Our Retro Santa is a Cover Boy!

I know we're in the middle of Halloween preparations, however this couldn't wait!

I'm pleased as punch to announce that our Retro Santa made with STAEDTLER's Puppen Fimo has made the cover of PolymerCafe magazine for December 2013!

Follow the link to grab your copy and stay tuned to this blog to get step by step instructions on pattern construction to make his outfits. 

Yes there are two outfits!!

One long coat and hood for a Father Christmas 

and one cap and jacket for a traditional retro Santa Clause!

The shirt will be up next week and the other clothing items will follow weekly so you can have your own little classic Santa ready for the Holidays!

#PicMonkeyBOO Halloween Contest!

PicMonkey is holding a Halloween contest!!!

The prize is a years worth of their advanced photo editing tools. It's a free Royal membership for a year if you win!

Here are some of my entries. 

I'm having a ball with these tools.

Myself as a ghoul....

Mummy Hand Tutorial

This is a really great way to pre-make some bandage wrapped hands for a costume, so you won't have to take time from your makeup on the event night to wait for the glue to dry....

I used some of our torn cotton sheet sets for this. I cut them into roughly 1 -2 inch strips. I started wrapping at my fingertips and worked my way down each finger. I used Fabri-tak fabric glue from Beacon adhesives because it has an amazingly fast grip.

Upside Down Apple Pie Cake

We've been completely swamped with seasonal projects these last few weeks. I'm finding it hard to keep up. We were gifted some delicious apples last week and are trying up new recipes to use them all up. 

This happened. We cooked up some sliced apples with cinnamon, sugar and pear syrup until they were a golden brown. Then we mixed up some plain cake batter and poured it over top the apples and baked it just like that.

I highly recommend this! The cake was sooooo moist when we turned the cake out the apples soaked right into the soft hot cake. We ate it all before it even had a chance to cool.

Do you have a favorite apple recipe?

The Creature

Here's a fast step by step on how I use my STAEDTLER Karat Aquarel watercolour pencils. I'm continuing on with my Monster theme for the season, but you could use these techniques with any subject matter.

I start by sketching out my basic design on a dry sheet of watercolour paper. After I get the design straight I can use a wet brush to blend the outlines. I scribble some of the colours I want to use onto a scrap piece of watercolour paper and call it a pallet. I can use my damp brush to pick up some of this scribbled colour and add it to the piece. 

Here's the creature with most of the work done.

I scribble background colour onto another pallet paper and wet my whole background down with plain water. Then I add some of the scribbled background colour and watch it run.

Background done!

Lastly, after the piece has completely dried, I use my STAEDTLER pigment liner 0.5 to outline the detail and sign the piece.

Hope your having a fabulous fall so far!!! 

The Bramble

We made these jelly shots for a family get together this weekend and I'm in love with them. I'm also smitten with the whole idea of gourmet, alcohol enhanced jello bites. I think it might be a new hobby.

These are called Brambles. They have a bottom gin and lemon layer and a top blackberry layer. You can find the recipe over at the JellyShotTestKitchen.

This is our first attempt about six months ago. Unfortunately, I spilled most of the gin layer on the kitchen floor so it's almost non existent here. They were still delicious. The yellow jelly with the grapefruit is the Paloma from Jelly ShotTestKitchen.  It had a bitter bite and I'm a sweet toothed gal, but it was another great recipe from the same site.

Do you have a favorite "bring to the party" dish for Halloween?

We'd love to hear yours!

Here Comes The Bride!

I'm still playing with my STAEDTLER Karat Aquarel Watercolour Pencils.

Couldn't resist a little classic monster fun. She might be a card or some gift wrap when added to a soon to come group of old timey ghouls. 

I used my STAEDTLER Pigment Liner 0.5 to outline the design and highlight the details. I'm having a ball with this years Halloween designs. There'll be more to come soon!

Halloween Watercolour

I've been playing with my STAEDTLER Karat Aquarell watercolour pencils. Thinking about some seasonal cards and decorations. Here's what we've got so far.

I'm thinking about table settings and maybe some pop up cards. 

The banners should be great for table settings, maybe scrawled across mini pumpkins? 

I have plans for pop up cards using this wing and some photo transfers on STAEDTLER fimo clay. 

I'll let you know what happens.

:D

Zucchini Pear Quick Bread

This recipe makes two proper large loaf pans of bread plus one small round cake pan.

The small round cake pan comes out first and is usually devoured by the time the larger loaves come out.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Oil and flour your pans and add parchment paper liners if you like them.

We started off making this recipe for Mom's Zucchini Bread but doubled and altered it to suit our tastes.

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients:

5 3/4 cups of white flour

3 tbsp ground flax seed

2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

6 tsp cinnamon

2 cups of chopped pecans or walnuts

Wet ingredients:

6 eggs

2 cups of veg oil

4 cups white sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

4 tsp pure vanilla extract (or the scrapings from one large vanilla bean)

3 1/2 cups of grated zucchini

1 cup of grated fresh unpeeled washed pears

1/2 cup of chopped apricots

For topping:

1/3 cup of unsalted, shelled pumpkin seeds

I mixed all the wet ingredients together in a bowl. Sometimes I add substitute carrot or apple. Sometimes we add raisins or currants... It depends on what we happen to have a heap of. 

I mix the dry ingredients up in a separate bowl. I use walnuts or pecans, but you could use any nut you happen to have. I've also added bran to this recipe along with the flax seed. Remember to reduce the flour if you increase the flax or add bran. I figure I can always add more flour at the end of I need it.

I butter and flour the loaf pans and add a sheet of parchment paper that overlaps the sides of the pan to make taking the loaf out easier.

I mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Make sure you are using a super big bowl. This is a heap of batter! Just mix until the ingredients are blended. Some lumps are ok, you don't want to over mix!

Pour the batter in the bread pans and put the left over batter in a smaller pan. Now is the time to sprinkle the loaves with seeds or toppings. I bake all three together but take the smaller pan out after about 30 minutes or when a knife comes out clean. The larger loaves will bake from 45 minutes to an hour. Use the clean knife trick here too.

Here are two loaves without seed topping.....

And here are two loaves with the pumpkin seed topping.

They are both delicious.

Hope you try your own version.

We can't seem to keep this in the house. It gets eaten almost as fast as I can bake it.

Even More Delicious Autumn Pair Fixin's

We were gifted with even more delicious fall pears. A different variety then last week, but just as delicious and ripe. Here are a few of the things we've done with them so far.

These guys are a little bit bigger and have very yellow skin. They are very juicy and have delicate white flesh.

This is Pear and Jalapeno Chutney. It smells of Christmas, all cinnamon and ginger, but it's the hottest preserve I've ever tried. Can't wait to see what happens to it after it sits for a few months.

The pears were so ripe I really couldn't stew them without them falling apart. So I just poured a sugar syrup infused with cloves and ginger and a few chai tea bags. There are also some dried berries thrown in just because I had them.

This is the stewed pear and peach salad. It's just in a simple sugar syrup, but they're delicious just the same. These are just out of the caner and you can still see the bubbles rising up from the syrup boiling.

I made some more pear and zucchini bread. That's six giant loaves so far. I love it the most the next day, sliced thick and reheated in the toaster with butter and sharp cheddar. So delicious! I'll be sharing our recipe for pear and zucchini loaf this weekend too so stay tuned.