A bit of progress

I have been doing a few hours on this each night and slowly making a little progress. It is starting to take shape, I am sure some super keen eagle eyes can work out what it is now. The weather over here at the beach has been pretty poor, so lots of time spent in doors. The kids are going crazy and there has been a lot of refereeing. But it is always nice to get away and today Blair had to head back to go to work. He will be back later tonight but for now the kids and I are here, no car and well I think I can see a bit of blue sky. I find it rather amusing the kids can find a puddle and play for hours with it, or a random bowl or anything small and that will be them. But with their toys they get bored with them have a few minute's. As I write they are playing on the double pram. This poor pram has provided hours on play, a rocket ship, a boat, right now I think it is a pirate ship. No, I have just been told it was part of the jungle. And they saw a monkey.

I didn't end up buying another quilting foot. Without the foot has meant I have been doing my cross stitch or reading! Wow it had been a while since I have been able to read. I sort of walk around the house with my book in my hand while trying to get things sorted.

A bit of cross stitch and a bit of quilting

When Ryan was a baby I made him three rather big cross stitch pictures, hung them on his wall and made his room look fantastic. Poor Adele, well, life was rather busy with two kids and she sort of missed out. I have done her one, but it is un-framed in a box. It is finished, I really need to get it framed. The other day my brothers girl-friend wanted to look through my cross stitch stuff and I found a whole heap I had brought for Adele and never done. I feel rather guilty. So I have pulled one out and started it. I haven't done any in such a long time, but I have really enjoyed starting this one. Can you guess what it is. I will put updates as I go along, it is a really basic one, so hoping to get through it pretty fast. As it turns out we are away for a few days and I brought a whole heap of quilting stuff to do and I managed to forget to pack my quilting foot. I am going to have a bunch of time to work on it.

I did manage to cut out the next bunch of fabrics, so if I do get one I have some stuff that I can whip up. We are over at Whiritoa, a tiny beach place which has no shops. We went into Whangamata thinking the craft shop there would have one but no luck. Tomorrow I think we will head into Waihi, I know there is a great fabric shop and another craft shop so hopefully they will have one. The above quilt is my quilt along. It is coming to an end and I am miles behind. So that was the plan for this week. I have joined up to do one with www.psiquilt.com so I really want to get this one up to date so I don't feel bad. And this one I think finishes this month. So really I need to get myself sorted.

And the semi finals are this weekend, NZ is playing Australia so a pretty big game. Distraction is every where at the moment.

Tx

Coffee Group cake

My coffee group is my ante natal group. We met about 5 and half years ago now and have been meeting every week since about a month or two after our first babies were born. We are proud of our achievement as we know that lots of groups stop meeting after time or have some serious issues. We are truly now friends first, who happen to have kids at the same age. We have some similar ideas and likes, one being baking. It is a lot of healthy competition on the baking front. It really makes us look for and time new recipe's all the time. So the other day it was going to be my turn to host and it had been a while since I tried anything new. There are loads of lemons at the moment and we had been given a huge bag of them and they just needed to be used. So while I did find a great looking chocolate thingee, I also found a yummy sounding lemon thing. It was pretty yummy but my gosh the baking time was so so so wrong!!!!!! I had two pieces. One at the wrong baking time, it was rather runny, but still quite yummy. Then when it was cooked one of the girls and I had another piece. Again yummy, but very different tasting. And it had cranberries in it, I thought that they would be a bit tart, but the cooking sweetens them or something because they really went well with the lemon. I have made it again today, still yummy, but I want to try and work out how to cook it quicker and I think I will double the lemon mixture. I might to that with lemon meringue pie too.

Lemon Cranberry Slice.

Base:

1 and 1/2 cups of plain flour

3/4 cups of caster sugar

200 grams of butter.

Mix all together. Bake at 180 degree for about 20 - 25 mins. I put mine into a large cake tin, I like the base quite thick.

Topping:

3 eggs

1 cup of caster sugar

zest of 3 lemons

juice of one lemon

3 tablespoons plain flour

100 grams of cranberries, I used dried.

Beat eggs and sugar for about 10 mins.It should be thick and pale. Add the remanding ingredient's. Sprinkle the cranberries on the cook base evenly.

Bake in oven at 140 degrees, the recipe said about 40 mins, I have for about an hour, really check it. It feels firm at 40 mins, but once I cut it, it was still very runny.

So tonight we are going to be having it with ice-cream as a pudding. More rugby tonight!!!! Loving the World Cup!!!!

Tx

Shorts for Ryan

I brought this a while back, I am pretty sure I was pleased with myself about this purchase that I blogged about it. It is a nice, medium weight cotton, perfect for young boys. They can play rough and hopefully not wear the knees out too fast. I am finding with boys fabrics it is army prints or pirates. Not that I mind either, but he has three pairs of pirate shorts (not including one that have gone to shorts heaven) and a a couple of army pants. I am keeping an eye out for "other" prints at the moment, I think he needs a couple more pairs.

So I used my trusty old Burda 9641 pattern. These shorts still need the elastic, but heading out into town a little later today. Ryan already wants to wear them as soon as the elastic is in them. I guess a good sign that he likes them. I am going to buy a new pattern. I know it wont be much different but I feel bad that i have been making him the same shorts for three summers now. I don't think he has noticed, funny how mum's and dad's are the ones that notice and feel guilty about it.

We have been up crazy early today and becasue of this Adele is screaming down the house already. There was no reason for her to wake up so early, just one of those days. I have a feeling it is going to be a long, coffee filled day.

Tx

The no sew tutu

Ryan had his last day of kindy today. It was a wee bit sad, but since I know he is so looking forward to school and Adele is starting afternoon kindy next term it was also not as bad as I thought. I think because it is not a complete good bye yet. So as a thank you to the kindy for being so amazing I made them a couple of new costumes. It is one of those things that isn't expected or asked for, but they really appreciate it, and it is a great excuse to do another project. The kids an I went shopping together and Ryan picked out the colours for the tutus.

There are loads of no sew tutus on the Internet. It is just knotting the netting on to elastic or in my case ribbon. I cut the netting to half a metre strip and 2 inches wide. You need 1.5 metres to make one that will fit most 2 - 4 year olds. Of course you can mix up the colours and all that, but Spotlight had a very small range of netting, I was hoping to make them old of three shades in each skirt, but they didn't have any different shades. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. I think I might make some for our Playcentre too. I had made one a while back and forgot how easy they were. Adele has her own one but she never plays with it, but these ones, she was pretty sad to see them go.

So kindy is now over for Ryan, two weeks of school holidays and then school. Wow, big changes. Of course we also have Adele heading off to afternoon kindy. That is pretty exciting for her too. It is going to be a crazy busy last term with both of them having some pretty exciting changes. Thank goodness it is only 8 weeks. I think at the end of that I am going to be pretty shattered too.

Tx

My bight red skirt

I have been a little lacking in the clothes department of late. A few weeks back I looked at my wardrobe and came to the conclusion everything was either falling apart, or far too dressy. I had nothing for nice, every day wear. I am aiming/trying to put together a few bits so I can look a bit nicer. Nothing wrong with trying to look respectable. Especially as I can sew, it can be reasonably price to make a few "things".

When Blair and I head over to the beach we always stop and buy a magazine each. Just one of those things we do. He usually gets a fishing one and I get the Burda sewing magazine or a patch work one. Very much living up to stereotypes! This seasons Burda magazine had quite a few nice things to make and this skirt was the first of the hopefully many things I will make. It is a pretty simple knit skirt, with a stretch waist band. I made it from a lovely heavy merino. I had this red for a while now and no-one has been interested in purchasing it. I think I made a couple of singlets, but no one else wanted it and I loved it so it quickly became the merino of choice for this skirt. It is super comfortable. I wore it with boots and stocking and I think looked dressy and then today with a plain black tee. Starting to feel like a lady! The Burda magazine, I like it, has some great patterns and ideas. But man alive, tracing the pattern pieces can be so hard, there must be a million patterns on each piece and they don't have seam allowances. It is a bit of a pet hate, so of course this frustrates me no end. I have been using the next size up instead of trying to do a seam allowance. I know it is not totally correct but it seems to work for me. I am not sure it would work so well for something that had a bit more structure to it.

Ryans last day of kindy tomorrow, so about to make the last tutu for the farewell gift. I made a purple one last night and about to start the blue one. I was also going to make prince crowns, but I cannot find my stash of felt. So I have had to promise Ryan that after the holidays we will drop some in to the kindy. He is most upset we are only giving girl presents.

Tx

Yummy, scrummy cheesecake

We went over to the beach for the weekend and asked a couple of friends if they wanted to join us. The weather was going to be terrible, but we have just brought a new BBQ and really wanted to try it out. And you know, a trip away is always fun. The weather was o.k, on Sunday we went for a big walk to the Blow Hole. It was a full tide so it looked really amazing. You could hear the thumping quite a distance away. We were all rather excited about that. The Saturday was pretty grim. Rather cold and windy. Our wee bach is behind a massive house and surrounded by heaps of trees, so often the weather is windy, but we are so sheltered that we don't even notice it.

Our friends arrived on the Saturday so I had spent the morning making a cheese cake. I know, I should have made it the night before as it is a baked cheesecake, so when we got round to eating it, it was still warm in the middle and a bit runny. It still tasted yummy though. The three ladies there all bake and we had a good giggle about cheesecake. Now no word of a lie, cheesecake is the easiest thing to make! Especially this one. The hardest thing is waiting for it to be cooled enough to eat. So if you have ever wanted to make one, make this!!!!!!!

Gordon Ramsey Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake

150 grams digestive biscuits

15 grams flaked almonds, toasted

60 grams butter

75 grams of dark chocolate (darker the better)

150 grams caster sugar

250 grams sour cream

600 grams cream cheese

2 large eggs, I used size 7

1 teaspoon on vanilla extract

Put the biscuits into a food processor along with the almonds and pulse until fine crumbs. Add the butter, completely melted. Whizz. Spread into a round tin, 23 cm round. Bake for 10 mins at 170 degrees.

In another bowl put ALL the ingredients in (except the chocolate). Beat together until smooth and creamy. Pour mix over the biscuit base. Melt the chocolate and pour over the cheesecake mix. Now once I sort of messed it up and the chocolate ended up completely mixed in too. So a chocolate cheesecake, well that was very yummy too.

Bake for about 30 mins at 140 degrees. It will be firmish around the sides but still a bit jiggly in the middle. Leave in the oven over night. This will cool it slowly and finish cooking the middle and hopefully wont crack as it cools. YUM!!!!!!! I made this with the low fat sour cream and cream cheese and for this you couldn't even tell. If it changes the taste I wont change to a lower fat option but this one is fine.

So that was out weekend, hanging with friends, eating waaaaaay too much and may be the odd wine ;