Spoonflower

I just ordered my first test swatch of fabric from Spoonflower using one of my free printable paper designs.  I am getting the yellow and grey colourway (totally obsessed with yellow right now).  Can't wait to get it to see how it turns out!  Well, I am off for the weekend to go and check out some waterfalls bigger than Niagara!  Hope you all have a good weekend too.

Here is a random photo that I love because I really don't like 'photoless' posts (yes, I am sure that is a word....).  This is a photo I took in our backyard pool.

April Calendar - just in the nick of time!

Whoa, almost forgot to do the April one on time!  I am having various levels of frustration with trying to get a jpeg picture of this calendar page so am just showing you the graphic at the top.  Link HERE for the full page with calendar.  Enjoy!

Felt, bead and button hair clip

There is really no limit to what you can put on these hairclips is there?  Well, ok, for you clarifiers out there (you know who you are!), you couldn't put a horse on there..... (a little horsey button though.....)

This is a really simple little clip and I always love things that are simple in style and I love them even more when they are simple to do as well.  So, you will need, a couple of circles of felt, a fun beady thing (or just a larger button or another circle of felt) and a button.  Oh, and a needle and thread, a hair clip and some glue.

Stack everything up and stitch through the whole lot securing the button.

Stitch a running stitch around the smaller piece of felt to hold it together and to add a nice little detail.

When you are finished, glue them to your hairclips.  Too easy.

Then borrow someone's adorable curly haired daughter to model them on (when own daughter downright refuses - the cheek!)!

Aussie Pavlova

First things first, I don't want to hear any New Zealanders carrying on about how the Pavlova was their invention!  I think we can all agree that no-one really knows for sure who did it (seeing as they appeared around the same time in both countries).  I don't have any emotional investment in it being exclusively Australian so if anyone can prove it either way, hooray!  (For everyone else, this is quite a heated debate in Antipodean parts.....)

Now, moving right along!  I actually made this back in January but forgot to blog about it so thought better late than never.  This is what is known as a marshmallow pavlova (ie. it is hard and crunchy on the outside but nice and soft and chewy in the middle).  A very simple dessert that is truly delicious.  Pavlova base, whipped sweetened cream on top of that, fresh fruit on top of the whipped cream.  This is also the very first pavlova I have ever cooked myself (having enjoyed other's efforts on many an occasion).  So, that just goes to show how easy they are.  I used the recipe out of an iconic Australian cookbook series (the Australian Women's Weekly 'Sweet Old Fashioned Favourites') and, not wanting to infringe on their copyright, have provided a link to another website who have the recipe published.  Click here for the recipe (and further details about the debate! ha ha).

Just one note, I also decided to add a raspberry sauce to mine to up the presentation (and flavour) factor.  This was sooooo easy to make.  Just push a punnet of raspberries through a sieve (this isn't hard at all) until you have all the lovely seedless juice in a bowl underneath and then mix in a little powdered sugar (icing sugar) to sweeten.  Raspberries can be quite tart so the powdered sugar really makes it.

New Design!

I have been wanting to change up my blog design for awhile but have been too intimidated by the process.  Or what I thought the process would be.  Turns out I managed ok.  I am certainly no whizz at it but baby steps....  I loved the free template I had before (thank you Sharnee from Yummy Lolly!) but thought it would be fun to do my own thing.   Living the dream here!  lol.

Ribbon dolly pegs

Here is a quick idea.  I am sure I have seen others do this too.  I had a couple of spare dolly pegs, I had some pastel coloured paint sitting there, I had some loose ribbons.....you get the idea.  I like how my ribbons look on their cute little painted dolly pegs (clothespins...whatever you want to call them)...  I just need to find some more dolly pegs to paint so all my ribbons can have such a nice home inside their jar.

Patchwork mod podge land

Here is a photo of our mod podge table efforts with the visiting girls the other day.  Such a happy little vignette to me!  And look, after getting tired of yet another tin to cover, one young lassy came up with the brilliant idea of covering my sticky tape dispenser.  I love it!!

Kusudama flower fun

 

Have you seen these Kusudama flowers?  They are origami flowers where you form each petal and then glue five together to make the flower.  I really love them, not surprisingly, as they combine two of my favourite things - paper fun with an aesthetically pleasing result.

We had two lovely girls (adopted nieces as it were) over for a sleepover and playdate and I had fun making a few of these flowers with one of the girls.  I say only a few of these flowers because with the folding, gluing and drying it takes a little while to make them.  I aim to fill a vase with them in all pretty papers (hence me enlisting some child slave labour to help).  Now, because they are a little tricky, I made an instructional sheet (I didn't want to take my computer downstairs to read these excellent instructions from Folding Trees as we were doing it).  This helped my little helper pick it up in no time.  I have it on good authority she is still making them back at home now.

Note:  to make it easy to cut out the 7cm (3in) squares, I did two things.  First, I used papers I designed in powerpoint and just overlaid squares the correct size before printing.  Secondly, I cut out a square template to use to draw around directly onto other decorative papers I have.