Hair "pin" # 2 and garden sign!

Pin - is inverted commas due to the size of it, it's a little bigger than the last one, but it is super gorgeous! And as you can see my clever hubby has been crafting again! I'm a lucky lady!

He also teamed up with my son and made me a 'Mum's Garden' sign! Too sweet! Thanks boys! 

Rosella, rosella, rosella!!

The harvest:

   

Cooking the rosella!

The rosella mixture can then be used for cordial,

Fruit punch,

Tea,

And jam.

We also made rosella cookies, tarts & pastry (not  pictured) and even cheesecake. 

We also attempted some weaving with rosella bush branches and lemongrass leaves as I harvested them at the same time. Pic isn't great, but it is a lovely canoe like shape. Smells great too! Haha!

We will definitely find some space to grow rosella again next year! 

Meet Fluffy!

This soft and cuddly fellow is my latest inspiration. I love him! I am really loving eagles at the moment and wanted to draw! So I googled "eagle" and came up with this handsome fellow. I am not sure how this will come up blogging on my phone, but I will check back to make sure the proper source comes up (or a link or something).

Here is my picture, and the image I used as inspiration.

Hardwood Hair Pin

My lovely hubby made me a cute little hard wood hair pin over the weekend. I had to share! (I am accustomed to winding my hair up and securing it with a pen.) Lol. So now I can tie my long locks up in style!! Haha!

Big thanks to my wonderful hubby!

Easels for sale!

Artist easels made to order!! These units are a lot more sturdy than anything I have seen locally and can be customised in an infinite number of ways, according to your specifications or requirements.

The one pictured is unfinished, and I will update this post accordingly. But I just wanted to show you the "base model". Anyhow they would make an excellent investment for any artist, schools, studios or your good old weekend warrior!

If anyone from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast is interested please email the furniture designer: melanie.sprenkeler@hotmail.com or link to her blog at melaniesprenkeler.wordpress.com hopefully you will see me over there soon too, I'm hoping for reciprocal links :)

Delivery is negotiable!

What's growing on?

Hello all! What a beautiful (and somewhat humid) morning!! Oh I love Mondays! Except for the washing that is! Haha!

Check out what my garden had to offer this morning!!! I didn't get everything in the pic, and you can barely see the pumpkin sitting on the compost bin in the background, but hey! I got a bounty of leafy greens, various beans and eggplants, a crookneck squash, a Kent pumpkin, lemongrass, spring onions, okra, and some lovely flowers!! After weeks of incessant rain my garden is thriving again!! I'm loving it!

Rosella Jam

Finally there are enough rosellas for a test batch of jam and some to throw in my salad for lunch! mmmm zingy!! I guesstimate that there is still 5 large bowlfuls or about 2 1/2-3 buckets full to come! There are so many still to mature!

My son and I picked the rosellas, washed them, and separated the calyx from the seedpod. We simmered the seedpods for a while, about 20 minutes, and drained them. We composted the seedpods, and reserved the liquid. Back into the pot went roughly 750g of each of the following; liquid mixture from the seeds, the calyxes and sugar (huge deal for me as I usually use VERY little sugar). It is a very large practice batch, only half the sugar the recipe called for, and it is an occasional item! Most of my rosella will be eaten 'as is' in salads, chucked in stir fries and the like, or dried for tea. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and the colour is amazing!

Do you know of any jam recipes you can make without sugar? I'm new to the making jam, and for me the perfect jam would be just fruit!

Anyway, a we had a lot of fun with it, and I hope you enjoy my ever dodgy photography!! Haha!

Garbage day!

Quick update! Today I put the bins out on the street. Only today, the recycling bin didn't drag ME down our very steep driveway! It was so light! I'm happy my 'recycling the recycling' efforts are paying off! For the first time ever, our household of eight, had less than half a bin of recyclables in a two week period. Awesome!!!

Repurposed pallet!

We were given some wood that came from a pallet that ofherwise would have been thrown away. Who would have thought this beautiful rustic hardwood coffee table cost nothing but an afternoons work. Big thank you to my wonderful hubby who made this for me over the weekend, even reusing some of the nails from the original pallet! I loooove it!

Spelt cookies.

One of my favourite ways to use spelt is in cookies! I use sprouted spelt, so there is no need to soak the grain, and usually bung in whatever I have lying around. This batch i used; freshly milled sprouted spelt flour, butter, egg yolks left over from the day before, 2 bananas a bit too ripe, and a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar. Then I rolled the mixture into balls, slightly squashed them, and plonked an almond on top! Baked for about 20 mins, until golden brown.

These were great cookies, the banana sweetened without over-flavouring them. They were crunchy on the outside and softer in the middle, nom nom nom! Perfect lunch box filler, or great with a cuppa :)

Dodgy pic, but fun idea!

Zucchini boats, with kale sails !! We made some little aluminium foil dudes to sit on the boats too (but I forgot to take a pic).

Kids loved them + very easy = happy Mummy :)

What quirky fun meals do you make??

Yummy yoghurt.

I know, I have posted about yoghurt before, but I just get so excited when a batch is ready! I love to pour my yoghurt into cheesecloth to drain some of the whey (I like my yoghurt thick!). (Note: I use the whey in bread making etc- so nothing goes to waste!) Whilst the whey is draining I am constantly thinking of all the delicious ways to eat my thick, shiny, creamy yoghurt. And eat it I do, almost every day.

Simple; milk, cultures, warmth and time.

Cost effective and highly nutritive!

Deliciously jazzed up, in this case, with berries!

Nuff said.

What's growing on?

My garden is finally starting to enjoy sunshine again, after over month of almost constant and destructive rain. Here are the highlights of my morning walk around the garden!

Amazing Okra!

My goodness how big these have grown! I get a bowlful of Okra every morning, without fail! Great stuff. We love it barbecued or in stir fries. Casseroles are wonderful too as the kids can't see it, and it is great as it replaces flour based thickeners perfectly. By far the best 'crop' I have had from the garden, and a very long season too! It has been fruiting for months. It is a very low maintenance plant too, just a feed of liquid fertiliser every now and then. It also needed a good tying/ staking up through the flood. You should give it a try. Even if you hate okra, grow it for the gorgeous hibiscusy flowers, it's ornamental value, it's height. You can always give away/ donate the okra! I have just put in two of the red variety in too. Purely for height, as I hate looking at fence, and it's stunning ornamental-ness, the fruit is just a bonus!