A compendium of homespun endeavours.
I had seen these owls on Craftster, and had been putting off making one for some time. But when I did get around to it, was it ever quick!
I had made the green guy with the intention of attaching him to my cousin’s Christmas gift, but when I showed my mom she immediately decided where he’d look best on our tree, so there you have it…and then I decided to make a purple she-owl so that my parents would have a matched set.
Merry Christmas!
Sigh…so I thought with having some time off in December that I’d be a one-girl crafting machine. Homemade gifts for all! Hot and cold running cookies!
Funny how things don’t always work out the way you had them planned.
I can’t complain. The time-management issues were my fault, really, but I wouldn’t trade lunches with old friends for all the hand-knit Chrimbo scarves in the world. (And a good thing, too, because I’m not much of a knitter.) Oh, I did get some holiday baking done – and once I’ve posted this, I’m running next door to distribute some of it – and managed a couple of new Christmas ornaments for the tree.
The kitty is from an out-of-production kit I scooped up on Ebay called “Merry Kittens”; she and five others make up the cutest little bunch of tree-hangers ever. Since I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish all six, I used threads and perforated paper from my own stash to do just the one.
Remember my fondness for Mill Hill beaded kits? This one is called “Diamond Holiday”, and has been sitting in my collection for the past two Christmases, untouched. I suspect some may disagree, but I find the beadwork oddly relaxing…and when it catches the twinkling lights…lovely!
I did get one homemade gift done: a vest for my dad which, although wrapped, is not officially finished. Once he’s had a chance to try it on, I’ll add the buttons and buttonholes to ensure a custom fit!
Merry Christmas!
I’ll keep this short, because who wants to read about cupcakes when they could be assembling last-minute Halloween costumes? (Speaking of which: according to WordPress stats, people are finding this blog by searching “Dolores Haze costume”. This makes my day in ways you cannot imagine. I wish I didn’t already have a costume lined up myself; there are at least a couple of people who would appreciate the reference.)
But…following my last rant about overpriced festive bake kits at Target, I saw an equally overpriced kit at Chapters to make mummy cupcakes. The kit made 12, and it cost $10.50. And, okay, yes it came with candy eyes, but how important are those to the overall integrity of the finished product? And do they really taste like much? So I broke out my trusty chocolate cupcake recipe as well as that for buttercream icing, and made my own, no doubt tastier, version.
I used a basketweave tip (Wilton #47, I think) to pipe on the bandages. That was tricky! I’m a big fan of symmetry and pattern, and to try to maintain a random order of bandage direction? Killer! The eyes are mini chocolate chips, and the mouth is red gel food colouring applied with a toothpick (my parents’ idea; before they suggested it, my mummies had a bit of a Hello Kitty vibe and no mouth to speak – ha! – of).
(Yes, that’s my mummy holding my mummies.)
Have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone!
Ahhh….I love Halloween. I might have mentioned that before, but it bears repeating. This is an entire day where you’re expected to wear a costume and eat candy. If television would air Technicolor-filmed musicals all day instead of horror flicks, it just might be the perfect day. And I don’t let being an adult (ha!) with a career (ha! ha!) stop me – I’m shameless, and will show up to work in costume even if I’m the only one in the whole office who’s dressed up.
While browsing the Halloween department at Target recently, I was a little disappointed. Sure, Tar-zhay had some different costumes than WalMart (for which I have yet to come up with an adorable, French-sounding pronunciation), but their candy selection was rather mundane. Same old, same old – and nary an Eat-More in sight. (These are a precious, precious commodity, and I would trade my strictly hypothetical firstborn for a bag of the minis.)
Ah, but they did have some different food preparation products – juice blends with ghoulish names, a set of four different sprinkles in test tubes, some cake mixes. One that caught my eye made an orange-and-black marble cake with purplish icing. Cute. The price? $7.99. Eight bucks for something I could do myself? No way was I paying that kind of money! So I came up with this:
This is the basic marble recipe from…well, you know. I used gel food colouring to get the batters just the right shades, and then proceeded to fill and swirl as usual.
With purple icing! Clearly, my marbling skills need work; this one looks mostly orange.
Now the only hurdle to clear is whether my test audience finds black cake appetizing or not. Come on, it’s chocolate….
Timbits are ten for a toonie!
I didn’t quite realize how many uniquely Canadian desserts there were until just a few days ago. You’ve got your matrimonial cake, your Nanaimo bars, your beaver tails – which might not be as cruel as their name suggests, but in any case, aren’t exactly part of a balanced diet.
And lo, the humble butter tart became my baking project for the long weekend. (This would be way more fun that studying, I knew it!) I used the “Better than Butter Tarts” recipe from Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard’s How it All Vegan!, and I’m pretty darned pleased with how they came out.
The recipe was soooo quick and simple. The longest part was letting the raisins plump for 10 minutes before I could do much of anything else, but seriously? So not a big deal when your payoff is tasty pastry.
My momma is a bona-fide butter tart aficionado, and had been more than willing to schlep me to the store to buy raisins and flaxseed. She dubbed these “less cloyingly sweet than some of the others you get” (where? Commercially? From your recipe?), but “really, really good”. I liked the addition of chopped walnuts on top. They toasted up as the tarts baked, and added a hint of crunch to the whole deal. I think this recipe is a keeper!
But before I resume hitting the books, a riddle: What does a Canadian gang look like?
“Hey, tart. Where do you think you’re going?”
…oh, and cupcakes, too!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Right by the [bad word, bad word] skin of my [bad word] teeth…
I decided that for Christmas, my mother needed a cross-stitched picture of three kitties, to reflect ours. So, with little regard for how much time this might actually take, I set to work:
It was one of my goals for the year to complete a Peter Underhill pattern, since I keep buying them but not stitching them, so this was kind of a two-birds-with-one-stone deal.
I’m quite pleased with how it came out, and so glad I switched out the 14-count white aida that came in the kit for sparkly 28-count evenweave. I think the sparkles really add a festive touch. It’s not washed or anything, yet; I put in the final stitches at roughly 7:45 this morning. My mother is delighted, and is trying to decide whether she wants to frame it, make it up into a cushion cover…
I also got to carry on one of my favourite Christmas traditions: making homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I do all the prep the night before, including slicing them and placing them in the pan, then refrigerate overnight. The next morning, they just need to be proofed a tiny bit, and then baked.
The recipe is from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and couldn’t be simpler or tastier. This alone was worth the price of the book, and the buns have come to be eagerly anticipated. You need a bit of a sugar rush to open presents!
Merry Christmas!
(Because I’m capable of domestic arts that aren’t just cupcake porn, doncha know…)
(But don’t worry, there will still be plenty of that!)
Every year, one of the no-kill cat shelters in town has an open house, sort of a fund-raising/awareness/adoption drive. They hold a bake sale, too, and put out the call for people to bring in baking to help the cause. I try to make something tasty each year, and one year I recall phoning in sick to work so I could stay home and bake a few dozen cupcakes (I’ve since improved my time-management skills).
I wanted to do something just a little different this year. Baking is fine, but homemade treats grow stale quickly, and what if they don’t sell? Isn’t there something a little more tangible I could do? Then it hit me: what about a couple of cute half-aprons? They make the perfect hostess gift, and can be tied on long after the cookies have turned dry and crumbly. I used fun faux-retro prints to keep things merry and bright, and had at ‘er.
To make them, I measured an apron of my mother’s and drafted up a pattern of sorts. They were really simple – I think I spent more time steaming my fingers with the iron than sewing – and generously-sized. I’m not a skinny girl, but the ties wrap all the way around my waist back to the front. The whole project would have been a great exercise in de-stashing, too (besides helping the homeless kitties), if I hadn’t gone out and bought fabric specifically to make these. Next year…
I even made little tags with care instructions:
But, you know, they did ask for baking and not for cute housewares, so I did bring something edible, too. My world city inner-circle famous Cuban Lunch candies, packaged and ready for giving, or just for enjoying yourself:
Hopefully I’ll help them raise a few dollars to help the kitties…what a nice start to the holiday season!
While most crafty/cook-y bloggers are no doubt posting homemade cornucopia centrepieces or locavore turkey and stuffing recipes this weekend, I decided to bypass Thanksgiving entirely in favour of Halloween, which is frankly far more fun.
From the instant I first saw the recipe for Black Cat Cookies in Hannah Kaminsky’s Vegan Desserts, I knew I had to make them. Because…OMG…cats and cookies? That’s pretty much a whole-package dessert right there. And yeah, I realize it’s just a jazzed-up chocolate cookie, but I loved the inclusion of black cocoa powder to get that deep colour.
I probably should have used a metal cookie cutter instead of a plastic one with little details etched right in, since I found the dough just a tad sticky and difficult to use with the cutter I chose (my fault – I added more liquid than the recipe called for when my dough wasn’t coming together as nicely as I had hoped). But any headache I may have had while rolling and cutting paid off later when I didn’t have to frost-in any features.
Okay, so they’re not quite black, but a deep brown. But I found a no-frosting-necessary way to make them look darker:
Flip the background fabric around! Score one for innovation!
Happy Thanksgiving!
A few weeks ago, I went to the cigar store with my lunch date to pick up a top-up card for my phone (this is important). There was no harm in looking at the magazines first, was there? This way, if I saw anything I wanted, I could pay for it all at once instead of having to queue up again after. I squealed when I spied the Christmas ornament preview issue of Just Cross Stitch on the shelf. It’s a harbinger of great things to come.
“Christmas already?” he asked, taking the magazine from me and turning it over in his hands, examining it.
“Of course!” I replied cheerily. “If you want to be finished in time for Christmas, you have to start now.”
We perused this year’s offerings, looked at the magazines a bit longer, and I paid for my cross-stitch magazine, the latest issue of Macleans, and a Wunderbar, and we left. Without the top-up card. But we did have a Wunderbar, which was a definite plus.
I was right, you know. You really do have to start stitching/crafting/creating early if you want to have any semblance of sanity left by Christmas. Hmm. I remembered a partially finished kit bequeathed to me by my chief cross stitch consultant, who had started it before deciding “Nuts to beadwork!”. This would be a good time to finally finish it.
A cedar I didn’t know we had in the backyard made a wonderful Christmas tree stand-in.
This is one of the many Mill Hill beaded kits I’ve amassed over the years – I had completed a “Noel” one similar to this a few years back. It’s supposed to be a poinsettia, although to me it looks more like a bold, Eastern European geometric design. Also, I’m starting to think there could be a real market for partially-finished kits – with most of the cross stitch finished, this project just flew by as I added the beads and sewed it together.
So there we have it: my second Christmas ornament of 2012. Hey, if Hallmark thinks it’s time, that’s a good enough reason for me.
The Witty Child 