Quick Update

Well what a weekend, I forgot that Saturday was Saturday and had it in my head that it was Monday. I blame the schools breaking up, there I was thinking it was the first day of the school holidays when really it was just the weekend lol. I blame it on a blonde moment ;)

So, I took a break from my cross stitch on Sunday wanting to give my hand time to recover a little but got straight to it again on Monday here is where I got to on Monday.

I then continued on Tuesday, and got this far,

This stitch has a lot of block colours and is very boring to do, I really want to get it finished now just to have it done.

I have chosen the photo for my SIL's wedding stitch, this one 

I have also been on Ebay (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH) and have bought the software to convert it into a chart. The software arrived yesterday and so I have made the chart up. I need to check my stitchy stash to see what threads I have and which I need, I also need to buy the fabric this pic is 128x192 stitches which those maths boffins amongst you will have worked out is almost 25,000 stitches. I have worked out that so far on the stitch I'm working on at the moment I have done roughly 1800 stitches and it has taken me 4 days to get that far, and so that's roughly 450 stitches per day. On this basis it will take me 55 days to complete the Wedding one. This means I should get it done for Christmas. But OMG it will be hard work. 

So I would say I have 4 more days on the pic I'm working on already before I can start on this one. I think I will have to take my mind off it by doing a few smaller pieces every now and again, I also have family life to fit in and the council business to do, and now the children are off school I don't think I will be able to do 450 stitches per day :( Ah well you will just have to keep tuned to see if I do manage to get it done lol. 

I'd better get on with it speak to you all soon xx

Nails and day 2

 

Well the girls had their nails painted last night as promised. Only Jessica and Emily had theirs done because Kerry stopped at her cousins house. they thoroughly enjoyed picking out their colours and having the paint put on. Emily had to have hers done twice as she scratched her leg and ruined the first coat lol.

And as promised here is my update on my work in progress (WIP).

Can you tell what it is yet?? Answers in the comments section please x

I have also finally gotten the picture I need for a very special cross stitch. My lovely sister in law (SIL) got married last year and I am going to cross stitch one of her wedding photos for her. I am just waiting for the software to change the photo into a chart and then I can get started. Woo Hoo. Very excited about it and will of course keep you up to date with it. I know my SIL doesn't read this so I am safe sharing it with you. 

We had a lovely Sunday lunch at my Mother in laws today. Most Sundays she does one but on the days she doesn't myself and my SIL fight over who get to cook it. Call me mad, but I love doing Sunday dinner. I must admit, it does help that I have all my Pampered Chef stuff to cook it in, making it super easy. I also love making things like sage and onion stuffing from scratch using the recipe that has been passed down five generations the first I know to pass it down was my Great Great Grandma Churms, and that I am teaching my girls now. When I next make a Sunday dinner I will post up the recipe with the step by step instructions on how to do it.

I also love going up to my MIL for dinner as we get to ride our bikes up there. I bought a Trailgator which attaches Jessica's bike to mine so we can all travel together. It took Jess a long time to get used to the 'bar' as she was used to riding on her own with stabilisers, but now she loves it. I am hoping that when she starts to ride on her own she will be able to balance better on her bike to start with as she will be used to how it works being on the back of mine. Hopefully this 'training' will get her off to a faster start when she does get on on her own. 

Will update on the cross stitch later xx

Christmas bunny in July??

Well I have completed my first cross stitch, and it is as the title says a Christmas bunny. Many people would be saying but it is July, but all you crafty people out there know that really you should be thinking about your Christmas crafts just after New Years. This bunny will be put on to a writing book and will be given as a gift to some one (not telling who so don't ask lol). Here is how it went.

 Day one I started by finding the centre of my fabric and working out from that. Using the colours I had, as I was five short of the colours needed. I went online to order the ones I needed on Wednesday which was the day I started this stitch, they arrived in the post on Thursday, super fast delivery from sian2407. 

 By the end of day two this is how far I got. Jessica kept guessing what it was we had bears and dogs and for some reason a dragon, bless her.

This is the completed cross stitch without the back stitching. I think it looks quite cute as it is, but next comes the finishing touches.

How cute is this bunny?? The back stitching really brings it to life and makes you want to say awww! I think this would look great on a note book for one of mt nieces (I can say that because I have seven of them and they will never be able to work out which one of them gets it lol)

This is the chart I used from an old copy of Cross Stitch Crazy if you want to give it a go.

I have also started my next cross stitch this one is a lot bigger 99x72 stitches. So this one will be going on a photo album me thinks, here is how far I am so far.

Looks spectacular so far doesn't it lol. But bear in mind there are 385 stitches in that border and bit of purple in the corner. My hands have frozen up holding the fabric in place so long.

I'm not going to tell you what it is a picture of you will just have to wait and see any guesses are welcome just pop it in the comments section underneath :)

So, in other news, the girls teachers were thrilled with their body scrubs. One teacher saying she would use it tonight as she wants to prepare her body for her holiday (I'm paraphrasing here), another thought it smelled really nice. Hoping for some good feedback from them after the school hols hope they liked it.

The girls have asked if tomorrow we can paint nails as I don't allow it during school term and they love having it done and practising on each other, so there may be pics on tomorrow to show you how they did.

Yesterday I bought some M&Ms to make some muffins with but the girls snuck in and ate them before I could so need to go get some more and will post up how we make them tomorrow.

We tried to go puddle splashing today but the rain stopped and most of the puddles had dried up by the time we were on our way home from school. I don't know, we moan when it rains and moan when it stops lol.

Anyway, off to bed for me now, speak to you all tomorrow

Teachers gifts and getting back

Well I managed to get some of the ingredients for the teachers gifts, and I had to improvise on some too. The recipe I have uses coconut oil, but I could not find any locally at all and so I decided to try olive oil with flavouring instead, I will tell you in the recipe.

I suppose I should tell you what we made... All natural vanilla body scrub. It should have been coconut (I should have used coconut oil) but as I said earlier I couldn't find any. 

The kids had great fun making it, I had to try to keep them from eating it though. They thought it was delish lol.

Any way, here is how to make amazing body scrub. I will tell you the recipe I used but I will tell you we made two huge batches (quadrupled it both times and it made enough for 8 jars) this recipe is enough to fill a Kilner jar, there is nothing on the jar or the information on the jar to say how much it holds so use this recipe wisely lol.

You will need

1/2 cup demerara sugar

1/2 cup golden granulated sugar

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoons of honey

put the sugar into a bowl and mix to distribute the different sugars evenly, 

add all the other ingredients and mix to coat everything evenly, don't worry if you get a few clumps it adds to the effect but you don't want them too big. 











Spoon into the jar and seal.

We then made labels to put on the jars, 

I wrote all the wording but I got the girls to write their own names onto the labels for a bit of personalisation.

They chose the yellow colour, not 100% sure why. 

  

We then added some ribbon to the tag and tied them to the top of the jar. The girls were so proud of themselves bless 'em.






We will wrap them in tissue tomorrow ready to give to the teachers.

Today, I have also been getting back my stitching bug, I used to love cross stitch with a passion and today I decided to start on some stitching for Christmas. 

I chose my design, out of my thousands I have, and chose a small one to start me off (I don't count the bookmark). The design I chose has only ten different coloured threads and guess what I only have five of them in my stitchy stash. So before I could change my mind about getting started I went straight onto Ebay and ordered my missing threads, (this section removed as it mentions my OH) but I also bought myself some more fabric. I am going to start stitching again and I have set myself to do one hour each day. I can post pictures on here of my works in progress and you can even rate them for me :) Here is what I have done so far today.

You can't really see the white stitching I did but that is because it is on white fabric, which by the way is super difficult to do without daylight, so I gave it up as a bad job lol. I think I haven't done too bad for the first proper stitching session I have done in a while. What do you think?

Going old school

Well last night I went to my first Royal British Legion meeting, where I was made a member of my local branch. To say it was interesting was an understatement but hey ho I will get them busy soon doing all sorts of stuff. They do a great job for those that have served in the forces and I can't wait to get involved. Will keep you updated with what we get up to.

Today I really fancied a jam roly poly. I can't stand the ones you can buy frozen and so out came the suet. I have a step by step guide coming up if you want my recipe. I told the girls on the way home what I had made for pudding and they practically ran all the way home lol.

Here is my recipe.

You will need

250g self raising flour

50g caster sugar plus a teaspoon

125g shredded suet

8 tablespoons water

jam (I don't measure it out just spread it on)

one egg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

In a bowl put the flour, sugar (except one teaspoon), suet.

add the water mixing until a dough forms, don't make it sticky!!

roll out onto a floured surface

spread jam all over leaving a border of around half an inch wide all the way round

spread border with egg and fold over to prevent jam spilling out when cooking

spread border with egg again

starting at one side roll into a tube shape and seal the join.

cover all over with egg wash, sprinkle over the remaining sugar and the cinnamon, bake in a preheated oven to 200c for 30 - 40 mins

You should end up with something like this.

I also tried something new for dinner too. I created some great chicken wraps. There was not much left at the end as everyone wanted second and third helpings which I didn't really mind.

I cut a green, yellow, and red pepper, an onion, 2 large carrots and 500g chicken breasts into strips.

I fried off the chicken until brown, added some cajun spice mix and the veg, then added 200g soft cheese and 100g cheddar cheese.

Once all combined put into wraps simple and tasty and got quite a lot of veg into the kids. Here is all that was left.

I have also finished off a cross stitch it is only a bookmark but it got me started with the stitching bug again.

Here it is as a finished bookmark

I also have a great teacher thank you gift that I will be making with the kids to give to their teachers at the end of term so I will post that up as soon as we have done it.

I will be going out to buy the ingredients tomorrow and we will hopefully be doing it tomorrow night if not it will be Thursday night (well we do have to have them done for Friday!!)

If you have any thoughts about recipes you would like me to try or any questions about the things I have done then please feel free to leave me a comment on here.

Birthday Party

I am going purple with my writing today in honour of my little girl whose favourite colour is purple.

Well yesterday and today have been fun, 16 screaming kids and a ton of baking to do. It wouldn't have been so bad if my electric mixer hadn't died on me half way through baking my buns but hey ho I got there on the end lol.

So today is Emily's 6th birthday, and she had a party on the Sunday. Thirteen of her friends turned up which was lovely and she got some great pressies. Almost had a panic attack when the room wasn't open when we got there but got it sorted out quite quickly so that was good.

My niece had her 6th birthday party on Saturday. This is my three ready to go. Emily loves to have her hair curly though it takes me ages to do and lasts for about 15 mins before it all drops out despite copious amounts of hairspray.

Emily and Millie were born 3 days apart it was a race to give birth to them to see who would be first both went over our due dates Millie by one day and Emily by five. She still procrastinates lol.

This is Emily's birthday cake. How lovely does that look!!

Anyway back to Emily's birthday preparations I have done a step by step guide to all my recipes if you want to try them out.

Firstly I made the buns/cupcakes.

To make 35 cupcakes

You will need

400g Self raising flour

400g Caster sugar

400g margarine

8 medium eggs

2 teaspoons baking powder

Step One 

cream the margarine and sugar together. do this as long as you can the whiter and creamier you get this bit the better.

Step Two

Add half eggs and mix until combined, then add half flour and baking powder.

Step Three

repeat step two and then mix until creamy and smooth

Step Four

Divide mix into paper cases and bake for 20 mins at 200c

Step Five

Once cooked and golden brown on top remove and allow to cool

This is my recipe for butter cream icing to go on the top which you can do while the cakes are cooling.

You will need

250g Unsalted butter

500g icing sugar

1teaspoon vanilla extract

beat the butter until soft, add icing sugar a little at a time and mix in thoroughly add vanilla and keep on mixing until all combined, soft and smooth.

If like me you don't have a piping bag (because your friend borrowed it and never returned it) then spoon the mix into a polythene food bag

Secure the top with a twixit clip and cut of a small corner and there you have it a bag ready for piping. Store in fridge until you are ready to pipe.

you will end up with something that looks like this

I also made some other little things here are step by step guides to do them too.

Bacon and cheese bites

You will need

a 24 cup mini muffin pan (mine is from Pampered Chef available from me at www.pamperedchef.biz/traceyw )here

A mini tart shaper (again from Pampered Chef here)

260g shortcrust pasty

3 rashers smoked bacon

100g grated cheddar cheese

3 eggs

cut up  your bacon into small pieces and fry off. (I used my Pampered Chef pan as there is no need for oil)

combine your bacon cheese and eggs in a bowl.

shape your tarts by putting a ball of around 10-11g of pastry into each well and pressing your shaper into each one.

divide the mix between the wells and bake for 15-20 mins at 200c. remove and allow to cool.

Mini cheese and onion tartlets

You will need

24 cup mini muffin pan (see above)

260g shortcrust pastry

100g grated cheddar cheese

half an onion

3 eggs

finely chop your onion I used my Manual Food Processor  (available from here) 

add your cheese and egg and mix until combined

shape tarts as before and divide mix between wells

bake for 15-20 mins at 200c

I then made some mini lemon tarts which is just shaping your pastry as above and adding a teaspoon of lemon curd into each well

I also made some toffee apple tartlets which again you shape your pastry as above, combine luxury toffee sauce (about 2 tablespoons) with 2 apples cut into small chunks.

Divide mix between the wells and bake for 15-20 mins at 200c

Here is Emily blowing out the candles on her cake

Happy Birthday Honey!!!