Denial

This is the pile of clothes sitting in my house just waiting for someone to come along and hem/alter/mend them with tender love and care...


*slowly creeps away*

I heart IKEA

I'd been meaning to check out some of the IKEA fabric offerings for awhile now and finally got the opportunity for a quick 5 minute nose-around the textiles section while buying some clothing racks. I have to say I was very impressed - they have some gorgeous prints that aren't really shown off that well in the catalogues. My current favourite is the Annamoa range by Lotta Kühlhorn (click on the pic below for a more detailed view of the gorgeous designs and colours)

desktop wallpaper of this graphic available from ikea here
I'm also loving the Cecilia range although I have to say that photos don't do the designs justice.
I was going to pick one of the designs to make up a fabric tote bag but just couldn't decide between the gorgeous options and didn't want to waste my hard earned pennies so I ended up hold offing for now and instead decided to take advantage of some clearance prices available - I ended up with 2 metres of some sturdy cotton at 50% off.

Not quite as attractive as the designs above *sigh* but I might as well give the bag pattern a test run before spending and potentially ruining the good stuff.

I must say you sure can do a lot of stuff with IKEA fabrics.

Craft + The Office - Can it get any better than this?

On my random travels over the interwebs, I came across this piece of crafty goodness from Sarah at Totally Severe...


Highlight of the day. Maybe even the week! :D

Excuse me while I ROFLMAO

Cath Kidston - not just about the fabric

How cute is this iPhone case from Cath Kidston?


Currently out of stock but hoping it comes back in - Frannie has kindly offered to get me one if available from the other side of the globe (hai Frannie!)

Fingers crossed coz it's super cute and I think it'll actually match the material for the bag that came with her book 'Sew!' which I don't seem to have blogged about for some reason *oops*

Bibs for Bubs

Check out the bibs I made. They were surprisingly easy to make - I think the most difficult bit was selecting which materials to use to go along with my spotty pink flannel backing (proudly recycled from some PJ pants that were too holey to do anything else with).
I used the template from one of the books I bought awhile back, 'Bend-The-Rules Sewing', followed the instructions and voila!

The only changes I made was to add another layer of white cotton in the middle of the bib, mainly for aesthetic reasons as the spotty pink flannel was showing through the white cotton on the other side, making it harder to appreciate the pink fairies and pink and blue stars.

I was really torn as to which side was front - so I attached my snap fasteners to different sides on each bib and I'll leave it up to the Mummy to co-ordinate with bubba's outfit for the day.

I'll be making more of these.

iPhone Snapshots - April 10

South Melbourne Market, Melbourne
Fruit and basket purchased from the Market and arranged at home as a gift for a new Mum and Dad in hospital.

Easter Monday Macaroons

I thought I'd take advantage of the long Easter weekend to do a bit of catching up with friends, so Kimba and I nominated Easter Monday as our day of baking macaroons. I had had a very yummy one from Laurent when I went up to Sydney last week but it was a reminder that regardedless of where you are, if you want to eat a good macaroon, it's going to cost, so I thought it'd be great if we could just bake them up at home.

I had heard that making macaroons wasn't difficult *YAY* but making good macaroons was *eep*. Armed with that bit of information, we went into it knowing that at the very least, we'd have something edible!

Kimba found a couple of recipes online and printed them out, and with a bit of guidance from our own personal masterchef Cindy, we decided to combine the recipes and go with 2 batches - chocolate and vanilla - partly because they are generally liked flavours but mainly because we didn't have the ingredients to make orange or raspberry ones (we're maybe not so great with the forward planning).


The frothy peaks of whipped egg whites... so shiny!
As we progressed, we had some surprise visitors drop in so our group of 2 bakers and masterchef doubled in size - perfect timing to help with the various stirring, mixing and piping jobs that were available. No work no food!


Sifting the almond meal
Following the instructions, we piped out our macaroon mix to a 1.5cm ball size, expecting them to expand.


Masterful piping
They did not.

As they were baking and not expanding we decided to take sizing into our own hands and piped out the next lot into (rather large) escargot shapes which once baked, looked a lot like... well escargot shaped baked goods.

After the macaroons had cooled and we had whipped up the butter icing for the vanilla macaroons and the ganache for the chocolate ones, assembly began. As you can see from the pictures, visually our mini-macaroons looked almost like the real things but they were a little over-baked (I suspect due to their small size they baked a lot quicked than we expected), so they weren't too chewy on the inside.


Our pretty mini-macaroons. Almost perfect!
Our giant escargot-style macaroons were very goo-ey, but pretty much went the other way and didn't have the firm, slightly crunchy outside that we were hoping for, but they sure tasted good!


Our escargot macaroons. It was pointed out that the chocolate ones bore a rather strong resemblance to something stinky...
Considering it was a first time effort, we were pretty happy with how they turned out, especially since we pretty much had no idea what we were doing. Lots of lessons learned for next time - and lots of happy full tummies in the meantime.