Spicks and Specks

Firstly we would like to thank Karen from Selvage for her lovely post on our Loyalty Card Wallets. If you aren't familiar with Selvage, it has loads of wonderful projects featuring selvedges - I will never throw them out again! Our tutorials are currently residing in our googlepages site but the bandwidth seems to be regularly exceeded making them difficult to open. If you would like them emailed to you, please leave a comment with your email address.  We hope to find a better place for our tutorials soon.

I am still playing with scraps of fabric and have made up some pot holders (after being inspired by Pink Penguin) for gifts.

....and a camera case for my husband (I had to photograph it with my phone inside - the camera is a better fit!).

There has also been a bit of baking going on. I had to try Suzie's Yoghurt Apple Cake when I discovered it has no butter or oil in the recipe. It is light in texture, low fat, and delicious. I will be making more of these now that apples are in season.

I also made a batch of my favourite autumn recipe - Sticky Toffee Pudding - perfect on its own or served warm with caramel sauce and ice cream.

Posted by Lisa

Happy Renee Day!!!

We would like to wish our blogging friend Renee, a very happy birthday today!! Hope your day is filled with love, laughter, happiness, and friends.

Please go visit Renees blog, Circling My Head, and leave a birthday greeting - it will make her day. Her beautiful blog is inspiring on so many levels! Have a great one Renee!!

Yummy and Yummier!

Last weekend I did some baking. I love to experiment and made up this recipe for Rocky Road Brownie.

Rocky Road Brownie

Brownie

175g butter, chopped
200g dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 ⅔ cup plain flour

Grease 20 × 30cm lamington tin; line base and two long sides with baking paper. Melt butter and chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir in sugar, eggs, and sifted flour: mix well. Spread mixture into prepared tin. Bake at 180°C for 30 minutes or until firm to touch.

Rocky Road Topping

2 cups mini marshmallows
1 cup Rice Bubbles/rice krispies
100g milk chocolate, roughly chopped
500g melted chocolate
½ cup shredded coconut

Combine marshmallows, rice bubbles, chocolate, melted chocolate, and coconut in a bowl; mix well. Working quickly, spoon rocky road mixture on top of the brownie and refrigerate until set. 

I also added some chocolate chips to my favourite pikelet recipe from the Donna Hay cookbook. This has become a regular at our place.

Chocolate Chip Pikelets

2 cups plain (all purpose) flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup caster (superfine) sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cup milk
½ cup chocolate chips1 teaspoon vanilla extract
70 g (2 oz) melted butter

Combine flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Combine eggs, milk, and melted butter in another bowl, then whisk into the flour mixture. Cook 1 tablespoon of the mixture over low heat in a frying pan greased with butter for 1-2 minutes. Turn and cook for 1 minute or until golden. Serve warm with butter. 

Posted by Sarah

Easter Baking Kit

You may recall those sweet Easter themed cookie cutters I bought recently? They were for an Easter Baking Kit I assembled for an Easter Gift. This Kit is the perfect gift for the budding chef in your family! Team some ingredients with cute biscuit cutters and decorating supplies, and they will be baking up a batch of bunnies in next to no time!

Supplies:
1 large jar
Assorted biscuit cutters
Ribbon
Scrap booking paper
Double sided tape
Ingredients (see below) – plain (all purposed) flour, castor sugar, white chocolate buds, coloured sprinkles, cachous.
Clear cellophane bags


Referring to the recipe below, assemble the ingredients (apart from the butter, egg, and vanilla) and place them in individual cellophane bags. Using your computer, design labels for the bags, print out, and attach to the bags. Place the ingredients and cookie cutters in the jar. Print out the recipe and enclose in the jar. Decorate the jar with a strip of scrap booking paper and attach with double sided tape. Tie a ribbon to the lid to finish.


 
Recipe: Easter Biscuits
 
Ingredients:
150 g butter
300g plain flour
110 g castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly beaten
100g white chocolate buds, melted
Sprinkles and cachous to decorate

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Rub butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar, vanilla, and egg. Kneed mixture until it forms a soft dough. Roll out the dough and cut out biscuit shapes. Place on a baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Spread with melted chocolate and decorate with sprinkles and cachous as desired. 

Thanks go to some great blogs for featuring us over the past week. We would like to thank One Shabby Chick,  Create Studio, and Sevi Designs. If you aren't already familiar with these excellect blogs, go and check them out - you won't be disappointed!

We have also been the grateful recipients of a few awards recently! Most recently from Kris at Quilted Simple (who is a prolific quilter) and Lisa at Handmade in Israel (who makes and sells the most beautiful cards). Please go and say hi to these ladies!

Posted By Lisa

Tea Time Swap

Back in January, Sarah and I were invited to participate in a Tea Time Swap that was being hosted by the lovely Stephanie of Loft Creations. We had some time to make up some tea inspired goodies for our secret partner. Stephanie had weekly Tea Time Tuesday posts to provide us all with plenty of inspiration. We have been seeing lots of wonderful tea inspired packages arriving all over the world. It has been the most wonderful swap to be part of. 

Today, Sarah and I were delighted to receive the most wonderful package from our partner, the super talented Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio - the mastermind behind Project Improv! It was a most wonderful way to start the week off.

Jacquie made Sarah the most wonderful apron - very funky and modern!

...some gorgeous pot holders - bright and colourful!

Jacquie made me some stylish tea towels with tea cup appliques

...and a tea wallet with some exotic teas. It all matches our kitchen (which has white cupboards and black granite benchtops) perfectly.

Jacquie knows our love of baking and sent us some sweet teapot cookie cutters, plus some lovely tissues. We will no doubt make up some teapot cookies soon! They were the cutest cutters I have ever seen. 

Thank you so much Jacquie for your generosity - we love it all very much!

By a strange coincidence, we also had Jacquie as our partner :) This is what we sent to her - An apron (modelled by Sarah)

a patchwork tea towel, a tea wallet,a keyring, a name tag and Sarah made some lavender bath tea bags (a bit of a twist on the tea theme!).

I would also like to thank One Pretty Thing and Craft Gossip for featuring my Scrappy Loyalty Wallet Tutorial. Due to heavy traffic, the link to my googlepages site has exceeded the bandwidth. If anyone had trouble opening the tutorial, drop me an email and I will send it to you as a pdf. 

Posted by Sarah and Lisa

Tutorial: Scrappy Loyalty Card Wallet

I had a few requests to make up a tutorial for my Loyalty Card Wallet. These wallets are a great scrap busting project!  You can find the tutorial here. There is also a link in our side bar. 

Edit: The bandwidth for my googlepages has been exceeded due to the heavy traffic. If you are having trouble opening the tutorial, drop me an email and I will send it to you.

Posted by Lisa

Softies, Supplies, and a Swap!

I spotted Betz White's Cashmere Bunny Tutorial during the week and I was smitten! I had a felted lambswool cardigan on hand, so set to work and in less than an hour produced these sweet bunnies.

Easter must be on my mind - I added to my cupcake liner and cookie cutter collection with these supplies - perfect for Easter baking! 

Sarah and I are participating in Stephanie's Tea Time Swap and mailed off our package this week. Stephanie has generously sent all participants a sweet tea house holder and delicious tea for taking part, and Sarah and I were thrilled to receive one each this week. It has been a most exciting swap to be part off and we can't wait until all the packages start to arrive at their destinations.

After all the scrap busting that went on last week, I treated myself to some more fabric this week. Thanks to Janelle, I heard about a shipment of Amy Butler that had arrived at my favourite store. It looks so pretty in my fabric basket that I may just look at it for a while before I turn it into a quilt.

Posted by Lisa 

Fabric Scrap-a-thon

According to the Oxford dictionary, a Scrap (n) is "a small piece; rubbish: waste material." Anina from Tiddletails had an interesting post recently on what constitutes a scrap. Opinions vary widely, but whatever your definition, there is something very satisfying about using up all those little "scraps" and creating something new. Scrap projects are very popular around the blogosphere at the moment.

I colour coded my scraps on the weekend, and then set about creating a few scrap projects.

I made a Loyalty card wallet to match my latest handbag...

....coasters to match my latest cushions....

... a placemat mat to match a table runner.....

...a zippered pouch to store first aid supplies when travelling....

...and some scrappy log cabins which will eventually become a quilt. 

My scrap pile now looks more manageable!!

Posted by Lisa