get my laptop fixed until I have had the oven fixed and I have a bit of spare cash. So it might take a while to get my lappy back online. But I have his desktop in the mean time :-) well when hes not home!!!

Anyway, back to ironing some new fabric I picked up the other day at Spotlight. I got a bunch of fat 1/4's some of the fabric I know I will be going back for yardage... :-p

For more creative spaces go HERE

Monday Cooking Lessons

One of the things I love to spend my time doing is cooking. I inherited my keen cooking ability from my gran who was the most amazing cook. Her offerings at afternoon tea were always divine and even making simple sandwiches for a party was a feat and she would make them deliciously interesting every time. She was always willing to lend her baking, sandwich making or simple cooking skills at any opportunity. I would love to get my hands on her recipes to be honest because the things she made were down right delicious and she did something to every dish that made it different to the cookbook. (I think this was the addition of love)

So one thing I hope to pass on to my daughter Ruth and hopefully Oliver as well is a love of cooking. Ruth has always enjoyed baking and we generally make muffins, cupcakes, cookies or muesli bars each week. But our oven is broken at the moment (oh isnt everything in our house?!) so she hasnt gotten to do much cooking of late.

Today I decided it was cooking day and I decided to make one of my favourite things, pasta. I didnt think Ruth would be interested as she was playing a silly matching game on my computer (mummy needed a break) but she came over and asked if she could help. What I thought would have been a hindrance was a fantastic bonding time for us, and Im so glad that she has begun to inherit from me what I inherited from my gran. She even said at one stage "Mummy, You are teaching me to cook, I am learning" which was a beautiful thing to hear.

rolling out the dough. one of our favourite parts

the pasta waiting to be cooked. mmm it looks delicious doesnt it?

the finished product.

Chicken, mushroom and parmesan tortolini with creamy pumpkin and baby spinach sauce. (My own recipe)

Oliver Turned 1!!

Can you all believe my little bubba has had his first birthday? Hmm so the party was HUGE I was cooking from 6am onwards, and collapsed into a slightly drunken heap at 8pm on the couch while everyone else cleaned up :P

I made a guitar cake for the boy which worked a treat and the oven survived not burning it before dying three days later! So glad that happened after the party!!



It was a lovely party and I have posted a few pics to show how much he enjoyed the cake, I didnt get to make him an outfit like I had intended cos I was so busy planning the massive meal everyone was getting!! :P But I am super proud of the cake, I did very well!!

Oops! I missed a day yesterday. I was busy making a lasange. I even made the pasta! I was very proud of myself! Felt very housewifely too :P

Some sewing happened here yesterday too! AMAZING!! I put together a nappy for Oliver as we are moving him up a size. The nappy is very cute and I cant wait to show it off! Sucks that its winter!!! LOL!!!