Lazy update-by-photos

Home-made finger buns. FINALLY found a recipe that my kids will eat in lieu of the Baker's Delight ones - all I did was add an extra tablespoon of sugar to a white bread recipe, do the dough in the breadmaker, and the key is to put them close together on the tray so they have the joins like the bakery ones. Oh, and undercook them a little compared to what you would do regular bread, so they'll be soft rather than crusty.



Custard apples ... the only thing I can grow, and no-one here really eats them. Palmed a couple off on friends and added one to a batch of strawberry sorbet for sweetness. Amazingly, these things sell for up to $8 each in the shops!!



Chocolate cupcakes for Miss Emma's seventh birthday, to take to school. Icing is natural food colouring.



Cake for her birthday party, she only wanted a love heart and didn't mind that it was a bit of a slipshod decorating job, heh. It does say "Emma" in sprinkles.



And the birthday girl herself.



Really bad photo of the Milo vest I knitted Evie; I finished this a while ago but had no pics. I've lost my yarn needle so the ends still haven't been woven in! Argh.



There's one important domestic art every mother should teach her son - how to make a good coffee.

Bread

Bad, bad blogger, I know! Life got in the way.

I haven't been doing much crafting lately anyway, but I need to get into gear for Christmas.



One thing I have been doing is making bread. I was lucky enough to find a breadmaker, in perfect working order, on my local Freecycle group. Only one suburb away, too!

This thing is awesome. I did make bread before, sometimes. But I had two issues: firstly, finding a big enough block of time to mix, knead, prove, knead, prove, bake, because we're in and out a lot most days. The Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day takes care of that, but the kids don't like the artisan-style bread. The second issue is that I'm a lazy kneader and the bread was never light and fluffy enough.

I was buying about 4 loaves of preservative-free bread, and a bag of rolls, each week. Plus my partner kept buying lunch because neither of us got organised enough to make sandwiches. The past couple of weeks, I've bought one loaf of bread a week, and he has taken savoury scrolls for lunch.

Savoury Scrolls

1 quantity of your favourite bread dough
pizza sauce, pesto or some other kind of sauce
grated cheese
other toppings, e.g. ham, bacon, chopped onion, mushrooms, capsicum, sundried tomatoes, pineapple.

After its first rise, roll out the dough into a large rectangle.

Spread with sauce, add other toppings and sprinkle with cheese (reserving a little cheese).

Roll up, starting from the long side. When you've rolled it into a log, pinch the edge a bit so it sticks. Cut into 2cm pieces.

Place either in a large round cake pan, or on a tray (depending on whether you want the scrolls to join up or not). Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to rise for about 30 minutes.

Sprinkle with reserved cheese, and bake in a preheated 180 deg C oven for about 15 minutes or until browned and hollow-sounding.

When cooled, they can be wrapped and frozen individually. Just pull one out each morning for lunch!

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The breadmaker does make a funny-shaped loaf, so if I have time I just do the dough in there, roll in sesame seeds and bake it in a loaf tin. But for when I don't, the time delay function is awesome, being able to wake up to freshly-baked bread!

Something I never thought I'd make myself ...

... bathers!

And I'm just a teeny bit reluctant to keep pasting the photos 'round the internet (but it just doesn't work on my dressmaker's dummy), so I'm just going to link, because a link is easily removed:

http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/alison-swimsuit--2

The link to the free pattern I used is there. The pattern instructions were awful! I did find a blog with some hints on construction, thank goodness, but I still made a bunch of errors that I'll do differently next time. There probably will be a next time, because despite the shortcomings of the instructions, it went together quite easily, and with a few adjustments, could be quite flattering. As flattering as any swimsuit is when you've had three children, anyway ;)

I do really like the cut of the legs - true boy-leg styles make my legs look really short, but I'm not a fan of high-cut these days.

We're heading to the Gold Coast in two weeks, and my old bathers have completely given up the ghost, so I figured it was worth a shot. The fabric cost about $10.

New things I've made to sell

For two custom orders:





Loving these new fabrics, they are polyester PUL so suitable for nights, and super-flexible and soft.

I should have some up in the Madeit shop soon.

Spring is coming

The nectarine and plum trees are flowering. Lots of bees buzzing around doing their work - hopefully lots of fruit this year!

I also bought a Pinkabelle apple tree. Despite the pukeworthy name, it's pretty cool - a dwarf Pink Lady apple tree. I'm going to plant it in a large pot with Evelyn's placenta (placentas are chock full of nutrients), which has been in the freezer for just over a year. It's partially self-fertile, which is lucky as it's the only dwarf apple tree variety available in Western Australia due to quarantine restrictions. I don't have the space for a full-size apple tree right now. So hopefully in a couple of years we will have yummy apples!

I have been battling really bad headaches lately, so haven't managed to post much.



I made these all-in-one nappies for a friend (she supplied the fabric - funky, huh?), I hope she likes them!

They are true AIOs:




I also made a gymnastics leotard from lycra remnants for Emma from a 1980s kids sewing magazine:



I altered it from the original by finishing the edges in a narrow fold-over elastic. Super-easy! I don't know why the photo program cut the top off ...

Making butterfly cakes with Emma

Butterfly cakes are a classic from my childhood :)