Washi on madeit

I bought some washi tape from 'The Stationery Room', because I wanted to decorate my boring bedside lamp. But *somehow* I bought a few extra rolls, which is okay because I have lots of ideas of how to use them.

Of course, there are many Australian artists far more talented than me on madeit who use washi tape in all sorts of creative ways. Cards and gift tags are the obvious things to make and when they're done well, like these ones from Made At Number 27 that also use embossing, stamping and twine, the results are so bright and cheerful.

Set of three thankyou cards by Made At Number 27.

 

 Ink. Paper. Cloth. puts washi tape on clothes pegs, which is very, very cute (especially since I have a fondness for red).

Decorated clothes pins by Ink. Paper. Cloth.

Washi paper is just as fun as tape and can be used to make beautiful jewellery. Mikano World makes fantastic drop earrings sealed with resin.

Japanese design resin earrings by Mikano World.

Norita Designs creates lovely pendants with washi paper - this one has a floral pattern etched on the back.

Midnight garden pendant by Norita Designs.

And, as a reminder that Christmas is sneaking up on me, Chie No Wa makes beautiful origami cards out of Yuzen washi paper.

Origami Christmas Tree Card by Chie No Wa.

Moving House - Week Three

Darren had a particular dislike for the dressing table and mirror in the front room. They are gone. Now we have a bit of missing carpet and some patching to do, but we can work around that.

My wonderful superhero neighbour took four trailer loads of green waste to the tip for me. Better do some more pruning!

And the stumpers are nearly finished, which means that Darren and I are forming a close bond with plaster.

In The Kitchen - Round-up 19-25 October

A very speedy kitchen round-up today, since I spent toddler nap time working on pricing instead.

On Friday 19th, I cooked chicken wingettes, which I had marinated in honey, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, garlic and lemon juice using a recipe from 'Small Food' and then baked. We had them with rice and salad.

Saturday 20th I made Vietnamese rice paper rolls, filled with a stir fry of minced pork, vermicelli noodles and rehydrated mushrooms, flavoured with soy. The other fillings were lettuce, carrot, green beans and Vietnamese mint, with a fish sauce, sugar and chilli dipping sauce from Pauline Nguyen's 'Secrets of the Red Lantern'.

On Sunday 21st we had claypot chicken rice, which I made using a recipe that Darren copied from somewhere or another. The marinade is soy, ginger, sugar, sesame oil and cornflour, as well as stock for cooking. I added lap cheong, asparagus, bamboo shoots and rehydrated mushrooms.

Claypot chicken rice.

I was planning on cooking a curry with some beef chunks for Tuesday 23rd's dinner, but couldn't be bothered. Then I was going to just use some bottled pasta sauce, but decided that it was a waste of money when I could easily make it myself. So on Monday I minced up the beef chunks and cooked them with onion, tomato, eggplant, carrot, tinned tomato, garlic and herbs. We ate the sauce with roasted vegetable and ricotta tortellini.

Tortellini.

Darren bought some marinated kangaroo in garlic and herbs, which I grilled on Wednesday 24th. We made wraps filled the the kangaroo strips, some potato slices fried in cashew za'atar and bush tomato from 'Gourmet Morsels', grated cheese and carrot, roquet, tomato and your choice of tzatziki dip, homemade pumpkin chutney or mayonnaise.

Although I traditionally can't make quiche, on Thursday 25th I made two, one for lunch with my sister-in-law and sister and one for dinner. I based both recipes on the one for tuna, leek and pumpkin quiche from Taste.com.au, making the base and the sour cream and egg sauce for both, but using tuna, roasted pumpkin and sauteed leek and spinach for one filling, and roasted mushroom, pumpkin and capsicum, sundried tomato and sauteed leek and spinach for the dinner one. The dinner one was less soggy - it actually worked quite well. Salad on the side.

Roasted vegetable quiche.

The Toy Boys

Speaking of a crafty family, my father-in-law (Peter) and his brother-in-law (Rod) are The Toy Boys. They make wooden toys, which they sell at markets in Victoria. Miss 1.5 is looked after by Grandpa Peter each Wednesday and she puts a lot of effort into road testing his toys.

When I was pregnant, Peter promised the new baby a name train, but proposed that the baby be named something with three letters, like Amy. We, of course, chose a name with 10 letters. I'm planning something longer, with hyphens and accents, for the next baby because I'm not a nice person.

For her six month birthday, Miss 1.5 got a prototype stacker clown which has stood up to being chewed (by both children and dogs) and is a great educational toy.

Pull-along toys are one of Miss 1.5's favourites, so she got a pull-along dog. I think that it needs ears...

A very spoiled little girl, she also has a pink small car.

... a dog jigsaw...

... and an elephant jigsaw. Thank you, Grandpa!

Moving House - Week Two

Things are happening, albeit slowly because of family events and Around The Bay. Last week, Darren and his father took out the superfluous internal windows.

This week, I started pruning the extensive rose bushes in the front garden and the stumpers started reblocking the house (and discovered live wires everywhere, so the sparky started rewiring the house).

In the kitchen - Round-up 12-18 October

On Friday 12th, I had a cauliflower out for dinner. Darren had done the shopping and thought that the cauliflower might become cauliflower soup. This would have been a brilliant plan, but we didn't have any onions or milk or stock. I went through my cookbooks for inspiration and thought that cauliflower, tomato and green pea curry from 'The Essential Asian Cookbook' might be nice, but we didn't have any onion, yoghurt or tomatoes. Curried cauliflower from 'Fire and Spice' might be nice, but we didn't have any coconut milk. I entertained the idea of South Indian lentils and vegetables from 'Fire and Spice', but I had a vague feeling that that hadn't worked out fantastically the last time that I tried it and I didn't have any tomatoes anyway. In the end, I made vegetable pakoras, which are kind of like Indian tempura, from 'The Essential Asian Cookbook' and omitted the capsicum, onion, chickpea flour, chilli powder and corn kernels. They ended up being potato, cauliflower, cabbage, flour, garam masala, coriander, bicarbonate of soda, water and lemon juice, all deep-fried. The cabbage was a purple cabbage, which went an odd shade of blue after cooking. On the side, I had rice and dhal, based vaguely on a few recipes from 'Fire and Spice', including lentils, garlic, ginger, turmeric, tomato paste and coriander. It all tasted rather nice, which was good.

Vegetable pakoras.

Saturday 13th we had a big working bee on the new house and got takeaway for dinner.

I bought some lovely flathead fillets at the market and cooked them for dinner on Sunday 14th. I coated them in beer batter (recipe in 'The Cook's Companion': self-raising flour, beer, water and a little turmeric and cumin) and deep-fried them and then baked some chips. There was also a coleslaw salad, with a dressing made of olive oil, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, mustard seeds, based on the Asian coleslaw with sesame dressing recipe from 'Food.com'. I wanted to use as similar recipe that my friend introduced to me last year, but I wrote it on a random piece of paper which I have since lost.

On Tuesday 16th we had left-over vegetable soup, with some added pasta.

When I got home on Wednesday 17th, I threw some washed potatoes in the oven and made a sauce to go over them. This was onion, minced meat, slices of ham, diced mushrooms, a tin of four beans, a tin of tomatoes, some vegetable stock and a little sumac and coriander powder, all sautéed until the sauce thickened. There was grated cheese and carrot to go with it.

Baked potatoes.

Yesterday, I got some slow cooking in. I combined two recipes from 'A Little Taste of Morocco', so Thursday 18th's dinner was lamb shanks with quince (I froze a whole lot from my grandmother's orchard earlier this year), onion, ginger, saffron, coriander and cinnamon. I also made a salad of carrots and green beans in a dressing of paprika, cumin, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil, and the whole lot was on saffron rice. It's funny that I don't like to eat a big piece of meat, but I do love lamb shanks.

Lamb shank and quince tagine.

Today, after nap time, we are also going to the zoo, so I made a tortilla (Spanish omlette) for lunch. My recipe is the recipe that my mother gave me and might not be very authentic!

6 potatoes, diced

3 onions, diced

Olive oil

Salt

Salami, diced

Peas

10 eggs, lightly beaten

Microwave the potatoes and onions with olive oil and salt for 20 min, stirring after 10 min. Add in the salami and the peas. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly. Grease a frying pan and add the egg mixture and spread it out evenly. Fry until the base is well cooked (mine is always slightly burned, Jamaica style!). Then put under a grill until the centre is cooked. Turn out on a plate to cool. Delicious hot and cold.

Toddler Art - Footprint Stamping

This is based a bit on an episode of Play School and is super easy. I cut out animal footprints from a bit of card (a dog, a frog, a dinosaur and a person's shoe) and taped toilet paper rolls onto them for handles.

Put some paint on some ice cream container lids and stamp away!

Toddlers, of course, aren't very consistent with the pressure, but here's a print that worked perfectly!

Lots of fun.