Little Girls Ruffle Skirt

In the interest of all good crafting, it seemed absurd to slowly teach myself all the little tricks of my new sewing machine. It seemed totally sensical to just jump in head first, buy a tricky-looking pattern, and do it.

And I did it! 

And it is not a massive failure. There are a few mistakes here and there, that I know are there, but I learnt big time from this awesome pattern, and I really feel like I have accomplished with this. 

I purchased the pattern off Etsy from a store called ViolaLee Patterns. 
This pattern was so awesomely written out, with easy-to-follow directions and step-by-step on how to do a gather stitch and getting even ruffles. 

I am just not at the point yet, where I am ready to jump in head-first without inspiration and direction. I have a lot more fun picking out the right patterns. 

I am a direction follower though, and I am ok with that. Learning the skills and being able to do it, is just as exciting to me!

I got the fabric for this from Spotlight. 

Yay! Totally inspired by the fun that I am having with my sewing machine, and    how productive and useful I feel!

LouLou xoxo

Seriously Awesome Baked Cheesecake

Do not assume you don't like baked cheesecakes. 

Because this is divine. 

This is what all cheesecakes should taste like. 

This is a classic baked cheesecake, with a whipped sour cream and icing sugar topping, then coated in a raspberry sauce.

Looks good huh? Go on, give this a go.

I found the original link for this cheesecake over on simplyrecipes.com, and I have made small changes to the original to suit my taste.

But this is GOOD.

INGREDIENTS: 

CRUST:

1 packet of Digestive biscuits (2 cups tightly packed)

2 Tablespoon sugar

Pinch salt

70g unsalted butter, melted (if you use salted butter, omit the salt)

FILLING:

900g cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/3 cup white sugar
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 Large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
2/3 cup cream

TOPPINGS: 

2 cups sour cream (475mL)
2/3 cup icing sugar
400g raspberries (fresh is best, but I always end up using frozen because fresh is available and affordable in a short space of the year here)
3/4 cup sugar

EQUIPMENT NEEDED:
23cm springform pan
Heavy duty, super wide tin foil
A large, high-sided roasting pan

METHOD:
prepare the springform pan: You must prepare the springform pan so that water does not leak into it while it is cooking. Place a large square of tin foil on a flat surface. Wrap tin foil up sides of springform pan and fold as neatly as possible at top edge without folding it into the pan itself. Repeat this again with another sheet of tin foil. I know this seems over dramatic, but if that water gets in you are gonna have a poached crust, not a crusty crust. 

Prepare the crust: Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celcius, with rack in lower third of the oven. Pulse the digestive biscuits in a food processor until finely ground. Put in a large bowl, and stir in the sugar and salt. Use your (clean) hands to mix in the melted butter. 

Put all but 1/4 cup of the digestive biscuit mixture in the bottom of the springform pan. Save that last 1/4 cup just in case there are holes or gaps, it can come in handy. Gently press down on the crumbs using your fingers, until the crumbs are an even layer, with a slight rise on the outer edges. Be careful not to tear the foil while doing this. Place in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool. 

Prepare the filling:

 Cut the cream cheese into chunks and place in the bowl of an electric mixer, with your paddle attachment. Mix on med speed for 4 minutes, until smooth and soft. Add sugar, mix for another 4 minutes at med speed. Add the salt and vanilla, beating each in before adding the other. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Add the sour cream, beating until combined. Add the cream, beating until combined. Remember to consistently scrape down the sides of your bowl, and scrape off your mixer for any left over bits of cream cheese. 

Cooking the cheesecake: 

Place the foil-wrapped springform pan in a large, high-sided roasting pan. Prepare 2L of boiling water. Pour the cream cheese filling into the springform pan, over the digestive biscuit base. Smooth with a spatula. Place the roasting pan with the springform pan in it, in the oven, on the lower rack. Carefully pour the hot water into the roasting pan (without touching the hot oven), to create a water bath for the cheesecake, pouring until the water reaches halfway up the side of the pan, about 5cm (or you can add the water before placing in the oven). Cook for 90 minutes. 

Turn off the heat in the oven, but leave the cheesecake in the oven, leaving the oven door open slightly, for about an hour. This slower cooling of the cake will help stop it from cracking. 

Cover cheesecake with foil without it touching the cake itself, and place in fridge for a minimum of 4 hours. 


Prepare the sour cream topping:
Place the sour cream and icing sugar in a bowl, and whisk until smooth. Chill until you are ready to prepare the cake. 

Note: this amount of sour cream produces way more than fits on the cake, leaves enough for people to chuck some on the side if they so desire. If you don't want to add it on the side, you can almost half this amount. 

Preparing the raspberry sauce:
Combine raspberries and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil for 4-5 minutes. Cool until serving time!

Preparing the cake to serve: 

Using a large palette knife, and spread sour cream topping evenly over top of cooled cake straight before serving. 

Top with raspberry sauce!

Will make up to 16 servings!! Seriously!

Give this a try, it takes time, but its not hard work, and is totally worth it.

Let me know if you try it, and how much you enjoy it!

LouLou xoxo

DIY Feltboard!

I have been working on this for a few weeks now, and  had the idea and desire to do it for a fair few weeks before this. I really want Lily and Hartley to have toys that are homemade, battery free and good clean fun in their lives, that I also can be involved with.

So, I made a felt board. 

And may I just say, being a bit short in the cash department on only one income at the moment, this project was super cheap money wise for the amount of time that it has already been used for. 

Though time consuming, Lily and I have both really enjoyed the felt board. Lily requests all the pieces herself, hence the fact so far we have a tiger, polar bear, horse, house, wolf/dog, 3 butterflies and 3 pigs. 

Apologies for the terrible photography here. A) I have a terrible camera, that I dream of one day replacing. B) Felt is fluffy, and seems to be almost impossible to make it look quite right with a cheap digital camera. 

I made the felt board itself out of an old memo board I had lying around the house for the last 3 years, and bought felt off the roll from Kutwell Fabrics in the central city (only $6 a metre)! After that, I just stocked up on cheap sheets off felt, and let Lily and I's imagination run wild. 

The tiger joined the family first of all, and he was a real learning curve for me. I have cut these out with my little scissors and it is a bit of a mission, but so worth it. 

I sketch all my designs out on paper first, cut them out and either lightly draw around them onto the felt or pin the paper to the felt and cut around from there. 

Butterflies have since been added, which I am quite a fan of! 

And yes, I am completely aware I am living vicariously through my daughter!

And over the last few days, I have been working on Lily's current favourite story "The 3 Little Pigs"
2 more houses to go, but they are quite time consuming, so they are slowly getting there.

I would highly recommend this as an easy and cheap DIY project , easily interchangeable to suit your child's personality and age group. 

I have heaps more plans with this felt board. Lots more stories and characters are on the way, and I would love to make her a cupcake decorating set, maybe an ice cream one too, before we start doing numbers and letters on here too.

For anyone wanting to give this a go, I have simply sewed the 2 colours of felt together to depict sky and grass, and then used my staple gun to attach it tightly at the back of the board. 

Give it a go!

Talk soon
Lou Lou xoxo

Selena Singer the Sewing Machine & Bandanna Bib Pattern Link

Yesterday, an amazing thing happened to me. 

Yesterday I bought my first ever sewing machine. 

On my vendetta to feel more creative, productive and just plain crafty, I decided a sewing machine was an absolute must-have. 

Lately I have been going crochet crazy, which I will post some photos sometime soon I promise.

Anyway, my local Lincraft store had an amazing deal on a Singer sewing machine yesterday, which I very quickly scooped up, as a birthday present for myself, from Josh (don't judge, we have been discussing getting me a sewing machine for like a month now). 

When I got home I realised a terrifying thing. I haven't even threaded a sewing machine or actually sewed anything since I was in my first year of high school, so 12 years old... But I am proud to say after a fair bit mucking around and reading the manual a lot, I have a fully threaded machine, and I am pretty sure I could do it again in MUCH less time the next time. 

And the rest, as they say, is history!

Now it was time to create. I grabbed a couple of fat quarters and a pack of cheap flannels while I was at Lincraft, and set to making Hartley a bandanna bib, as he has become quite the drooler lately, and they are ridiculously expensive for a bib when bought in store.

If you want to give it a go yourself, I used this fantastic free tutorial over on "Sew Love It". 
http://sewloveit.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/tutorial-bandanna-drool-bib.html

The bib is fantastic, though I am more than happy to admit that the first attempt looked great, but was way too small. The sewing isn't overly tidy, and I may have to redo the fasteners on the back, as they are a wee bit wiggly. But I am very proud of my first sewing machine creation. 

Helps that I have such a darn cute son. 

Onward and upward from here! Hopefully...

Talk soon, 

Lou xoxo

The Lack of Baking in my Life

I seem to struggle with the concept and consistency of having a baking/cooking blog.
I couldn't figure out why.
Then Lily had a vicious bleeding nose last night, and I clicked.
I have 2 kids. 2 kids who need food, baths, toilet trips, nappy changes, bleeding noses (not as often as the rest of course) and almost constant supervision and attention.
Although I am pretty sure I will always bake, at the moment I am also enjoying the trials and tribulations of being a mum, of learning new crafts and growing my friendships.
But I can blog about that! Just because I made a blog to write about baking and cooking, doesn't mean I have any shame about admitting that it is totally not working, and that perhaps I just need to write about my day to day life.
There's something so comforting about writing it all down and putting it together.
So, watch this space.
Today is strictly a housework day (after this post), but tomorrow I will show you my new and exciting DIY felt board activity for the kids (well, mainly just Lily right now), which so far is being with various animals.
Over and out,
Talk soon
LouLou xoxo
x

Banana Chocolate Biscuits!

So, the other day, I decided to get rid of some bananas. 
Josh's all time favourite muffin is banana chocolate, so I thought I would make him a treat. 

But... disaster struck... Well, actually laziness struck. My muffin tray was a mess from making wholemeal banana blueberry muffins last week... And I just wanted to bake, like right now.

So, I made biscuits instead. Banana chocolate biscuits. This is a new concept for me, making stuff up as I go. But these are good, like real good. 

Keep in mind at this point, that these biscuits have mashed banana in them, there is no way you are gonna get a thick, crunchy biscuit. These are more like little cakes, in the shape of biscuits. It's also really hard to get them looking "pretty", but if you want something new to try, these are absolutely the way to go. And no muffin tray required!

So:

Banana Chocolate Biscuits

Makes approximately 2 1/2 dozen good sized-biscuits.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
120g butter or margarine
2 eggs
3 bananas, mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk chocolate bits
1 1/2 cups dark chocolate bits

Method:

a. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda into a bowl and set aside.

b. Cream white sugar, brown sugar and butter/margarine until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix well.

c. Add mashed bananas and mix in. Add flour mixture and stir until just combined.

d. Add chocolate chips and stir through.

e. Spoon tablespoonfuls onto a greased cookie tray, and bake at 200 degrees C for about 12-15 minutes or until just browning on top.

f. Attempt to not eat straight out of oven- but good luck, I failed miserably at this.

NOTE: I used margarine in this batch, giving it an even more cakey texture, but butter will work a treat, especially if you aren't 100% on the cakey texture in a biscuit. Also, change your combination of dark and milk chocolate to suit. Personally, I would recommend giving it a go just like this though. It works so well!

Well, have a great weekend all, and I will talk to you next week. 
Love to all and God bless,
Louise xoxo

Attempt 2: The newest blog attempt

Wow...
Last September I created a blog.
And then I promptly totally forgot about said blog, got pregnant, moved house, and then had a baby.
Now it is August 2012, my blog has only my original post from last September on it, about how much baking I will do, and how much I will be posting on this lovely blog.
So, now that I have moved house, have had my beautiful baby (who is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen), I want to get back into the fun and creative world of blogging.
Over the next months, while breastfeeding, I want to basically learn to get fit, as I actually have no fitness level at the moment. I also want to eat healthily and get back to somewhere near where I used to be.
Mainly though, above all else, I want to look after my family, keep my house tidy, and attempt new recipes and creative DIY projects.

All of the above both excites and terrifies me, but as I am currently at home full time, I need something to keep me busy and feeling useful.

So, my lovely people, what I am trying to explain in a roundabout sort of way, is that I have great hopes that this time I really do mean it. This time I want to post blogs about my life, my projects, my baking and my family. And I want to keep it up most importantly.

My next 2 big projects are going to be Lily's 3rd birthday, which she has decided she would like a princess party. For anyone who has met my daughter, this is the most unsurprising thing ever, as she is just the cutest little girly girl ever at the moment, which I am totally loving about her, as it shows me just how much of her own person she is (since I am so not super girly fun-timeness). So, the princess party will be filled with budget friendly princess projects. And for project number 2, for Lily's christmas present this year, I want to make her a large sized felt board, complete with characters, shapes and maybe letters and numbers that we can use as both an educational activity and as a distraction on the many days we have where we do nothing and go nowhere.

I will be in touch my lovely people.
But now, I am going to clean my house and I have the Plunket nurse visiting in 3 hours, so I might chuck some muffins in the oven. If I do well, I might even take photos and post a blog all about it later on tonight.

Love to all and God bless,
Louise!

:)

And just in case you don't believe me on how amazingly cute my newest little man is, here is proof. He is utterly delicious!! 

Awwww..... Sleeping baby!!