Weekly Stills

Frankie in her little kennel

Cutest pup. Almost 6 months old.

Limes from the neighbours and plums from the markets

Jake's home-brew with a pretty awesome head on it

New apron from the Tocumwal Markets on Easter weekend

Spotted this Kangaroo mummy with her joey

New plant in the guest bedroom 

Yellow, my favourite colour

Radish & Coriander Pickle

We had a heap of radishes ready for harvesting in the garden so found this recipe to make a quick and easy pickle.

Ingredients:

• 2 handfuls of mixed radishes
• 1 tsp Cumin seeds
• 1 small dried chilli
• 1/2 thumb sized piece of ginger, grated
• 1-2 limes, juice of
• 6 tbs olive oil
• 1 handful coriander leaves

Method:

• finely slice the radishes
• to make the dressing, lightly toast the cumin seeds and bash them up in a pestle and mortar with the dried chilli and grated ginger.
• Add the lime juice, oil and some salt and pepper and stir well.
• Put radishes in a bowl with coriander leaves and lightly toss all together with the dressing.

Week 3 - Yellow

In the Garden

       The garden is going pretty well at the moment. New additions are Kale and Garlic. I planted Snow Peas a few weeks ago and they are shooting up well despite Frankie continually running through their plot.

Was given some garlic to plant and they are growing well

Leaned down to take a photo of the sprouting Snow Peas and landed in a bunch of burs.

First flower coming on the Marigolds

Love these pretty bushes. The bring a heck of a lot of bees though.

Frankie's teddy getting a wash and dry. It no longer has eyes and looks quite creepy.

Week 2 - An Animal

Garden Update

       We had a few days of rain this week and it has helped the garden so much. We also spent four days away, and I think the garden appreciated no puppy bounding through it, digging holes, and biting off flowers.

Basil and Thai basil

These recovered well after Frankie bit off all the flowers last time

Random mushrooms

Radish

Love the textured Sage leaves

The watermelon plants have grown heaps this week

Zucchini growing huge

To show the proportional size of the Zucchini leaves!

Peach & Rum Jam

       Last week Jacob bought about 20 peaches, and then we decided to spend four days away from home and came back to a house that smelt like peaches. Kind of nice, but it was also a reminder to hurry up and eat them or something! I found a recipe for nectarine and rum jam which said you could use peaches instead, so this morning was a jam makin' mornin'!

The bottom middle peach looks like a heart

Sterilising the jars

Testing the pectin levels (and licking the spoon of course)

Taste testing finished product

The recipe was super easy, and you can use most fruit.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups of peaches, peeled & chopped
• 25g of Pectin powder
• 5 cups of sugar
• 1/4 cup of rum (or 2 tsp of vanilla extract)

Method:

• Place chopped peaches into a large pot with the pectin. Stir until the fruit cooks down a little.
• Add sugar and continuously stir until sugar has dissolved (i added about 1/4 cup of water here as my fruit wasn't breaking down too easily
• Bring to the boil & it will get thicker and more jam-like. Add rum.
• Sterilise your jars while the jam cooks
• Once the fruit has broken down more and it looks more like jam, take off the heat and once the jars are ready, they can be filled.

I very much used my own method for this, just waiting until it looked right to me, and my jam turned out great.

Weekly Stills

Restyled the bookcase. 

Blue books & a succulent 

Yellow books & a stout vase

Gathered from the garden

Out little living area is still coming together

Freshly picked & washed

Love window sill colour

Week 1 - Self Portrait

       Week one of the 12 week art challenge was portrait. When I am painting or drawing I find it really hard to just create something from my mind, I need a photo to work off. I found a photo of my face and started off with watercolours. Unfortunately more than half of my watercolours were all dried up inside, so mid way I switched over to the old faithful acrylic paints.

     

       Next theme: An animal.

A bit of Photo Editing Fun

       Just by chance I stumbled across this really clever photo editing website. It's heaps easy to use and has over 300 different styles you can add to your photos. I had a lot of fun using it, and thought I'd share it!

http://photofunia.com

Some are random & kind of silly (but a little fun!)