Fuschia Update

I wanted to show how my standard fuschia plant was going. I started this some time ago with no idea what I was doing. It's all a big learning experience for me. I learn from it and do it better next time. However I am please to be able to show my plant is doing well.

Its starting to take shape. I can see now I should have trained it a bit more while it was small so the stems were twisted and not so leggy.
I have recently taken lots of cuttings from some of my favorite roses so these will be my new projects. Home grown standard roses. A chance to give it another go.

Baby Shower Crafts

 

In this post I am showing off all the crafts from my baby shower we held in October. It took me a long time to prepare for this event. It was such a special time for me that I wanted to put in alot of effort and make it truely memorable.

 

This baby is a mircle. I had a lot of issues concieveing so I was truely over joyed!

 

Below is my chocolate table. We made all the slices, cookies and cakes and my partner even helped me make the three teared cake stands.

 

 

 

Below is a picture of the three teared cake stand we made along with all home made treats.

 

A friend made the rocky road browines and I made the cookies and choc brownies using a packet mix. The cake stand was made by purchasing a cake stand kit that came with the drill bit to drill the holes in the middle of the plates. It was only around $10 with a drill bit and the metal rod and all the screws to complete it. I just purchased the plates for a few cents each at the op shop! Much cheeper than buying one new and I got to recycle and have a vintage garden look.

 

 

 

Home made triple chocolate muffins with hand made muffin toppers and food lables.

 

My muffins were a packet mix. The toppers were really simple. They are a coloured card with a lady bug sticker on the front. Cut around the sticker and tape a tooth pick to the back! Easy and cheep!

 

 

Home made paper pompoms

 

These were a little tricky with numb hands from the swelling from being pregnant. Luckily my partners Mum helped me out. I Utubed how to do it. I have included a links but I found it helpful to watch a few ways. I found using lots of sheets of paper the easiest way to do it. Here is a good link with lots of photos

 

 

 

 home made bunting

 

photo line

And thank you treat bags

 

 

My baby shower invitations

Earlier in Hardwork Heaven I mentioned my Baby Shower and all the crafts I attempted to set up our special day. It was a lot of work but soooo worth it.

 

 

 I mentioned I would come back and write about how I made everything. I was hoping to get it done before my baby came a long but unfortunately late in my pregnancy I had bad swelling in my hands making typing very difficult and painful.

 The good news is our beautiful baby girl Lara arrived healthy and well on Christmas eve! An absolute dream for me to have a healthy baby girl! Even more excuses to indulge in my crafts now I have my baby girl to make them for! And now my hands are improving it's a lot easier to type.

 

Well as promised I'm finally writing about my baby shower in between feeds!

 

Well the first thing I made for Lara's shower was the invitations.

 

I had a slightly different image in my head but this is what I came up with with the resources and the budget that was available.

 

I wanted something personal and modern not so much cutesy like a traditional invitation and I also wanted them to mirror the theme I had planned, which also evolved with the resources available.
My theme was

Ladybugs and Indulgent Chocolate.
 I wanted to have a afternoon tea with an indulgent chocolate table and I have always loved lady beetles so this way I could incorporate the chocolate with the baby shower theme. It was sooo me!

 

I did lots of research into different styles of baby showers before I decided what I wanted. I spent a lot of time on Google going through images for ideas. Once I decided on my theme I gathered my supplies.
My first step was to create my invitations was to googled some poems to help with the wording.

This is the link to the site with the poems I used. Heaps of great ideas. I would defiantly recommend trying this site. I cut and pasted the poems I liked to a word file where I played with fonts and the arrangements of the poems.

 

Below you can see the final result of the wording of my invitations. Please feel free to used my layout. 

 

Front of Invitation

 

We would be honoured to have your company at

Katrina’s

Baby Shower

A brand new baby is on the way, so come celebrate with a special day!

We're having a get together and a few little treats, in honour of a new baby we soon all will meet!

 

 

Back of Invitation

 

 

Dear

Come join us for an indulgent afternoon tea

on

13^th October 2012

2pm till 3.30pm

at

12 T------- A

U------- 3---

RSVP by 30^thSeptember 2012

Katrina - 0------

We'll share our secret and give you a clue; our new baby will look great in... Fooled you!

Boy or girl, we simply can't say, we'll have to wait until the big day!

Please don’t feel you have to bring a gift.

Presents are great but your company is the bigger treasure.

 

  I'm not big on making people feel they have to spend money. You never know what situation people are in so I gave my guests the option of bringing a gift. I didn't want them to feel obligated to spend their hard earned money just to attend. I would rather have my friends around just to have some fun. I don't need expensive gifts. I feel people spend far too much money on presents for people outside of their families these days.  

Once the wording was finished I printed it all out on a silver dotted paper. I later changed this to parchment paper because the ink started to rub off the paper and you could see the glue through it!

 

You can see my invitations are just a piece of pre-cut card, with tissue paper cut to size, glued on top of the card and then the paper with the wording, glued on top of the tissue paper.

 

 I added a ladybug to one corner and diamond stickers to all sides to hold the paper down.

Originally this was to stop the paper from curling while the glue dried but it just looked so pretty I repeated the diamond stickers on all my invitations. Each invitation has a hand tied, brown ribbon glued at the top and to my surprise the blue stick you can see in the photo below is all I had to use. I really thought this glue wouldn't be strong enough but I made sure the ribbon was well covered and they all stuck.

  

 

On the reverse side I have the details of the party, much the same as the front, with the same layers of card, tissue paper and the printed wording sheet. I have repeated the diamond stickers, ladybug and this time added a red hand tied ribbon to emphasise the lady bug theme.

I was really pleased with the final result. I also added a magnet on the back so the invitations could be stuck to the fridge so my party would not be forgotten.

 

 Below you can see the beginnings of some invitations in white. I had so many extra people I thought of at the last minute that I ran out of brown paper.

The invitation were place in an envelope and sent out! I got so many lovely comments on my invitations but I have to admit they were very time consuming to make. It took me two week end to complete them all! This was from planning to completion. They are something I will have forever as a reminder of how special this pregnancy was too me. I've all ways wanted to be a Mum and I have never been so happy!

 

 

A Very Old Choc Chip Cookie Recipe

 

Today I made Choc Chip Cookies.

My partner had made some a while back which were amazing. We were not sure which recipe he used but he knew it was simple.

My partner had this recipe in a very old book from 'Lake Charm Centenary Cookbook 1879 -1979' all typed up with an old fashioned type writer font and held together with staples.

 

It was the simplest recipe we could find so I gave it a go.

 

They are called in the book 'Choc Bit Biscuits by Mimi Pasco'.

 It's all in ounces and pounds so you'll have to convert it unless your lucky enough to have a scale that has ounces as well, like I have.

 

I made mine a little different because I am lazy!!

 

 

 

 

First I used 5 ounces of butter chopped. The recipe said to use 4. I had 5 ounce and didn't want to leave one ounce in the fridge so though I may as well use it and it also says to melt it. I just chopped it up and put in in the Kenwood mixer.

 

 

  

Next add the sugar- 6 ounces. The recipe says use caster sugar, I used soft brown sugar.

 

Next add one egg and mix.

 

  Add 8 ounces of SR flour. I used 6 ounces of SR flour and 3 of plain flour. I would stick to just SR flour. They might have been even more chewy and thick if I had of stuck to the recipe.

Then lastly add a whole packet of choc chips.

Mine was the standard 250g milk chocolate chips and I always use good quality chocolate.

The recipe just says to cook at a moderate temp. It said nothing about how long to cook or how big to make them.

 

I used extra large teaspoons full of mix and sqwashed them just a bit with my knuckles. As it turns out I didn't need too as they go flat as you can see below. Leave plenty of room on the tray for them to spread out.

Also I made 21 large cookies. May have been 22 if I could have stopped eating the raw mix!!

 

 I cooked mine at 180 degrees Celsius for about 12 minutes.

 

 This was just long enough for them to just brown and some to look cooked on the edges but as if they needed longer in the centre.

 

 But they turned out pretty good.

 

I think they will improve over night. They taste pretty yummy now and they are still hot!!

 

 This is after they had cooled for about 45 minutes.

 

 

 

I just had to show underneith the cookies so you could see how many choc bit were in each one! Yum!

 

 

 I want another!



Pinata cookies!

 

 

I have been so excited about my attempt at making Pinata Cookies!

 I think these look amazing with all those colours.

 I found the recipe while browsing Pinrest. Mine are no where near as neat as the original recipe but I think they still look so pretty!

 

 

 

Making the dough was quick and easy. You then added food colouring which is also easy.

 I didn't have the gel dyes the recipe recommends. I just used the ones I had, Queen Food Colours. These are the same ones my Mum always used while I was growing up. They have been around a while and I think the result was still pretty good. 

When you've coloured your dough you need to layer the colours in a container so the dough is wide enough to cater to the size of the cutter you are using. Check the recipe for more accurate instructions and then place the dough in the fridge for 4 hours to set.

 

When it comes out you need to slice it so you can see all the colours as I have done above.

 I had left over dough that wouldn't fit so I made the extra cookies above.

 I am very glad I did as I burnt this batch!!

You can't let them get too brown as the colours look faded.

 

I quickly learnt I had to watch them closely as they cook.

 

This was my main batch. Thank goodness I watched these closely as they cooked!

 

Before the cookies cool you need to cut out the shapes and make a hole in the centre of every third cookie shape where the M&M's go.

 

I would use a bigger cutter than mine because it doesn't allow for much room to put the M&M's in. Using mini M&M's would have worked better in mine as the smaller chocolates have more room to fit more in and will spill out easier. The larger M&M's get stuck.

 

You let the cookies cool, then following the recipe, glue them together with a simple icing mix: milk and icing sugar. Place the M&M's inside and sandwich the final cookie in place.

 

Let the icing set and your done!

 

Follow the recipe, not my instructions and read it carefully.

 

I found assembling them a little tricky because my shapes where too small and my M&M's too big!

When I make them again I will try make my cookie dough thinner as this is a lot of cookie for one person and they are very sweet.

Once you have finished there is a lot of left over cookie from cutting the shapes out. I crumbled my left over cookie and mixed it with the left over icing and placed M&M's inside it to make truffles. These where also very sweet but yummy!

I hope to make them again one day - maybe when my baby has a birthday!

 

 



 



White Chocolate Mud Cup Cakes

Last week I had a terrible craving for White Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins.

 Two days in a row I craved this. Must have something to do with my pregnancy.

 Well that the excuse I'm sticking with!!

Well I gave in and desided to have a go at making some.

Unfortunately I didn't have raspberries or anything like it. So I scoured the net to find something similar and this is what I came up with.

 

 

White Chocolate Mud Cup Cakes

 

When you go into the link there is a second link to a White Chocolate Mud Cake. Click on this and the recipe is there for you.

 

I found this recipe quite easy to follow. I've never made mud cake before so I'm really happy with the end result. 

 

 

This is the finished product. I added chocolate bits to the top for an extra indulgence plus they made them look pretty.

 

 

 

They were so yummy!

 Try to resist eating them the same day because when they are left over night they become more moist and the flavour becomes stronger.

 

My partner loved them.

 He is really picky with what he eats so I was really happy to see them going with him to work every day!

 

He has requested I make some more!

I think next time I'll try Milk Chocolate Mud Cup Cakes!! Yum!

 



Making my bread with my Kenwood mixer hook attachment

 

 

It's been so long since I've posted. Today is the start of me trying to catch up. So I'm going to work backwards!

 

If you read yesterdays blog you would know I've had issues with my hands during my pregnancy making it difficult to do everything!! The one thing I really loved was my homemade bread and this was also one of the first things I could no longer make because all the kneading just really hurt.

 

I have discovered my fabulous Kenwood mixer has this amazing attachment which means I don't have to kneed my bread!!! I was so excited. I'm not into using a bread machine. I like to make it the old fashioned way. Anyway I gave it a go and was very skeptic of how it would turn out but this has to be the lightest yummiest bread I have ever made!! My partner even took it to work in his sandwiches so I take that as a major complement as he is very picky about the quality of what he eats.

 

 

This is the link to the recipe I use.

I have made this many many times and I just love how quick and easy it is to make. I do change the recipe regularly to suit my tastes but every time I leave out the egg and add a full cup of milk instead. I also play around with the quantities of butter, salt and sugar and I also play with wholemeal and white flour. I almost forgot I add bread improver to help it to be light.

 

In some of my past post you'll see I have made fruit bread using the same recipe. Some times it work and other times it's not so good but I've never had a complete failure! It's a bit part of learning.

 

The closer loaf was made 15 mins earlier so it's had more time to rise. I was so happy when it came up beautifully.

 

My first loaf finished and only minutes out of the oven. I love butter and Vegemite on fresh bread! Yum! It was so light!

 

And my second loaf finished!!

 



Hopefully when baby comes I'll still find time to make my favorite bread!!