me, my camera and my life.

Archive for January, 2006

You Gotta Love This Girl

Published
by
Helen
on January 29, 2006
in friends and paper
. 4 Comments

Tracy is well I don’t really know what words to use to describe her other than she is an incredible person. We met on 2peas a couple of years ago, I was a wee girl a couple months shy of my 18th birthday, she was a Garden Girl (one of those women on 2peas who you aww over) and well the rest is history, we’ve emailed each other, cheered each other on and given no barriers held advice when needed, she is a pretty cool lady and I am glad to know her :)

So, imagine my delight this afternoon when I came back from celebrating my Grandfather’s 86th Birthday to an email showing me this :) Then to add to all my proudness of what she is achieving, she has a paper line coming out with A2Z Essentials which is about to be released at a trade show that starts today/tomorrow :) Called Harmony :) – Go Tracy :)
Helen by tracy

Australia Day Catch-Up

Published
by
Helen
on January 26, 2006
in blog stuff, cool things, random life and yarn
. 3 Comments

Well, today is Australia Day, which means I am cooking Lamb Chops for tea and we have rushed outside at the sound of the F1-11 flying over (Is there ever an event in Brisbane where we don’t have at least one F1-11 do either a fly-over or a dump and burn? The benefits I guess of having a RAAF base just down the road).

Also for the fact that it is Australia Day, I have given my site a new change of clothes and adopted a Green and Gold theme, the cool tag template for the header image comes from Tracy Ann’s Cool Bits Kit at Scrapbook-Bytes. :)
I have spent the morning filing away bookmarks and updating my RSS feed subscriptions and clearing off my desk, so I can hopefully get some scrapbooking done this evening inbetween watching my favourite Australian TV show at the moment – RAN (Remote Area Nurse).

The other day I picked up this gorgeous little Ethos Poppy & Friends serving plate set from Robins Kitchen.

Poppy plates

Earlier this week on Monday, Pabbi and I, like many other Brisbanites went to the LifeLine Bookfest (a 6 day pre-loved book sale held twice yearly, which is the largest in the world, yep’s that right Brisbane can claim to fame the world’s largest pre-loved book sale and we have had it for the last 16 years). I spent $6.50 and came away with a fistful of crochet, sewing and knitting leaflets/books. Here are a sample of them, click on the thumbnails to see them full size.

anchor flowersanchor pattern This is a leaflet from an iron-on embroidery pattern from Anchor, the iron-on transfer is long gone but cool are the flowers?
learn to One of four little crochet booklets I picked up, just love the front photo on this one, reminds me of a polaroid portrait.

playtime pets Loving the elephants :)
swiss straw Who could go past some Rayon-Raffia accessories, which are still chic today and were used to make a hat in the recent Interweave Knits Crochet edition.


oven mittsspoonsgiant flowers These three are from a Australian Women’s Weekly embroidery leaflet for the contemporary needlewoman. Which it promises are all quick to work in simple stem and chain stitch. The balloon oven mitts are billed as perfect for children to do for presents as they are easy and inexpensive to make.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Published
by
Helen
on January 22, 2006
in food and random life
. 4 Comments

Some time back in November I guess, I picked up some frozen Blueberries and Raspberries to make Berry Ice-Cream from Celebrate issue of the Donna Hay magazine (just swirling frozen berries into softened ice-cream and then re-freezing in a pudding cloth).

Then the other day at work I picked up some sour cream from the reduced to clear section, having seen somewhere in the back of mind sour cream muffins.

A google search yesterday gave me these recipes Blueberry Cream Muffins, Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins and Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins, which I used for the basis of my recipe as well as drawing on a Baking Sheet blog post from the other week called Bakery Style Muffins.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Ingredients
2 & 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 butter (melted)
dash of Vanilla essence
200ml sour cream
dollops of Milk and Buttermilk if needed for achieving consistency
2 cups or so of berries (I used Blueberries and Raspberries)

Method
Preheat oven to 160°C and place patty or muffin papers into patty pan or muffin pans. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, in a separate bowl combine the egg, sour cream, vanilla and melted butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients bowl and pour in the sour cream mixture and mix together, if mixture is not wet enough add dollops of milk and or butter milk till it is gooey enough to spoon into patty pans. Stir in berries, be sure to do this well so that the berries are evenly distributed through the mixture. Spoon mixture into patty pans so that the mixture is just about at the top of the pan. Cook in oven for 15 minutes or so until skewer comes out clean (muffins will need longer to cook than patty cakes). Makes 40 patty cakes.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Now for some notes.

  • Since this recipe makes quite a few patty cakes be sure to either freeze them in small batches or store in the fridge to prevent mould growing in them (cakes etc with fruit especially berries are quite prone to mould if stored at room temp, so eat quick or store in the fridge/freezer.
  • These will be quite airy patty cakes due to the amount of baking powder and baking soda used if you don’t like airy cakes, halve the baking powder and soda amounts.
  • Enjoy with a nice glass of milk :)

In other news:

  • On my hook at the moment is this Crochet Cupcake Pincushion.
  • I want one of these – Flame-worked All Glass Crochet Hooks in ruby or opal please (Mum, ideal 21st birthday gift, you have 232 days to purchase one).
  • Mum is just about finished her crocheted bag.
  • This arvo Mum and I went through her old wool to see what I could use to create with and found some knitted goodies which will be fun to felt.

Lastly, this coming Thursday, January 26th is Australia Day so Be Australian, Eat More Lamb (you have to click on that link, though if you aren’t Australian you probably won’t get half the stuff said but still click on it).

wave back :)

Published
by
Helen
on January 16, 2006
in random life
. 12 Comments

So apparently it is National (does that mean only in the USA? If so when is the Australian one?) scratch that, let us just call it International Delurking Week. I know some of the people who like to poke around here you know those people who possibly know more about you than you know about yourself (family and buds), yeah but back on track, just imagine, you can see me waving at you and saying hello.

What do you do?

  1. Say to yourself is she waving at me? must be that person behind me but I’ll wave back anyway.
  2. Wave back and say Hi Helen.
  3. Ignore the wave and go about your merry way.

What did you answer? Option 2 is the cool one but if you go the others, I will cope, after all I can only wave my hand so many times in one week :)

Back to more content driven posting sometime soon.

Crocheted Bag

Published
by
Helen
on January 15, 2006
in yarn
. 6 Comments

Erins' bag

Well to the right, you can see the completed bag, my first real functional piece of Crochet, done on a 3mm hook using Anchor Magicline Cotton, the pattern comes from Judith Swartz’s book Hip to Crochet. Mum is currently also making this bag again from Magicline but a different colourway and a 3.5mm hook.

This bag is going to the daughter of a family friend, well the main present are the dolls you see below (click on either picture to see them larger), which we purchased at the Salamanaca Markets and the bag is just serving as a tote for them. :) :)

Now I just have to decide what my next project will be…..
dolls