Cake success

Apparently my version of Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake was well received by C's workmates... apart from the guy who said that it was not fluffy enough. I think he was expecting a sponge. At any rate he's not getting any next time! Hee hee.

C saved some for me, and we finished it off tonight. The cake was reasonably dense, to be expected when you make a cake with wet ingredient of sour cream and only two eggs! The icing I found a little bit too sweet - the golden syrup - however it was nice and chocolate flavoured. I would make it again.

Yum!

No photos, it all was eaten too quickly.

Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

Our version of this yummy looking cake is currently cooling on our kitchen bench. Hopefully we can make it look as tasty as Nigella has!

Image and recipe here.

Squeaks and squawks

Tonight I had the urge to pull out my clarinet and play some Mozart! It has been a while since I entertained myself in this way, and I learnt that it had been too long for me to do more than make some rather unattractive squawks.

I backed off from the Mozart and scaled down my expectations to some simple scales. In the lower register.

Playing music is one way to relax and I shall endeavour to spend some time to reduce my squeaking and improve my tone!

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Liquorice love

I am very much a liquorice allsorts fan, and when this image popped into my inbox it made me think "yum".

Okay so it is soap, and not too edible, but still makes feel like eating liquorice allsorts! Yum.

I think that tomorrow at lunch time I might have to go for a wander into the city in search of a packet or two...!

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My poor cake

I made a banana and walnut cake the other weekend. Unfortunately my kitchenhand was a bit too enthusiastic in trying to get the cake out of the tin, and we ended up with a pile of crumbs! The cake still tastes great, you just need a spoon or fork to eat it.

Hanging out with friends on the foreshore

It feels like an age since I caught up with some of my friends and so it was lovely to head to the Swan River foreshore this morning for a casual catchup! We kept it casual this time, and asked everyone to bring their own stuff. It is probably best that we did as half of the people who had said that they were coming pulled out this morning!

Most of my friends have children now and there are a couple of playgrounds where we met. It was a beautiful morning, and there were many family groups out and about enjoying the sunshine and the play equipment.

If the weather continues to hold then it would be great to try and do something like this regularly. I am not sure what my contingency would be if the weather turns foul.

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Easter Progress

Today I made a small effort to get started on one of my Goals for 2011. I previously had plans to knock three of the nine off my list. Two days into the five day weekend and I think that I will struggle to achieve the three I had set out to cross off!

I bought a couple of skirt patterns, and the fabric to make one of them. As you can see from the picture it is a fairly simple style but hopefully it will give me a good start in how to make and shape an item of clothing! It has been many years now since I foolowed a pattern and made myself something to wear.

The plan for tomorrow is to cut out the pattern, mark and cut the fabric and tack it together. I think that I will start with the lining fabric just to make sure that it fits me! Stitching it up for real will mean a visit to Mum and Dad to use Mum's machine.

I have plans too, if the skirt is successful then I would like to try and add some pockets to the next version.

Doctor Who sad news

The ABC has reported that Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who, has passed away.

I am a little young to remember her from the original run of the series, but as a youngster I taped and repeatedly watched The Five Doctors special, made when Peter Davison was the Doctor. Sarah Jane figured quite prominently in that episode. She was the foil to Jon Pertwee's doctor, and rather fiesty.

Sarah Jane made a return to the rebooted Doctor Who with David Tennant's doctor. It was a blast to the past and a lovely tie in for all of us nerds who remembered her from the classic series.

May she rest in peace.

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LED Downlights

One aspect of our build that we had to think about early on was the lighting. We have two rooms and a passageway that are located under the first floor concrete slab and all lights had to be planned before construction.

C is the one who did his homework, and selected this LED downlight. I prefer a warm white to a cool light and the fascia will be silver for further impact.

This fitting claims to provide the equivalent light to a 50W halogen downlight for the cost of only 16W of power. Not a bad trade off! Also these lights are considerably more efficient than the halogens so we should use a lot less power and produce less heat. They also promise to be dimmable, so we should have the same control over our new lights as over our existing halogens.

Brilliant!

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DECORATE: Living Inspiration

I have my eye out for ways to decorate our new house! This house has an L-shaped open plan living space in a similar configuration to ours, reversed.

I really like the arrangement of the fireplace, with the TV above it. The heater is built out and there are low lying cabinets either side. That is something that we could consider for the living area of our open plan space.

We also have double sliding doors at the end of the living space. Ours will be a chunky commercial frame and we have specified a thicker, better insulating glass than the standard so it should provide us with light and a view of our garden without letting in too much heat!

Our kitchen island will also provide a breakfast bar and I am looking forward to being able to potter around in the kitchen with friends perched on the stools to chat! Our current kitchen is a separate room and it is difficult when you entertain to maintain engagement with your guests. The downside of course is that I will not be able to let dishes build up in the sink as they will be on view!

We have the same general layout of the kitchen with the awning windows on either side of the hotplate and the pantry and refrigerator in the return. We also will have two colours for our kitchen cupboards and drawers.

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Weekend of shopping!

I had a big weekend of shopping this weekend. Well, big compared to my recent habits! I have been pretty conservative lately and trying to save some money to pay for and kit out our new house. Mortgages are very scary, and we currently have two.

On Friday night I went home via the city malls. On my way to Myer I stopped at Pulse Urban and checked out their stock. I was very excited to see that they sold Australian Labels that are made in Australia, and including Maiocchi, Dogstar and Lush. I tried on a vast variety of clothing - skirts and dresses and cardigans - and ended up purchasing myself two merino wool cardigans. The first is long sleeved and a bit drapery and royal blue and black striped. The second is short sleeved and black, more for the in between weather we should be having right now! The cardigan label is Isla and they are made in New Zealand. The website on the tag is designer textiles.

Following on I headed to Myer where my mission was to buy tights. I had a $10 voucher that expired today and so I was determined to use it. They handily had a sale on their hosiery - 30% off if you bought three items or more - so I took advantage. I bought some funky tights from two labels, Levante, made in Italy, and Columbine, also made in New Zealand! Awesome.

After the excitement of being able to buy clothes that were (hopefully) not made in a sweatshop, I looked forward to the Angove Street Festival today. E and I made it our destination for this morning. The festival was fairly busy, with a rock band at one end and a ukelele spectactular at the other.

I added to my list of locally made goodies and bought a funky woolly hat from mel p designs, some onesies lovingly wrapped at Future Shelter and some lovely t-shirts from inuk designs.

Now I just have to wait for the weather to cool down so that I can wear my new cardigans, tights and woolly hat! I love my wool clothing and I am excited as it seems that there is a much better range of choice available. Although perhaps I was just never looking in the right place.

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Winter is coming. Maybe!

This morning I woke up and saw that it had rained on our balcony. Yay! I figured that was a good enough excuse for me to pull out my winter boots.

The forecast was for 21C and so I dressed half for summer (the top half) and half for winter (bottom). Halfway to the bus stop the sky started to weep and my decision not to wear a jacket on my walk seemed rather foolish.

The cooler weather is not meant to last and we are back up to 29C on Sunday, although perhaps the 30+C days are gone for this part of the year. We shall see!

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Angove Street Festival

This weekend I will be hanging out with my sister E at the Angove Street Festival. It runs from 10am to 4pm on Sunday 10th April, at Angove Street in North Perth. The shops will be cranking and the Perth Upmarket is making an appearance.

What more could we want?

More information on the market here.

Impulse buys - tights!

I just randomly ordered some tights! Sight unseen and no idea if they are any good. I am now looking forward to them showing up, and the weather being cool enough to wear them.

I was inspired by this post and a sense that winter might finally be on its way (although you would not know it with the temperatures that we have been getting here - consistently over 30C!)

Tightology boast that their legwear is made in Australia using organic materials. The packaging is 100% recycled. So many boxes are ticked!

Here are the two styles that I ordered. I was not brave enough to order the green and so I went with the more conservative red.



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C's Mum is a wizard with her needle and I am lucky that she has turned her hand to Delicates bags! These are perfect for putting your lingerie or delicate clothing into before running the washing machine. She had previously given me the butterfly bag, and on the death of a couple of the cheap supermarket bags that I had been using (my underwear used to just fall out of the rips!) she was kind enough to make me some more, of varying sizes. Thank you!

She has a whiz-bang sewing machine that embroiders the pretty patterns and text you see on the bags, and she coordinates the cotton with the zips. How awesome is that?