Baking, succulents, and parties

Hello! I realised recently that I have an awful lot of photos of little things I have made/ baked, but I haven't shared them with you! You may have seen some of these on Instagram, but here we can talk about them a little more without having to make those huuugggeeee comments that end up looking like a really dense wall of text ~___^

First up: ugly cake! Scott and I recently celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary for which the traditional gift is salt. I thought that sounded a little boring so instead I decided to make a salted caramel cake. I wanted to make a layered cake, but I also didn't want it to be huge so I made a rectangle shaped upside down cake, and cut it into smaller circles. The caramel part of the upside down cake means that I didn't have to put anything between the layers.

However, cutting nice looking circles from cake is actually a lot harder than I expected it to be! When I layered them up, I realised how wonky my cake was! >___<

I thought about covering the entire thing in buttercream icing to try and make it look nicer, but ultimately decided that salted caramel layers and a salted caramel sauce poured over the entire thing was probably enough forms of sugar for one small cake so I left it naked and ugly ~___^ We ate it anyway, and it tasted pretty good!

I also made a simple card for Scott. I used a black and white chevron paper to cover a blank card, glued on a square of gold heart patterned paper, and stuck a black and gold embellishment in the middle. I messily scribbled a border around the heart paper with my silver metallic pen and it was done!

Bunnings had a heap of tiny succulents for sale recently, so I brought, ummm, way too many of them. I put one in a tiny teacup to give to a friend for her housewarming, and put two more in two empty tins I kept because they're cute. I added dinosaurs because dinosaurs are awesome.

I put the rest in a bigger pot, and added more dinosaurs and some pretty little rocks. I'm not sure how well that one in the middle is going; I brought it because I thought it was a cool colour, but I'm now thinking that perhaps I brought a dying succulent. Hmm.

I designed a badge to give to some of my derby pals, and recently two of my buddies from skating star classes had their birthday so I used two of the leftover pins to decorate some hair bows. The fabric I used is the same design as the badges, which I got printed from my Spoonflower store.

For my birthday I had an Adventure Time themed party - I didn't take many photos but I did remember to photograph some of the food (the most important part, right! ~___^)

I made Lumpy Space Crackles with using this recipe ... except I didn't put in any cocoa and I used honey instead of maple syrup. I also added some blue and red food colouring which didn't mix in that well. I was hoping for it to make purple, but it mostly didn't. I also put on some star shaped sprinkles to make them more space like ^___^

I brought some Adventure Time cookies, but they didn't taste that great so I made them into chocolate bark, with the addition of salted pretzels and pop rocks. They were a big hit!

I also made a Tree Trunks apple pie; the fancy lattice top was trickier to make then I expected it to be! It tasted really great and even though it was huge, it got demolished really quickly.

These sunglasses were made for my friend Clare for Christmas. Clare has an adorable style and is a big fan of daisies, so I wanted to make her something to suit her look.

All I did to make these was glue little daisy cabochons around the frame of some round sunglasses. It was really easy, but they turned out really cute!

I also made these Wookiee cookies after seeing these super cute biscuits by Sugared Nerd.

I used a mini gingerbread person cutter, and melted chocolate for the details. I adore how they turned out!

I made this chocolate bark for my dad for Christmas - I added almonds, pepitas, pistachios, dried cranberries, and white chocolate chips to melted dark chocolate. I also made Dad some coconut ice using this recipe (except I used Stevia instead of rice malt syrup), a trail mix, and more gingerbread. I added twice the amount of ginger into Dad's batch than I used for the Wookiee cookies because both of us like our gingerbread really spicy (not that he wanted to share! ~___^)

Inspired by Messy Nessy Chic, I made this cheese platter Christmas Tree for after our family lunch. Honestly, we were all a bit too full for this, but we did our best anyway! ^___^

Lastly, I've been working on the Death Star blanket. If you've been a long time reader of this blog, you may remember that I started this project in, oh, 2011. It's been in the WIP box for a long time, but the new movie inspired me to get it back out. I've started joining the squares, which makes the whole project a little more inspiring - I've almost finished the rows with the laser! (Baby steps!) ^___^

- Lisa xx

Halloween 2015: Mermaid costume and spooky sweets review

Hello! So, Halloween is over for another year. I adore Halloween; I'm always so sad when it's finished! I've been told a few times this year that my hair looks like "mermaid hair", which is SUCH a lovely compliment that I decided to go as a mermaid for my costume ^____^

Rebecca and I were planning on hitting our regular rink for their Halloween skate session and then a party afterwards so I wanted something that would be comfortable enough to skate in.

 

I figured leggings and a skirt would be a practical combination and when I found this gorgeous shimmery scale fabric at Spotlight, I knew I was on the right track. I used this tutorial by Cal Patch to make my own pattern for the leggings and, aside from making them a little tighter around the knees next time, they worked out wonderfully!

I'm not yet at the stage where I feel comfortable enough wearing only leggings, so I also made a circle skirt with the same fabric. This video tutorial by Annika from The Pineneedle Collective was extremely helpful for this, but as my sewing machine was still broken at this stage, I had to get a little creative with sewing it together. I ended up doing the entire thing on my overlocker, and not hemming the skirt or adding elastic to the waistband. I'm a little worried that the waistband fabric will eventually stretch out; if that happens I'll have to reverse engineer in some elastic, but it was fine for a costume.

For the top, I printed out a picture of clamshells and used them to make a freezer paper stencil. I mixed up some light blue and light green fabric paint (I just diluted the colours I had with more white fabric paint) and used sponge brushes to add the blue on the top and green at the bottom. Then I used a brush dipped in both colours to mix them together in the middle of the shells and create a colour gradient look.

And then I put silver glitter all over them! One can never have too much glitter ^___^ Lastly, I made some hair accessories simply by attaching, with E6000, hair pin backings to some shells and starfish I had in my stash  (hoarding from childhood holidays *does* come in handy! ~___^)

The day after Halloween I hosted a crafternoon, and took the opportunity to test out some spooky recipes!

The strange pink lumps below were meant to be the Bloody Popcorn Brains by Not Quite Nigella, but mine are not quite as pin-worthy! My popcorn turned out really sticky, so making them into any real shape was seemingly impossible. I just ended up blobbing down lumps, adding some raspberry jam and calling them Blood Clots! They taste amazing though and are perfect for a special dessert treat or for curing diabetic hypoglycemia (I'd personally opt for the former!). 

 

The Spooky Worm Halloween Jello by A Spicy Perspective was voted "grossest-looking" by my guests; some wouldn't even try it due to its appearance! I'll grant that it's creepy looking, and the tapioca pearls lend an interesting texture to the jelly, but Scott, Rebecca, and I all quite liked the taste. I used lime and grape jelly and they turned out these lovely pastel colours, which went really well with the "witchetty-grub" lollies I found in the supermarket (I couldn't find plain old jelly worms like the recipe called for anywhere!). I used little ramekins as my moulds, but the jelly didn't come out cleanly. No matter, I think it looks even more gross this way ~___^
 

I'd never made chocolate bark before, and I found The Pioneer Woman's Halloween Bark tutorial very helpful even though I didn't follow her recipe completely. I melted white cooking chocolate, poured it into a tray lined with baking paper, and then pressed in salted pretzels, Star Wars character cookies, mini M&Ms, and pop-rocks. After sitting in the fridge for a while, it was ready to be broken up and served! This was the most popular dessert at the crafternoon; the salty-sweet combination was considered most superior by my friends ^____^ I personally think that the addition of the pop-rocks makes it a very appropriate Halloween treat as there is something rather creepy about your sweets making random cracking noises ...

Scott's favourite was the coffin cake; which is just a plain chocolate cake with peppermint icing. Can't beat the classics, I guess! I got the coffin-shaped pan from Spotlight and it does have a cross indentation on it, but that didn't show through very well on the finished cake, so I added my own with writing icing.

And that's it! Gosh! Did you have a fantastic Halloween? I hope you did, and that you dressed up! I love hearing about and seeing other people's costumes ^____^

- Lisa xx

Crochet chevron cowl, a 60s mod costume, plus photos from Singapore!

Hello! I'm back! I spent last week in Singapore, which was so much fun! I'd never been overseas before and we were in time for Lunar New Year, which meant everything was decorated and everyone seemed in a festive mood ^____^ One thing I was worried about though was that I wasn't going to finish a project for the Get Geometric KAL! I'd started Tanya's knitted cowl pattern a few times, but I just couldn't get my head around it! I think I need to do some more simple knitting and work my way up to it.

I also figured I'd want something to do on the plane flight over, so I packed some balls of chunky yarn and a big plastic crochet hook in my check in luggage. I did double check with the lady who checked me in at the airport, and she said I should be fine. Luckily, security also didn't mind and I was allowed to keep my crafting supplies!

I used the same stitch pattern that I used to make my chevron fingerless mitts, but I worked this cowl in the round. I crocheted with two balls of black yarn, then changed to green for two rows, and then finished off with another ball of black. It's very squishy and cosy, but not really appropriate for Australian, or Singaporean, weather!

My phone started playing up basically as soon as I left Australia (maybe it got homesick?) so I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked to. Nonetheless, I took a fair few!

 

          

 

On the first day we went to Gardens on the Bay, which was really lovely. We went into the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest which were amazing feats of both technology and gardening, and I found the information on sustainability fascinating. However, my favourite part was probably the goats made of flowers! They're just so adorable!

 

We saw the Sultan Mosque, and spent some time wandering around the Arab Quarter. There were so many silk and carpet stores; the tiny camel carpet was especially tempting for me! We had coffee in a tiny Turkish coffee shop which was covered in beautiful tiles and lanterns; I wish I could have photographed that! Also, we saw lots of interesting street art!

Chinatown on Lunar New Year was amazing, and absolutely packed with people! We lined up to see the parade, but nothing happened for hours and we were too weak to wait until midnight to see the fireworks so instead we had dinner; at a Thai restaurant in Chinatown, ironically!

We also went to the Singapore Zoo, where my phone took many blurry photos. Damn! I did get these two of the flamingos and the mouse deer. I'd never heard of a mouse deer before and they were so cute! They are tiny and one of them had a baby, which was even smaller and more adorable! We also saw elephants, giraffes, a polar beer, a white tiger, a komodo dragon, giant turtles, otters, and many many monkeys ... it was incredible fun!

I'm a big fan of froyo here in Australia, and I thought it was cool how different it is in Singapore! Still very delicious though ~___^ The chocolate eclair I thought was cool because it had a merlion on it! Seriously, merlions are everywhere in Singapore! By the way, if you're ever in Singapore, I can highly recommend the high tea at the Ritz Carlton - eight courses of pure deliciousness and more tea than any one mortal could possibly consume.

And then, the day after I got back, Bec and I headed out to a 60s themed birthday party. It was so much fun! We hit up the opshop earlier that day, and found enough mod/beatnik-ish clothing to make some fun outfits ^____^

My outfit consisted mainly of a black polka-dot mini dress with an aqua collar and waist tie; it cost me $7! I also wore knee high black socks and black wedges, which I already owned. My handbag is one left to me by my Nana Tess; I don't know what era it is actually from, but I felt that it worked well with the rest of my outfit. I wore contacts so that I could wear massive false eyelashes, and I used a bump-it to fake a bit of a bouffant hairstyle.

Bec hit the jackpot and found a black turtleneck (high necked knitwear is very difficult to find in Australian opshops!) and this super cute overall dress. She also wore black ballet flats, round sunglasses (yes, at night; that's dedication to a costume!), and a vintage pendant she had found previously at an antique store.

Bec and I also spent some time before the party icing the birthday girl's cake. It's well ... it's not pretty. But, it tasted amazing! I used this recipe to make the two cakes, but I left out the milk (I used plain water instead), used coconut oil instead of vegetable oil, substituted self-raising flour for the plain flour, baking powder, and baking soda, and added 2.5 teaspoons of peppermint essence to the cake mixture. I also ended up doubling the recipe for each cake ... this thing is pretty massive as I used a deep square tin, about 12 inches wide. I made the icing from unsalted butter, icing sugar, peppermint essence, cocoa, and a *lot* of black food colouring. The dots are made from store-brought fondant, although I did colour the yellow dots myself using gel food colouring. If I had the option, I would buy pre-coloured fondant though, because I think the food colouring slightly changed the consistency of the fondant which made it sticky and harder to work with. Plus, I dyed my hands yellow >____< If I made this again, I would change the ratio of butter to icing sugar to make the icing thicker because the icing did seem to slowly kinda ooze off the cake ... the hot weather here also probably doesn't help with that! Anyway, Bec and I had a good time putting it together, and all the guests had a wonderful time eating it ~____^

 

 And that's it from me right now! Next week I start roller derby training and I can't wait! I did catch a cold the day after the party though (I'm blaming the aeroplane) so I'm really really hoping that clears up before then! My current plan is to eat lots of garlic bread and spend a lot of time resting (aka crafting) on the couch so I'm fighting fit by Monday! Any cold cures would be greatly appreciated ~____^

- Lisa xx