Grandma's Best Recipes

I am currently developing a website for one of our town's beautiful homeware and gift shops. While I was taking photos for it last week, I came across the Grandma's Best Recipes book and it just had to come home with me!!

The cover alone would have made me buy it, as it's a book that would look nice on any coffee table or standing in a book holder. The inside pages are nicely designed and of course the recipes will be useful too!

Here are a couple of shots of some other things that took my fancy!

 

A new range of children's party packs had just arrived. The set is made in Australia and is called 'Circus Party'. The range has a lovely vintage feel and includes invitations, cupcake holders, cups, serviettes,  plates and a cake wrapper. Pity I haven't got any littlies to host a party for!

 Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Some unexpected surprises!

I own up, I have never owned a 'proper' pin cushion! My pins have always lived in the box from which I purchased them from. A couple of my friends who are much more experienced sewers than I, have often laughed (been disgusted, paid me out!!) about that fact!! (all in fun of course).

One of those friends came around for coffee last week and guess what she had made me? Yes, a pin cushion which sits in a delightful tea cup!! It's beautiful....thanks Janette!

Her daughters also made a few pin heads out of shrink wrap. Aren't they just the sweetest?

 My pins will now live in the lap of pink luxury!!

Another little surprise I recieved was this lovely neclace...I love the colours as it goes with so many things.

I hope you are enjoying your week.

I'm joining "Pink Saturday', so hop on over and see some lovely 'Pink' things!

A few ruffles and easy bread recipe

A couple of months ago I made a chocolate brown ruffled cushion cover for our bed (my post about it and tutorial are herel)

 
and last weekend decided to make one for a gift, this time in cream colour.

Would be very tempting to keep it for myself!!

I enjoy cooking and baking, but one thing that I've never had nuch experience with, or success with when tried, is baking with yeast. I came across a post the other week that had an easy recipe for bread, so decided to try it.


My first attempt, true to form with yeast, didn't work!! The yeast when added to the warm water didn't expand as supposed to and when I let it rest in the mixture for 30mins it still didn't rise. However, I baked it and was heavy but the family still really liked it.
After getting a bit frustrated by it as it was such an easy recipe I searched a bit on the net about yeast and discovered that you can kill the yeast by having the water too hot.....'AHA' that was a 'light bulb moment, could that have been where I was going wrong?

Not to be beaten by this so called 'simple recipe', I tried it again the next night and just had the water lukey warm. Things started happening how they were meant to...YAY, I'd discovered where I had been going wrong with yeast.  Like magic when I peeked under the cloth that covered it for 30 mins it had puffed up like it had life!!

It tasted really good with a nice crunchy crust. Maybe next time when I see a recipe with yeast I won't turn the page!!
You can visit the post with the recipe here. I just used self raising flour for my recipe.
I hope you have success the first time!!

 Annette....The last couple of posts I've had trouble with uploading my images, hence I just couldn't insert my signature image!!!!

My fabric birds and their adventures!

My creative urge on the weekend led me to making some fabric birds. I made a pair, blue and pink.

The pattern I used for the birds was from Spool, you can download it here. After making one the other week, I tweaked the pattern to have a more rounded head and put in a felt beak.

After I made them I let them fly around to explore their surroundings. Here is where they flitted.

After receiving some lovely rain yesterday, I let them out in the back garden to take a drink from our bird bath.

 After their adventures it was time to put them in their resting place.

 

This morning I let them inside again, and as I type this post, I have two little birdies watching me!

I hope you enjoyed following my birds adventures. I did make something else on the weekend too that included ruffles, but I'll keep that for my next post.

I'm joining Inspiration Friday at the Picket Fence and
Pink Saturday

My purchases this morning...now what to make with them!!

I woke up this morning with the urge to do some sort of sewing this weekend.
I wandered up the street and purchased a few pieces of fabric. I do have some projects in mind but as to how much I'll get done, you will have to stay tuned!!


Here is what I bought.

The piece below is a heavy backed curtain fabric which I thought might be just right to re-cover a little footstool I purchased at a garage sale some months back.

Time will tell as to whether my sewing urge got me anywhere!

A giveaway and a few other things!

It gives me great pleasure to introduce back to blogland, one of my best friends Jo, from Vintage Lane Stitches. She has had a few months break from blogging, but has returned and is celebrating her 100th post with a beautiful giveaway. The picture below is the giveaway. As you can see there are lots of pretty feminine things, so head on over and say hi, I'm sure you will enjoy getting to know Jo and reading her posts.

Living in the Riverland region we are fortunate to be able to buy locally grown oranges. They are just superb at the moment, so sweet and juicy. I love living in the country where you can buy produce straight from the growers. I purchased a bag at a roadside stall last week. You just pull up, choose the produce you want to purchase and put the money in the tin. It's an honesty system which is still nice to have around in this day and age.

Last Saturday I decided to make a big batch of soup which I quite often do in the winter. So I got my stockpot out and loaded it with all the veggies, chicken and water and placed it on the hotplate to simmer away. However I started hearing sizzling so presumed I had spilt some water on the element, so wiped it up and put the stockpot back only to discover it started sizzling again. After taking the stockpot off and placing it on a tea towel I discovered my trusty stockpot which would be over 20 years old, had a small hole in it!!  As I didn't have anything as big to put the contents into, I quickly raced off to the shop and purchased a nice new shiny one. Hopefully this one will last me as long!!!

On the craft front, I've bought a cute cream birdcage and want to make a couple of fabric birds to go in it to sit on the perch. I found a pattern and picked some fabric for one of the birds, so maybe today I might get around to making them. Stay tuned!!

 

I don't have too much flowering in the garden at the moment, but this pretty cyclamen brightens up the back door area.

 Until next time...

Food, fashion and fixing up!

Wow, i feel like I have to blow the cobwebs off my blog as it's been so  neglected of late!

We've had a couple of great social weekends. One of the weekends we had friends and one of my sisters come up from Adelaide for a couple of nights, It was time spent talking, laughing, sharing, shopping, eating, drinking and catching up with others as well at our place.
Last weekend Paul and I spent in Adelaide as we had a reunion dinner on the Saturday night with the group of friends we mixed with when we lived down there over 21 years ago.Some we hadn't seen in many years and had lost contact with.
I had such a good time that taking photos didn't hit my radar!! I did find this photo of the place where we dined last Saturday night. It was the Red Ochre Grill on the Torrens in Adelaide. A lovely dining experience with good company.

This is not my photo - I copied it from a Restaurant review website

In one of my previous posts I featured how we took out a glass door frame from our kitchen. By doing this we were left with unstained floorboards where the panel was taken out.

We had to decide what to do. The floor people could have tried to stain it to match, but we had a feeling it would always look lighter as the polished floor had darkened with age. They suggested they put a 'header' on it, which is what we went ahead with. They cut the floorboards the whole way across and laid wood going in the opposite direction and stained it as close as possible to the existing floor colour. We were happy with the outcome as it looks like it was meant to be there.

 

For the fashion conscious one of our local fashion boutiques, LamiSaru has developed a website for their clearance items. There are some quite good brand name items at very discounted prices. Take a look at www.electriccharlie.com.au 

Over the past weeks I've also been adjusting to a new computer and operating system, which hasn't come without it's frustrations!  I think I'm nearly on top of it now and have my settings and programs all installed and inplace. 

On the cold winter nights, we've been enjoying kicking back in our recliners and watching The Block and The Renovators.  One thing I detest though is the previews...I HATE them, so I close my eyes and my hubby mutes the sound while that's viewing.....that's love!!!

A mixed bag

A couple of weekends ago we went to Melbourne with friends. We left early Friday morning, arriving mid afternoon. We settled into our motel rooms before heading out for a bite to eat, then onto the footy at Ethiad. After the disappointing result, we walked back to our motel, got changed and headed up the road to the Crown Casino, for a relaxing wine.

Saturday was a lovely day of discovering the shops in the city. Bourke Street Mall was alive with people. We stood for around 10 minutes watching these human statues.

They were amazing, they just didn't move, not even a blink!!. At one stage one of them did start to slowly walk to shake someone's hand when they put money in the hat.I don't think I would last a few minutes, let alone however many hours they were there for.

While meandering up the mall we came across a huge line up of people and discovered that the 'Zara' store was having it's opening. You would have to be keen to wait in line for that long. We passed on that!!

Saturday night, the guys went off to the MCG to take in another AFL game, while Wendy and I had some tea and took in a movie...Water for Elephants. We enjoyed being transported into a different world of the circus for and 1½ hours.

Last year one of my sister's gave me an old hard covered Walt Disney book that had my name 'Annette' in the title. Well, my birthday has just passed again and you guessed it, I received another Walt Disney Book from her with my name in the title...classic!!  I look forward to reading it as the first one was actually very exciting!

One of my other sisters asked if I could email her through some of my favourite tea cup photos I had taken.  And what do you know...my present from her was greeting and gift cards with the images of my photos on them. What a lovely gift idea...I won't be short of cards to give now. She is a very good photographer and turns some of her photos into cards which you can purchase at www.postcardsalive.com

 

As you would agree there's nothing quite like a home baked cake, the shop ones just don't cut it as far as I'm concerned. My favourite one for baking at the moment is a Buttery Vanilla Cake, it goes great with a coffee. It's one of those recipes where you just put everything in the bowl and mix it. 

The recipe is:

250g butter, 2 teaspoons vanilla essence, 2 cups castor sugar, 4 eggs, 2 cups self-raising flour, 1/3 cup custard powder, 1 cup milk.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer until well combined. Spread into prepared cake tins. Bake in a moderately slow oven for 1 1/4hr. When cold dust with sifted icing sugar.

While I'm on favourites...my favourite drink at the moment is Malted Milk...yum. A couple of heaped teaspoons into a glass. Mix with a little milk first and then pour the rest of the milk in. It's a bit like milo in that you get the nice crunchy bits on the top.