You told us and we listened and are moving most of our classes to Saturdays. So you can come along to a morning or afternoon class on a Saturday and treat yourself to a few hours of ‘me’ time. Classes start 3rd July and include carving your own stamps in hand printing, making cute owls in soft toy making, sewing childrenswear and jewellery making. You receive all materials, refreshments, tuition and a Notebook goody bag.

To book just go here

I always thought ‘Christmas in July’ was just a marketing ploy by Blue Mountains Tourism to justify a weekend away, sitting by a fire drinking gluhwein - like we need an excuse.

A couple of weeks ago, before the cold-snap of sub-zero temperatures rolled around (the vegie patch survived!), my husband thought it would be ever-so-much fun to make a gingerbread house. I’m not entirely sure where the thought came from but if he was up for challenging, whoops, I mean bonding time with the kids, all the power to him.

Once returned from the supermarket with all the use-once-in-a-year ingredients, a proper read of the method was in order. While I sat back to bear witness to a lovingly shared father-child moment, what resulted was a rather comical cover-up of expletives while he realised just what a massive undertaking construction of a house made of flat cake was really going to be. Especially when the kids want to ‘help’.

To ensure this moment didn’t end up etched in the minds of the children for entirely different reasons to the oringal plan, I was called on to assembe the rather tall, narrow and ‘wonky’ (kids words, not mine) house. Decorating with whatever lollies that hadn’t already been eaten, darling husband ever so solemly retired to the sidelines as Cheif Gluhwein Maker. A very important role nonetheless.

Will you be celebrating Christmas In July?

Prost!

Siobhan

xo

A freshly baked muffin in winter is like a warm hug from Nanna. I’ve been testing and tweaking recipes from my favourite cookbooks over the last couple of months and I think I’ve finally cracked it.

RASPBERRY MUFFINS
Makes 6 large.

120g unsalted butter (plus extra for greasing)
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
170ml sour cream
1 cup plain self-raising flour
2/3 cup almond meal
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
sea salt
150g frozen raspberries (or blueberries or mixed berries)
icing sugar for dusting

Method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease a large 6 muffin mould. Cream the butter and sugar in a food processor. Add the eggs, vanilla extract, sour cream and sifted flour, almond meal and baking powder and mix well to combine. Add berries and stir through by hand. Pour evenly into muffin moulds and bake in oven for 25-30mins. Test with skewer to ensure middle is cooked. Pull from oven and leave to cool. Turn out of moulds and dust tops with icing sugar.

These muffins will keep in the freezer for weeks. I wrap them individually and then pull them out the night before. Perfect fo popping in your handbag for a treat at the park for you and the kids the next morning.

Enjoy!

Siobhan

xo

By Corrie Sebire:
Papercraft isn’t just about scrapbooking! Take a visit to Melinda Andersen’s blog here and see her beautiful modern paper buntings, cards and stationary. This Saturday at The Craft Room you can make this gorgeous card and papercraft products in her Creative Collage class. You’ll learn modern techniques and tips of the trade from Melinda who runs her own successful papercraft business from home. 

This veggie garden caper is going better than expected if I to be completely honest. It must be something to do with Mr Gnome bringing me the luck of the green-thumb.

While there have been some cabbage moth issues, it’s not something a little ‘find and squash’ can’t fix (sorry caterpillars!).

Overall we are enjoying a steady supply of rainbow chard, which is such a beautiful addition to the patch with it’s brightly coloured stems. Rainbow chard, or the plain old regular chard variety, can generally be used as a replacement for spinach. I like it finely sliced in soups like minestrone.

The lettuce are coming along very nicely too. In fact one of the red varieties has grown about 6 inches in the last week. We are calling it the Leaning Tower of Lettuce. The photo below shows the red luttuce in question pre-growth spurt.

It’s funny to think that winter isn’t at all the time we think about eating salad greens and yet from what I understand, the colder months are the best time for growing them. Understanding seasonality is just one of the interesting things that you learn when gardening.

When I do go to the supermarket and buy up on anything not growing in our garden I realise just how much I take for granted the year-round accessibility to all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Could you imagine having to grow for yourself every kind of F&V your family eats in a week? Meals certainly would be less adventurous. That being said, there are some very clever gardeners out there who use cloches and little greenhouses to grow all sorts of things out of season in an effort to be more self-sustainable.

There’s probably a little too much more than we need of both rainbow chard and lettuce so there’s been some happy takers of ‘excess stock’ in the form of visiting friends and family. “Oh before you leave, take some lettuce!” I yell just as they are about to walk out the door. Everyone loves fresh backyard produce.

The broccoli is powering on, but no flower buds as yet. I think I hindered growth here because I planted the seedlings in mounds which have gradually washed away with all the rain we’ve had so they’ve lost support around the stem and were leaning over. I put some little stakes in the ground to prop them upright, so fingers crossed they’ll start budding soon.

What’s really got me excited are the sugarsnap pea pods which have appeared seemingly overnight. It’s funny how you look and look and can’t find one then the next day there’s one staring you right in the face and all of a sudden you can see dozens of them.

I went along to the Farmers Markets a few weeks back and a lady there was selling mix-and-match vegie seedling trays. So instead of getting one tray of cauliflower seedlings, which would have been too many for our plot, I was able to just get two, plus another two each of beetroot, fennel and celery. It’s the perfect way to test out different varieties without ending up with a bumper crop ready for harvest all at the same time.

What’s really great though is that the weeding has been much less of a chore now the weather had grown cold.

How are you all managing in this cold weather? I’ve been drinking lots of green tea and getting around the house in my sheepskin boots.

Siobhan.

xo

Over the weekend I finished building a bench seat for our entryway, an idea 1oo% inspired by Angela Ferdig’s attempt at Kriselkeeper.

I found a local woodsmith, Mark, who has a lovely collection of reclaimed timber hidden away in a self storage garage. I had very (very!) little idea about how timber looks once it’s been finished so I chose my timber, tallow wood, in the same way I choose horses at the race track - because the name brings fond memories. In this case, summer holidays at Byron Bay and swimming at Cosy Corner on Tallow Beach.

Mark did the hard slog for me by shaping the timber and sanding it back. I wasn’t after a ‘clean’ look so he left the sides uneven with little sanding to keep characteristics of age and the chainsaw marks along one side.

When I got the timber home I gave it a coat of Danish oil to give a natural non-shiny finish. After the coat was left to dry for 10 minutes I sanded it back very lightly with 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper and then rubbed it down with a soft cloth before repeating the process.

After trawling as many of the second had shops in Newcastle as possible over the last few weeks I finally came across a side table with cast iron hairpin legs that would be a whole lot cheaper than purchasing new ones from the US site Hairpin Legs (they wanted quite a bit for freight).

I sanded back the legs and then gave them a coat with semi-matt black spraypaint. Once they were dry I attached them to the base. Because of the imperfections of the timber I had to space out one of the legs with some washers so all legs sat evenly on the ground.

And voila, an entry way bench seat! The baskets were on special from Target and will be perfect to store everyone’s bags and shoes.

All I need now is a coatrack above and this little space will be set.