The Big Bang

You may have noticed that I've been a bit quiet on here lately (well, quieter than usual - I'm a bit of a sporadic blogger at the best of times anyway!)  The reason is that we've had some problems with our power.  Just over a week ago we had an overhead power line outside our house break.  It produced quite a spectacular bang.  And the kids were excited to watch the resulting fire trucks arrive who secured the live wire that was lying on the ground. 

We were without power for 30 hours while repairs were done.  As if that wasn't annoying enough, the surge blew out the air conditioner, dishwasher, computer, printer and modem.  So we (read Chris) have been busy organising repair people to come out and replacements for things that can't be fixed.  And did I already mention that this same thing happened a year ago?  Yep, we've been through this before.  It took ages for everything to be repaired last time too - we had a lot of trouble with the air conditioner (it didn't help that the company sent a faulty part!)

Luckily, the power company *should* cover some of the cost.  Although we will have to pay out of pocket for a few things including the dishwasher (which is so old they no longer make the parts for it!)  I just hope that this same thing doesn't happen again next year - I will be one very angry woman if it does ;)

The reason I haven't been online much is because I have to use the laptop to do my posts now.  I think I live in the dark ages because I find the laptop more frustrating to use than the home computer!  And it's a bit more fiddly to upload photos on here.
 
Hopefully I'll be back online properly very soon, the computer is being repaired as we speak...I'm looking forward to catching up on lots of craft posts when I do!  

Week 43 of Craft Project a week: Hat for my (little) boy

A few weeks ago I made a hat for Jacob.  This week it was Gideon's turn!  I chose to make his hat with cars material on one side and denim on the other side.  The denim made it much sturdier and was easier to work with than the corduroy.  Don't you just love the photo of him above - his two 'teeth' are celery just in case you were wondering! 
  

The cars side of the hat

The denim side of the hat

 

The next challenge will be actually getting him to keep it on.  This is a photo of what actually happened when we were getting him to try the hat on...

Week 42 of Craft Project a week: Baby's Day Out

I've been incredibly slack in getting my craft projects done these past few weeks (lots of stuff happening here at the moment!!) I promise I will get my craft projects from the past couple of weeks done and up here soon but I wanted to share what I did this weekend before the moment has passed...

Tomorrow our ABA group is celebrating  Baby's Day Out.  This event is nation-wide and is an initiative of the ABA.  It aims to celebrate the place of babies in our community and their right to breastfeed whenever and wherever they wish.  Our local place centre, Eco Playscape, very generously offered to allow our members free entry to the centre for our meeting.  So tomorrrow at 10am we will be meeting up there to celebrate our Baby's Day Out event which I've very much looking forward to!

I've been busy making some things for the event as gifts for the babies and children attending.  I got some bibs from Kmart and simply used an iron on transfer of our official Baby's Day Out logo - they turned out pretty well I think!

Customised bibs for the babies coming!

I also didn't want the older children to miss out so I put together a little organza bag with a couple of balloons with the ABA logo (our group project also which I am in charge of!) and a bottle of bubbles that I printed an ABA sticker for.  Hopefully they will enjoy it! 

Little goody bags for the older kids!

 I'm really hoping that we will have a few new faces there tomorrow!  Our group tends to go up and down with memberships and we could really do with a few more people coming to meetings to energise us breastfeeding counsellors and group leaders a little more! 

Raspberry and Coconut Muffins

Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Soy-free

Now that Jacob is on a gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free diet, you'll probably be seeing quite a few recipe posts like this as I experiment with new recipes.  As soon as I saw the recipe for these muffins I knew I wanted to make them.  The original recipe is dairy-free but not gluten-free so I had to make some adjustments.  Replacing the wheat flour with GF flour (we make our mix of GF flour using rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour) was easy enough.  But I also halved the recipe and added an extra egg so it wouldn't be so crumbly with the gluten-free flour. Here's my adjusted recipe...

Raspberry and Coconut Muffins

Ingredients

1 cup GF flour 

1/2 cup castor sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1/4 cup oil

3/4 cup coconut cream

1/4 cup shredded coconut

1 cup raspberries

Method

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.  

Put everything except for the raspberries and shredded coconut into a bowl and mix really well.  

Add the raspberries and coconut and mix gently until just combined.

Spoon into patty pans and cook in oven until brown and a skewer comes out clean.  

Leave in tin for 5 minutes and then remove to a wire rack to cool.  

Enjoy!

I don't particularly like the texture of GF flour but I didn't have a problem with these muffins.  I think the coconut cream made them really moist and not dry like gluten-free things tend to be. Next time I make them I will try substituting the castor sugar with 1/4 cup coconut sugar instead so there's not so much processed sugar in them. 

 

Week 41 of Craft Project a week: Hat for my (big) boy

With the weather starting to warm up it was time to make Jacob a new hat.  He's growing so quickly - the hat I made for him last year is already too small for him.  I love this hat pattern and have used it many, many times.  It makes a very cool reversible bucket hat.  Jacob chose to have the trains (of course!) and I put it with some brown cordoruy that I already had. I'm not very happy with how the cordoruy side of it turned out though.  The material is slighly puckered in a couple of spots but as Chris points out, no one would notice expect for me!

The train side of the hat

The cord side of the hat

I think I might make Gideon one of these with cars material and denim next...

Week 40 of Craft Project a Week: Digger shorts

This week I've been using up some scraps to make Jacob a pair of shorts.  I had a little bit of leftover cord and digger material from the orange digger pants I made the other week.  It wasn't enough for a pair of pants for Jacob but just enough to make some shorts.  And so I did! 

The back of the pants with pockets

The front of the pants

 Jacob was pretty chuffed with the shorts.  Pity he's not so keen on getting his photo taken in the things I sew for him anymore!!