29 January 2010

School yard Cutie Pie


I dropped off my niece today at school and saw Miss Evie, the cutie pie, doing the rounds of the school yard with her blankie. She was skipping around with a spring in her step after having dropped off her older sister with her mum. Miss Evie made me smile today, thanks Miss Evie.

28 January 2010

Hmmm Summer


An illustration in celebration of the sunshower. I know, it's been a while. Crazy weather about of late. Thunder and lightning for most of the week, with a lovely sunshower thrown into the mix. I saw 'It's Complicated' today with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. The interiors were so fabulous. I want to live in Meryl's character, Jane's house and I also want her bakery. I really enjoyed it, but I mistakenly went to the early bird pensioner shift and encountered out loud chatting throughout. Although it was a tad annoying it was also quite hilarious how interactive they were with the film. When Meryl's character drank too much or a character was behaving badly there was collective tut-tutting in the audience and 'Oooh that's terrible' statements bandied about. I was almost waiting for them to boo the screen at certain scenes. What I found particularly amusing though was the continual banter between the two ladies behind me who were talking so much they didn't know what the hell was going on and couldn't quite work out who was who. The last scene of the film ends with a sunshower and then when I came out of the cinema - a sunshower of my very own - ah lovely coincidences.

10 January 2010

Wedding Invitation

My lovely friend is getting married. Three cheers! This is her invite which I had fun doing. The little pic is a portrait of her family. The Mrs-to-be, crazy as it may seem, wants to add to her brood of three so way up high is a little egg (her idea) that just might become addition number four. The envelope is an A4 piece of paper printed and folded and then machine sewn. Just a tip if anyone intends on sewing paper with their machine. Change the needle once you've finished sewing the paper. The needle tends to rip your fabric once you've sewed on paper.

Christmas Roundup 2009

Miss Seven decorated her own chocolate brownie cupcake. She likes sugar. Poor little deer looks like she's caught in a snowdrift.
Better late than never with the roundup. Ah, the hot, lazy Christmas holidays. Is there anything better? I've been doing very little except eating and lazing. Yesterday was the most excellent beach weather so I hung out with some special peeps down at the beach - bliss!

As for the roundup, Christmas day weather was a bit of a fizzer. Just as we were setting up our feast under the liquid amber tree, like last year, it started to rain and everything had to packed up and all had to retreat indoors. Got a quick couple of picks of the table, but that's it folks. I made my first ever- from scratch- fruit mince pies (see top pic) and they were delicious and will be making them again. We had a Christmas Eve bash and my older sister and I put on dinner and desserts. My sister made cookies/biscuits for a cookie tree she put together. The cookies were so cute. She also made cookies for placecards for Christmas day. I made fruit mince pies and a black forest cheesecake, which since Christmas day I've made another. Yummmmm. My sister made chocolate brownie cupcakes with a chocolate ganache (see pic above) which are crazy delicious and her famous cranberry/pistachio biscotti and pistachio shortbread chocolate dipped biscuits.
Gosh I love Christmas. There are certain foods I eat at Christmas which to me are only Christmas food and I never eat them at any other time, even though I love them so much. Sort of crazy to think of foods as only Christmas food, but anyhoo here is my line up that I look forward to every year.
1. Pistachio Shortbread chocolate dipped biscuits
2. Turkey with pistachio/cranberry sage stuffing
3. Chocolate almonds
4. Fruit mince pies
5. Cranberry/onion/sage/apple chutney (eaten with turkey and an array of both soft and hard cheeses)

So what's on your list?