Grandad

Happy Birthday Grandad.

Tree card

Hope you feel better soon, wish I was able to see you on your special day.

This was a really easy card to make and turned out very effective, I love making scraps of felt and playing around with different ideas so this was a nice way of using up some of my experiments. You are probably noticing the angelina fibres theme running through my card recently, I still am in love with them, and continue to get a little to excited when I finish ironing them and lift away the paper to find fused fibres, how do you know if your addicted to something?

Carrot cake

Carrot Cake

So over our post BBQ cocktails we flicked through cook books to find a cake to make as my friend decided I should make her a cake, or was it 'you haven't made me a cake in a while' I can't quite remember. She decided that she wanted a carrot cake I made the same cake for her Birthday and I guess she loved it so much she wanted more. This is a carrot cake I made from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book.

Tier of carrot cake

 The recipe calls for three tiers to this cake but I only have two cake tins, even though my oven is now fixed because of the increased thickness of this tier it took almost double the baking time. Umm this looks ummy, the cake was a bit soggy in my opinion so next time I make this for my friend as I think it is inevitable, I might alter the recipe slightly, or buy another cake tin.

Slice of carrot cake

I think it is important to point out that after our cocktails my friend was a tad tired (or hungover), for the day and she cancelled our tennis plans, she was however up for the carrot cake and got out of bed especially for it. Now that's friendship isn't it.

Albert's Birthday

Albert's Birthday card

It was Albert's birthday on last Sunday he was three, he had his birthday party today. This is the card I made for him.

If I had had more time I would have attempted this again. It is supposed to be a bird of prey. One thing about making animal cards from hand made felt is that it comes apart easier, I need to make animals that have bigger body parts to make them work. Part of the wing came of here when I was dry felting on the detail, luckily you can't tell. But hey live and learn, the next ones I make will be better.

We went on a picnic to the Zoo on Albert's birthday, I was supplying the crisps, but I also made some Vegetarian sausage rolls with the left over pastry form the antipasti tart I made for my Easter BBQ. I used this recipe which is a Delia one. The ones I took on the picnic disappeared quickly, however the pot I took to work lasted three days, one person told me that they were not my best!

Cheese and Onion Veggie Roll

They went down very well with me though, I need to adjust to having a working oven though! Old habits and all, I fear that I might be burning a lot of things in the near future.

Easter BBQ

I know April isn't the best season to have a BBQ April showers and all that, but I like playing hostess and I like making food. So having friends over is fun for me and I have no room in my tiny flat for a table so the best thing about BBQ's is that you don't need a table and everybody tends to go outside. So I planned a BBQ hoping that the lovely sunny weather would hold up. I also abused the recipe's on the BBC 4's website for my food plans.

I made Haloumi skewers and Mediterranean vegetables, which I found here.

Haloumi Skewers

They were yummy and were lovely the day after with salad and home made bread for lunch. I worried that the haloumi and marinade combo might have been to salty as, the main base of the dressing was olives but it worked well.

Homebaked fresh bread

I made lovely bread from Nigella Lawson's book How to be a domestic goddess. It was a basic white loaf, but it was scrummy. And my kitchen still smells of it.

Ummm I love the smell of home cooked bread. I made this on Friday and stored it in the fridge overnight and then crushed it and cooked it before the BBQ so that it was still warm. As I made this after my last shift at work, by the time I had finished needing or pounding it to oblivion all of the tension I was still carrying was gone. I might try and put this into my stress relief program.

Antipasti Tart

I also made antipasti tart which I got from here. I was unsure about artichokes but decided that I should try something new. They were salty but it was a nice starter, as I prepared this before people arrived. I used sun dried tomato intense paste instead of red pesto as I couldn't find any that was suitable for vegetarians (a good reason to make my own sometime).

Antipasti Tart

The last thing I made was sweet potato and chilli fries. I love sweet potatoes. I got the recipe from here. These were lovely and easy to cook in the oven whilst the BBQ's were warming up, though I should have asked the people who were coming if they liked things hot, I didn't think they were hot but watching a friend puffing and waving her hand in front of they mouth shout 'oohh there hot' I suppose is a point against my hostess skills. But it was a tiny bit funny.

Sweet Potatoe Chilli Fries

Oh and it did rain, which was good for my BBQ, but bad for the country as we are in the middle of a drought. Poor country!

March .....

Were did March go? Well my March has involved a night shift stint, which for most people means a chance to catch up on the work you can't do during the day, but no. I am one of those people that does not have any luck! There are many of us out there and you know who you are ..... March also included a finally submitted my final tape and assignment, so hopefully I will be a CBT therapist of some description soon. To complete my assignment I poped up to Nottingham to see my parents (see Sacher tort).

During manic March I also found the time to learn how to Crochet.

I decided to start with a blanket, it may take me a while, this is about thee weeks work. I have only been doing this in the evenings and I need to build up my finger muscles so that I will be able to keep it up for longer than 15minets.

It was also my best friends birthday, wohoo fab night out in London Happy Birthday Liz.
 

Also Eve was born,

 

It was also Mothers day, happy Mothers day to the best mum. Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the card I made for you. But it was yellow and had butterflies on. There was a bit of a butterfly theme this month. They were all made with a butterfly hole punch.

Hopefully April will be a bit less manic.

Sacher Torte

When I popped home to see my parents in Nottingham my Mum made a great suggestion, 'lets make a Sacher Torte'.  

We got the recipe from here. This is a recipe that my sister has made a few times and she makes it really well, so much so her husband requested it as his birthday cake. It is a truly wonderful torte. 

Here is our torte all gunked up with lovely marmalade which we used instead of apricot jam as Mum decided that this was not needed. I have to admit it made no difference, the jam is used to keep the icing attached to the cake and apricot jam is preferable as it is not as flavour sum. Making the cake was fun and I opted to do this before writing my assignment, which was defiantly one of those no brainer decisions! Cake first please.

This was the best bit, making the icing, chocolate and cream mixed together. This was made the day after the cake was, as I got a bit to engrossed in writing my assignment, which you will be pleased to know I finished. I think my motivation was increased by the thought of Sacher Torte at the end of it. The icing was left to cool whilst we all get dressed and showered. And then the fun began.

The icing has to be poured onto the cake and you rotate the cake to make the icing reach all the edges, it was like one of those puzzle games were you had to get the balls to roll into certain places. If you spread the icing you lose the lovely sheen. As you can see we had to do a bit a spreading.

The finished product! It was yummy, I need to work a bit on my writing skills, but at least I spelt it right.