I spy, what I want for Christmas.

Thanks to Cindy at Bug and Pop for the awesome new idea of Eye Spy.

One of the things that I really like to buy for entertainment purposes, is DVD's of TV shows. Me and Damien already have a fairly impressive collection, and one of our favourite relaxing things to do is lounge in bed on a Sunday and watch as many episodes of our favourite TV shows as we want. No interruptions, no ads, the TV station can't randomly decide to show an old episode completely screwing up the story line, heaven.



This afternoon I spent some time over at EzyDVD looking through their lists of TV shows and I've decided to do a little top five of the shows that I would most like for Christmas. Sorry that this isn't anything crafty, I'll chuck a few of those on the end too!

- Buffy, the complete series - I am letting you all know how geeky I am?

- Dawson's Creek, the complete series - I grew up in the late 90's didn't I?

- Arrested Development - I love Jason Bateman and Michael Cera. I find this show SO watchable.

- Supernatural, Season 3 - It scares me, but I can't help loving it.

- Bones - No, I don't have a thing for David Boreanaz

Have I mentioned that I love TV?

On a more crafty note, I'd also love a new rotary cutter with an interchangeable zig zag blade, new fabric scissors, someone who knows how to change the light bulb in my machine, a crafting iron (I ruined ours with wadding), quilting lessons, a walking foot for my machine, more storage and a million dollars!

This game is fun!

- Jemma

ScheDUEL

With the amazingly talented Kirst over at Kootoyoo!

Here are my answers:

Still feeling totally inspired by the handmade issue of mankind mag from my favourite design blog.
Q What is the blog author's first name? ANSWER: Erin Loechner
use the first letter - LETTER: E

We like to keep lunch casual, I've found some fabulous BBQ recipes for the big day.
Q What type of meat is pictured on the rotisserie? ANSWER: Lamb
use the first letter - LETTER: L

Getting some great ideas for upcycling (my favourite craft) & enjoying the revamp over at this fabulous craft website.
Q They list everyone's favourite mama as one of their inspirational sites. Which mama is she? ANSWER: Soulemama
use the second letter - LETTER: O

Looking forward to being able to buy handmade at the shopping shindig with the craft book Queen.
Q What type of car is pictured? ANSWER: Volkswagon
use the first letter - LETTER: V

All these letters unscramble to reveal: LOVE
WHAT? is all you need.


I can't even imagine how happy I would be to win this one!

Good luck to everyone else.

-Jemma

Next week!

I'm going to host a week of "Collections"

I'm going to be posting everyday, starting Monday of pictures of what I collect. But if you want to join in, it can be anything really. Cool pictures of other peoples collections, the things you collect, items that you'd love to add to your collection, the possibilities are endless!

Let me know if you want to play and spread the word, I'll make a link dump on my sidebar if anyone actually reads this and decides to join!

-Jemma

Ginger Beer

I decided that I'd use Pip's recipe and have a go at making some ginger beer. After seeing her joy at her creation at the Peddlar's Picnic. How could I resist?

The end of my second week is coming, and it should be ready for bottling on Sunday afternoon. I still haven't quite pigured out where I'm going to mix 14 litres of ginger beer in my tiny kitchen, but that's half the fun! I'll let you know on Sunday night.

Also, my best friend asked me if I could dye a dress of hers. I of course said yes (very cockily I might add) but I actually have no idea how to. Any one have any tips?

-Jemma

Christmas Traditions Swap 2008

In this, my first year of blogging I've decided to join in with the Christmas swap over at sew liberted. I got my swap partner last week and I was super excited to see that my partner was from america. A place that i've always had a facination with. And has a lot of cool traditions that I'd like to read about!



Being that I did get an American partner it really helped me with thinking up ideas of things to make. I'm pretty much going with a kangaroo theme. And then filling in the gaps with caramelo koalas!



The tradition that I wrote about was a but if good old backyard cricket. And the recipe that I chose was the timeless and slightly 70's white Christmas.



My partner also told me that she had a 2 year old son. So I thought that I'd whip up one of the very cute and easy Melly and Me dinosaurs. I love them!

-Jemma

On my fridge..

With one of my favourite bloggers, Amy over at BadSkirt.



A little temperature conversion chart, since my oven is older than dirt it's still in Fahrenheit.



A menu from my favourite restaurant to get take away at. It's walking distance from the house!



A purchase wishlist made by me and Damien at the start of the year. Nice to see that so many have been ticked off!



And lastly, a "get well soon" picture drawn by my nephew Noah when Damien and I had a really bad flu a few months ago.

Thanks Amy for something fun to do tonight.

Next week I'm going to join Fi from Dearfii with her new "what are you wearing Wednesday". Though I might make it it. What I would be wearing if I wasn't at work Wednesday !

Happy hump day everyone!

-Jemma

Passport Protector

As I said before, two of my very good friends are leaving for a 3 month trip to Europe next weekend. I wanted to make them a little going away present that would be helpfull while they're away, and here's what I came up with!

I got the adorable tutorial from here. It was super easy to follow, and already for an Australian sized passport.



I added a little (shakily) embroided panel on the front with the girls names for a little bit of extra personalisation and for my first bit of proper embroidery by myself. I think it looks good!

The top stitching is a little special because this was the first time that I had done any sewing with clear vinyl and I don't have a teflon foot or anything fancy like that. After I'd done a few centimeters I remember a tip that I read about putting a bit of tissue paper over the top of the vinyl when sewing it. And it worked a treat! The only problem being that I only had decorated paper, that wasn't exactly see through. I know what to do in the future though.



Well, hope you like. I know that I'm super pleased with this one. I'm going to be making the second one tomorrow night with the same fabric combo, but in reverse.

- Jemma

I've been a very bad blogger....

I've had one of those weeks. You know, very busy but you don't know why?
Well I assure you that there's some goods coming up. I've joined with the sew liberated Christmas traditions swap, and I'll hopefully be doing a post about that tonight. It's all a bit exciting, and I've made a little present for two of my friends that are you going to Europe for 3 months (lucky!) next week. So I'll be showing that too!

Hopefully I'll be back soon :)

-Jemma

This makes me smile.

Stop Motion Spaghetti Cooking - Watch more free videos

First seen by me at Mighty Girl.

Make sure to check out her other excellent sites, Mighty Goods and Mighty Haus. They're my homewares porn.

-Jemma

Curried Sausages

This is a recipe that I like to pull out... probably once a fortnight,at least. It's super easy, very cheap per person, easy to adjust for different amounts and most importantly. Delicious!

This is for 2 people since that all there is at my house. 3 sausage per person is pretty good, just add more if you want. The sauce is very far reaching in that regard. One other great thing is that this is an absolutely perfect leftovers meal from the barbeque that you've just had :)

Ingredients

6 Sausages, cooked and cut into chunks

1 medium onion, diced
1 medium apple, cubed
1 medium banana, cubed

2 tbsp of sultanas
1 tbsp of dessicated coconut
1 tbsp curry powder
3 tbsp of plain flower
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp strawberry jam
1 tsp lemon or lime juice
2 1/2 cups of water

Method

Heat oil in a frying pan and add onion, curry powder and coconut and allow to fry for about 2 minutes. Then add flour and fry for another minute.

Add water, jam, tomato paste and lemon juice. Put in the fruit and sausages and let this all simmer until thick and the fruit is nice and tender.

And you're done! I like to have mine with some rice, but I think mash would be really nice too. Especially if it was good and creamy to set of the spicy fruity curry.

Enjoy it!

-Jemma

75 Books in a year

With Jessie



Starting 1 November 2008

High fidelity.

What can I say ? Loved it! The movie of this book is one of my favourite go to watches in times of boredom, and I was surprised to read that in the book the whole story is actually played out in the UK.

I pretty much loved every minute of this one, and though I don't usually like to read the book after I've seen the movie first ( or the other way around ) this actually gave me a really enjoyable sense of déjà vu. It was really fun this time seeing that a lot of my favourite moments from the movie were in the book too.

So in short, highly recommended!

- Jemma

This is... A favourite recipe that I'd like to share.

It's called Old Fashioned Raisin square among my family members. But I've seen various other similar recipes that are called some variation of raisin bar or raisin slice.

Anyway, moving right along.

Preheat your oven to 190 Celsius and grease and line your favourite slice pan, square or rectangle. It doesn't matter!

Ingredients:

1 cup of Raisins, Chopped
1 cup of water
125 grams of butter
3/4 cup of caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon of bi carb
1 teaspoon of all spice (or nutmeg or cinnamon or something similar)
1 3/4 cups of plain flour

Method:

Put the water and raisins into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir in the butter and allow to cool slightly. When it is cooled, beat in the egg. Make sure to do it quickly or your egg will cook a little.

Sift in all of your dry ingredients and mix thoroughly until it is nice and smooth. Pour evenly into a greased pan and cook for 40 minutes.

Take out of the oven and allow it to cool completely, if you take it out of the pan too soon it will fall apart. I like to dust it with icing sugar too.

My suggestions for serving is with an afternoon tea, it goes perfectly with a cuppa! Or for something slightly more decadent, put one of the bars in the microwave for about 30 seconds and then put a big scoop of vanilla ice cream over the top! Yummy!

I really hope that someone in blogland will give this a try and see how delicious it is!

- Jemma

A week of Nanna.... Day???

This is my last "Nanna" post for the week. Memes work on business days right?

This is another one from my large collection that was gifted from Nanna. It's an old tea tin and at the moment it holds my desicated coconut. I love all of my babies equally, but this one combines my love of tea AND kitchen containers.

I've been thinking that I'm going to start a few weekly features here so that I won't ever be finding myself desperate or content.

My ideas at the moment are:
- weekly canister, which would just be a picture of the aforementioned canister and a few lines about where I got it etc.

- Weekend baking, where I would post a recipe and picture of whatever I've cooked that weekend.

- join on with "on my desk" which might be hard since the answer is usaully either amity or tea cups

- a weekly hare your stash.

Good? Bad? What does everyone think?

- Jemna