Sewing for me: New purse

My purse has, after many years of good service, come to the end of it's useful life.  The zips are broken,  the card holders are torn and loose; is time for a new one.

Just as when I was making the wallet for the other half, none of the patterns I've looked at are quite right for me so I'm freestyling and designing my own.

Here's what I've come up with so far:
 
Now to work out the individual pattern pieces and the assembly. Stay tuned.

K

Welcome to 2015 & Minecraft Party

The holiday season is over for another year; I hope yours was everything that you wanted it to be and that you're starting 2015 on a positive note.

The last month of the year is always crazy in this house; with a couple of birthdays, the end of the school year and Christmas it can seem a bit frantic and 2014 was no exception. I managed to get 3 weeks off work during this time and made the most of it with equal measures of running around like a headless chook and times where I did absolutely nothing at all - it was wonderful.

Now that I'm getting back to some semblance of normality its time to catch up on  some of the blog-worthy stuff I've been up to over the last two months.

First up was the monster's birthday party.  She had decided on  a sleepover with a few of her friends from school. Because the monster's birthday is after school finishes for the year  I usually send out about double the number of invites than I would for an event at any other time of year  because I know that so many families get out of town as soon as school is finished for the year. But with this year being a sleepover (we've never done a kids sleepover at our place before), I didn't want to risk the possibility of a dozen or more tweens showing up and not having enough space for them all so we deliberately kept it very small. We ended up with 3 of the monster's girlfriends for the party - a very manageable number to feed, entertain and provide mattress/floor space for.

Minecraft Birthday Sleepover Party

The monster had decided on a minecraft theme (is any one else's child as obsessed with minecraft as the monster? Seems shes always either playing it or watching youtube videos about it at the moment).

Gifts

Of course being a minecraft themed birthday I decided at the last minute to supplement the gifts we had already purchased for the monster with a themed stuffed toy. And so I found myself sewing a creeper the night before the big day. 

In case you are not familiar with what these blocky little bad guys usually look like here's a reference pic.

In putting my creeper together I was reminded yet again of why I should not be crafting in the early hours of the morning after my brain has shut down for the night.

My creeper with the sideways head

You'll note that mine has its head on sideways. I was so annoyed with myself for not noticing this faux pas until I had sewn 3 of the 4 seams on the neck that I almost threw the whole thing in the trash but Jack the (seam) Ripper came to my rescue as usual!

In the end it turned out really well, and has probably been used more than any of the other gifts she received. All's well that ends well!

Entertaining

Entertaining the girls ended up being much easier than I had imagined. The classic, simple activities (including some that I was worried that would be too childish for my tween who would like to think she's all grown up) were huge hits.

Creeper Frisbee

There was lots of screen time and minecraft played, but we also kept the girls entertained outside for ages drawing on the concrete with a big bucket of jumbo chalk and throwing around a minecraft themed frisbee - a cheap green plastic frisbee with creeper stencil in black permanent marker.

Once the mozzies came out it was time to move indoors where the girls played a parent approved version of spin-the-bottle. This was a lot of fun and had the girls in fits of giggles.

The results of playing nail polish spin-the-bottle

The idea is that the players sit in a circle around a ring of nail polish bottles. They each take turns in spinning a bottle in the middle and whichever colour nail polish it lands on they paint a single nail in that colour. The game continues until each player has all 10 fingers painted (or all 10 fingers and all 10 toes in our case). Then of course we need take take photos of the crazy manicures!

After dinner it was time for movies and popcorn - I had set up a TV and DVD player in the spare room and all the girls piled onto the queen size bed in there to watch movies, giggle and chat into the early hours of the morning.

The final activity that I thought I would mention, because I was really unsure about how it would go down with this age group but seemed to be a hit, was colouring-in! I had printed out a heap of minecraft themed colouring pages and left these along with a bunch of pencils and markers in the room where the girls were to watch movies and sleep. I didn't mention them at all, and didn't push the girls to take up the activity but when packing up after the party I noticed that pretty much all of the pages had been used. I honestly thought the monster and her friends would think they were too old for colouring in, but obviously not.

Food

Minecraft cake 

What's a sleepover party without pizza? Rather than ordering pizza to be delivered I home made individual pizza bases (using my favourite 2-ingredient pizza dough) and laid out a selection of toppings, allowing the girls to each add their favourites before putting them into the oven. Because the other half and I were also eating the same meal I also laid out things like baby spinach, feta cheese and fresh basil that the monster would balk at normally if I ever tried putting it on her pizza; I was a little surprised at just how eager a couple of the girls were to have some of the less commercial /traditional toppings on their pizzas as well. The individual pizzas went down a treat with barely a crumb left over.

The monster's (slightly disappointing) minecraft cake
with sparkler candles

In keeping with the theme we had a minecraft cake - A simple vanilla cake with a cream cheese / whipped cream frosting and pieces of red roll-ups. 

Although it looked the part this really wasn't my finest moment as far as baking goes - the cake was really heavy and bland and the frosting was lumpy  :(. But it was cake and had candles so everyone tried at least a small piece before moving on to the left over roll-ups that I had used for decorating.

The monster had asked for pancakes for the morning so I cooked up a big batch for brunch, set up a pancake bar and again let the girls add their all their own toppings. Again I was surprised (and more than a little pleased) at the volume of healthy toppings the girls opted for - almost all of them chose fruit toppings (with squirty cream from a can) rather than the syrup or lemon and sugar.

Pancake bar - pancakes, syrup, lemon juice & sugar, jam, whipped cream,
bananas, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, grapes and watermelon.

All in all the whole sleepover party didn't really take that much effort to throw together and the girls all seemed to have a good time. I know the monster had a ball, and all her friends are great kids so it made it that much easier on us. It's certainly made me more willing to allow occasional sleepovers when the monster starts lobbying to have friends sleep over again.

What did you get up to over the holiday season? Did you throw a birthday/ Christmas / New Years party? Did you manage to get away for a break? 

K

Pinterest Reviews

Its time I did another pinterest review post... Sadly no crafty stuff with this update - I really must get back into posting the crafting things!

Food

I've been cooking quite a bit recently - all sorts of stuff from savoury to sweet from salads to cookies but if you were to look through my pinterest "Stuff I've Tried" board anyone would think that its all sweet and sugar-filled (some have been, but definitely not all of them).

If you want to try any of these for yourself, just click on the recipe name to go directly to it.

Chocolate Chunk Peanut Butter Swirl Fudgy Cookies

One word - YUMMY!

These are without a doubt some of the best chocolate biscuits I've ever made/tasted. Serious chunks of chocolate that seems to stay soft and oozey combined with the saltiness of peanut butter and a lovely, slightly crumbly biscuit base tying it all together.

I've made this a few times now and the only change I make to the recipe is mix half and half crunchy and smooth peanut butter for a tiny bit more texture (and I forgot to add the baking soda to the last batch but they turned out OK so maybe that isn't essential either).

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars
Recipe and pic from www.averiecooks.com 

Decadence plus. These were a huge hit when I took them to a work morning tea. They are a bit messy to eat, but most people did not have an issue with that and they disappeared pretty quickly.

This one was surprisingly easy to make and well and truly satisfied the craving I had been having for pecan pie, while also providing a really good chocolate hit (one can never have too much chocolate). 

One thing I was pleased about with this recipe was that when cut and served carefully, my version of these bars looked almost identical to the promo pics - That doesn't happen very often and its such a nice feeling when it does all come together.

Cinnamon Rolls

24-hour Cinnamon Rolls
Recipe and pic from: www.madeitateitlovedit.com

I know cinnamon rolls are a fairly American thing, but I'm just about ready to start lobbying to make them an Australian tradition!

My latest attempt at cinnamon rolls was made using the recipe from Made it. Ate it. Loved it. and again were a huge hit at work - even with my (formerly) American boss.

A word of warning if you are going to use this recipe - it makes a LOT!

I didn't have the 10 cups of flour the recipe calls for on hand (and I don't think I have a mixing bowl big enough to handle a recipe that large anyway) so I halved the recipe and still ended up with 3 trays of cinnamon rolls.

The bonus with this recipe is that most of the work (and its not really a lot of work anyway) is done the night before so in the morning all you need to do is pop them in the oven for about 15 minutes and then glaze them.  Nothing better than a warm sticky cinnamon roll with a cup of hot, strong coffee for morning tea.

Cleaning stuff

yeah, all the boring stuff...

Shower screens 

My pinned source - a post on  askannamoseley.com 

Don't get me wrong, I'm still loving my beautiful bathroom, but I never realised just how grotty glass shower screens could get. They are not something I've had to deal with before having only ever had a curtain at most.

We were doing OK making sure that we use the squeegee fairly regularly after showers and keeping it reasonably nice, but it just doesn't give it a really good deep clean by itself so last weekend I was determined to get in there and clean the glass properly. I scrubbed and scrubbed with windex but it  wasn't getting through the hard water stains to my satisfaction. So where do I turn? My source of all things domestic - Pinterest of course! and again it delivered for me.

The secret - magic erasers... those funny little squares of dense sponge (I think they are melamine based) that are apparently good for cleaning all sorts of things.

And the results? They speak for themselves. Both doors in the pic below had been cleaned - the one on the right with just windex, the one on the left with the magic eraser and then windex. I think we have a winner!

On the right - shower screen after scrubbing with just windex

On the left - scrubbed with magic eraser, followed by a gentle wipe with windex

I probably should turn my attention towards more festive topics and crafty stuff for my next post, and with 3 weeks off work, hopefully there will be some more crafting and blogging happening.

Until next time

K

More little renovations - Spare room refurb

We've had house guests recently so our spare room (aka the junk room) had to return to being the guest bedroom it was always supposed to be. After clearing out the accumulated junk it was decided that the room needed a lick of paint to freshen it up before it would be guest ready.

Somehow "a lick of paint" turned into "demolish a wall and re-plaster". I'm still not entirely sure how that happened, but with a week before our guests' arrival we were pulling off wall sheeting and teaching ourselves (with the help of Google and you tube) how to hang and finish new plaster sheets.

It begins! skirting boards and cornice removed and the old wall sheeting coming off

Nice new plaster  sheets hung
Note the panel installed back to front with the print facing out?
Don't do that - it causes no end of trouble when it comes to painting!

Well we managed it! The room was replastered and back together, fit for guests within the week (if not entirely finished with all the little details) and we learned heaps in the process.

1. Moving 3m long sheets of fragile plasterboard from Bunnings to home and then into the house is a logistical nightmare.
2. Gyprock definitely does have a right and a wrong side
3. It's tricky getting those joins and corners plastered neatly
4. The 16 square metres coverage claimed on the tin does not apply to undercoat going on fresh plaster.
5. Oil based sealer is a really handy thing to have around when red ink printing starts appearing through your new paint job (see #2 above).

The other half has said he wouldn't mind redoing the joins and smoothing out the layers of sealer we used to cover the red print that kept seeping through the paint where one section of sheeting was installed back to front,  but overall I'm pretty happy with the results.

Next jobs on the list for that room - repainting and re-installing the pelmet over the window, new curtains and replacing the old louvre door.

Christmas is coming (Ready or not)

I had a colleague return to the office after lunch yesterday and announce that she's just finished all her Christmas shopping. And just in case I needed another reminder that there are less than 7 short weeks until the holiday I stopped in at the the pharmacy on my way home last night and there were carols playing  over the store PA system.

How can it be November already? My how the year has flown!

I've barely even started my preparations this year! Sure I've been browsing Pinterest a lot, and I've pinned some potential decorating and gift ideas - but I'm always browsing Pinterest so I don't think I can really count that towards actual Christmas preparation.

Now that I've been forced to think about it, I'd like to try and get back to basics a bit more this year. The last couple of weeks before Christmas always end up being a frenzy of preparations, parties and spending so this year I'm going to try and avoid that a bit, do more to actively enjoy and share the festive spirit and put more thought, time and love into selecting (or making) gifts for family and friends that will hopefully be appreciated more than an easy commercial option that will be broken or forgotten within days or the no-brainer gift cards which are my usual go-to gifts when I run out of time or ideas.

All of that basically boils down to the fact that I need to get motivated, organised and creative again... and really soon

Have you got your festive season planned and organised yet?  If you're going the home made gifts option this year, what have you got started so far?