Posted on

Helen’s Best Ever Biscuits

Last night I figuratively let down the hair after work and had one hell of a night out with one of my best friends, lots of talk, lots of vodka fire-engines, lots of dancing, lots of laughs and a cute boy or two. Total blast of a night and I got to wear a gorgeous skirt I picked up yesterday from Myer for $18 reduced from $60! score!
I made the best biscuits I have ever made and/or eaten the other day, a variation of a family staple called Apricot Wheat-germ Biscuits, these I think shall be called Sultana Hazelnut Biscuits.20060218_7833

Ingredients:
1.5 cups soft brown sugar
250g softened cooking margarine
2 eggs
dollop of vanilla
1 cup cornflakes
1 cup coconut
3/4 cup sultanas
1 cup hazelnut meal
1.75 cups whole-meal plain flour
3tsp baking powder

Method:
Preheat oven to 160°C and grease biscuit trays. Cream together margarine and sugar, add in eggs. All in together this fine weather mix in the rest of the ingredients, adding a bit of milk if mixture is too dry or some more flour if mixture is too moist.
Roll into balls and flatten lightly and cook in oven till when a finger pressed lightly into a biscuit does not leave a mark. Makes plenty.

Posted on

A Bag for Jemma

Jemma's Bag A ducky little bag for sweet little girl, this bag is going to Tracy’s daughter, Jemma who loves cats

The bag was made using the Jordy Bag Tutorial at Crafster.org which is a slightly different construction method to how I made Rachel’s bag the other day. I created the shaping of the bag by first pressing the connecting lines between the four corners and then pressing from the corners up to either side of the handle which creates the sloping sides 🙂

I went with Mum to Queensland Quilters last night for the sole purpose of browsing the library for interesting books to check out and I came home with 6 issues of Patchwork Quilt Tsushin and 1 issue of Patchwork Club. All of which are chock full of great bags and very nice quilts 🙂

Posted on

shoes, ornaments, a bag and so much more.

Stream Shoes The other day I picked up a pair of Source Stream sandals and they are just pure bliss, I have a hard time with shoes from wearing a 9.5 but mostly finding shoes that are always comfortable and can wear all day. Well these certainly fit the criteria and they are so funky as well – the images on the straps are sunflowers 🙂

I have been after some new work pants for a while now but finding good work pants is hard as well. Pants need to be loose fitting, breathable, big pockets etc so that I can actually fill the shelves instead of standing like a bean post, well I found a pair in the most unlikely shop. I was in Mountain Designs and saw some travel pants, which fitted all the criteria – black, loose, pockets, breathable. Score! What makes them even better is that they are a 55% Hemp/45% PET blend, dude my pants are a bong! (yeah I know that the hemp they grow for fabric is different to the pot kind but still), the best bit? They were reduced from $90 to $40, score!

Mikasa Cake Stand

How cute is this little cake stand from Mikasa? It is 5.75″ wide and 4″ high, perfect for taking photos of a single slice of cake or some biscuits 🙂

Villeroy & Boch Ornaments

Two more purchases, as my family and friends know, I have a very good relationship with Christmas Ornaments, we go together like Vegemite and cheese or milk and milo, so when I saw these in the Vileroy & Boch store at DFO, nothing was going to stop me taking them home with me. They are from the Scandinavian Christmas 2004 series, which was the second year in V&B’s Christmas round the world annual collection, Russia was 2003 and America was 2005.
A bag for Rachel

This is a bag I made for a friend who loves cats and is quite fluent in Japanese, so what better than a bag based on a pattern in a Japanese craft book and Japanese quilting fabric? Idea for the bag is from this book (the middle one on the front cover) – ISBN4529040011. Crafting Japanese entry for the book.
Pandanni

I love Pandani! They were such cool plants to play with whilst in Tasmania, the way the leaves formed corkscrews was just so cool, so here is a layout I did on them earlier today 🙂

Well that is for the moment, I was in the middle of making a bag but I ran out of thread 🙁 so now I am playing in photoshop and chilling out to the crazy/beautiful soundtrack.

Posted on

Batman Bridge

This is a layout I did earlier this evening, you know like 15mins ago 🙂 one of the many joys of digital scrapbooking, I don’t have to hike downstairs to the scanner and scan the bugger in.

I have spent a little bit of hard earned dough in the last couple days, but of course when I wanted to take photos today it was all overcast and rainy 🙁 and I also have done some sewing but again can’t take photos because of the weather 🙁
Batman Bridge.

Posted on

Dolce Bacio Ice-Cream Cake

Dolce BacioFor the last two, perhaps three Christmases, Matthew and I have looked curiously at the various Italian Christmas cakes that appear in the stores where we work early each November. This year instead of talking about getting one, we did on the post Christmas sales of course 🙂 which made the price a lot more attractive. The cake we picked up was a Dolce Bacio Panettone, that is described as

(the) Most famous Italian chocolate is transformed into a panettone (traditional Italian Christmas cake). This is the origin of big Dolce Bacio (Sweet kiss). Soft cake filled with chocolate and hazelnut cream in the shape of a chocolate. This panettone is a nice present to be eaten in company of friends, family or colleagues. A sweet present to be made to everyone who deserves a kiss. Source – ItalianfoodsHQ.

However imagine our response when we had each had a slice of cake each and both didn’t think it tasted that nice. We still had 2/3 of a cake left and we were going to get our monies worth, so we brainstormed and I came up with this idea to make it a lot more palatable.
bacci cake 2

Step 1 – Line spring form cake pan with baking paper.
Step 2 – Crumble cake and using roughly half form a base.
Step 3 – Press cake down well to create a well formed base.
Step 4 – Spoon thin layers of ice-cream onto cake layer, not worrying if you have thick and thin patches.
Step 5 – Use the other half of the cake and create a another layer in the same method used before.

Step 6 – Spoon another layer of ice-cream on to the cake, trying to get a relatively even layer this time.
Step 7 – Cover pan with some baking paper and place in the freezer for 24hrs or until set.
Step 8 – Serve with fresh fruit and enjoy a cake that tastes a whole lot nicer than it did originally.

Notes: If we had, had any chocolate or chocolate sauce in the house I would have drizzled the sauce or molten chocolate between the layers for extra goodness. The idea would also work quite nicely with any cake even if it tasted nice before hand 🙂

Posted on

Ribbon Log-Cabin Block


I borrowed this gorgeous book out of the library the other week called Vintage-Style Quilts by Flora Roberts and one of the projects in it was a ribbon pin cushion which was constructed on a similar method to a log-cabin block, inspired by the idea, I grabbed some cotton, lots of ribbon and got started. The block is about 8″ square.
The elephant in the middle is from ribbon that was used to trim the curtains in my bedroom and the others are 3/8″ ribbons that I have collected in the last year or so from scrapbooking.

I have no idea what I will do with this block, Mum has suggested making 12 tiny ones to go round the edge and turn it into a cushion cover or to make it the feature of a bag. I have no idea what I will do other than sit and look at it 🙂 Ideas?

In other news
Readymade Magazine now has a blog.
Check out these awesome lights from brightlights-littlecity.
Uncooked – cards that well make you laugh like others have not before.
Lastly, perhaps you may have noticed that I have my very own favicon for my site – favicon 🙂