NIKKI-SHELL

Illustration Friday

DREAMS

As you probably know by now, i'm a Pastry Chef and make a LOT of muffins for my workplace, so many infact that i started to dream about them!

Photoart and Self Portrait Day

Self Portrait

Robert Frank

The Early Years

The Americans and after

The Aesthetic Triptych of Robert Frank

I have Robert Franks Thank You book.  It's full with Thank You postcards and is great.  Looking through it gave me the idea of organising a postcard swap.  There will be some guidelines such as the postcard must have been constructed in some part by you, make it your own, no buying a postcard and sending it as it is.  You can use any medium you like, drawing, painting, fabric, printing, cut & paste etc.  So, are you interested in taking part?  If i get enough of you wanting to participate I'll come up with a catchy name (I'm open to suggestions) and will start a blog for us to post ideas and inspiration and a Flickr gallery for the finished 'works of art'.  I did think of maybe doing this as a monthly thing with a theme to each month and sending to someone different each time, what do you think?

Also, it'll be relatively cheap, just the cost of making the card and the postage which makes me smile after posting my SP package the other day and having a small heart attack at the cost!

Mini Me!

I actually got my submission for this months 'Tie one on' finished, hooray!  It's damn hard to get a picture of Mia standing still whilst trying to get myself in the picture and taking it myself, phew!  I think i need a beer!

I'm in the thrifty mood lately so these are made with fabrics i found at the op shops.

Ding Ding!

Round 1!  Kev (that's the Hubby) has just set up his own blog.  I encouraged him to do it and am now thinking that this could have been a BIG mistake.  Why?  Well, he's going to want to cut into my computer time isn't he?  I think there could be a few fights on the horizon!

Anyway, go check his blog out at www.rawk.typepad.com, it's mostly going to be about music, his influences, recommendations favourites, news in the music world, his band Spyhunter etc.

I had an email from Racheal today.  She tried out my cookie recipe and hers turned out great, go take a look.  A few others have tried a few of my recipes, if you have then send me some pictures, I'd love to see how they turned out.

In the kitchen

Carrot Cake

This is a Charlie Trotter recipe which i use quite a lot.

Ingredients

• 8 eggs
• 1/2 cup of oil
• 1tsp salt
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 3 cups wholemeal flour
• 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 4 cups shredded carrots
• 1 cup blackcurrants/blueberries

This recipe will make 2 loafs so half it if you only want one.

Method

Whip the eggs to ribbon consistency.  Add the oil, sugar and salt and mix well.

Sift together the dry ingredients and shred the carrots.

Fold the dry ingredients, the shredded carrot and the blackcurrants or blueberries into the batter and mix well.

Spoon into a lined loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees celcius for about 40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.

 

Et Voila!

You could make cream cheese icing for the top or altenatively if you want to make this for a dinner party dessert, bake as individual mini cakes and serve with carrot sorbet! 

Secret Pal goodies

So as promised, here is the second package that arrived yesterday.  It's from my Secret Pal.

She sent a cute little sewing box, which is great, now i can stop storing my bits and bobs in a cardboard box!  The lid is all padded so i'm assuming i can use it as a pin cushion.  Next, we have 2 balls of green  Mission Falls cotton yarn and 2 skeins of hand dyed  cotton/rayon mix yarn from Springwater Fiber Workshop in a mix of greens, blues and golden yellows.  There was also a catalogue for this place along with a catalogue for spices which had some recipes in and a hat for Mia from her daughter which didn't make it into the picture as Mia had ran off with them.  Her daughter also sent Mia a couple of drawings:

 

Thankyou so much KT!  I guessed correct right?  You gave it away at the beginning by telling me about your dog!  I had a lot of fun and enjoyed all your emails and packages.

Now....what do i make with my yarn?

What's in the mail today?

I've had a good day for packages today!  First of all the patterns i ordered arrived...

Yup, i plan on making nappies!

Then, Mr Parcel Guy dropped off some parcels for me at work, AT WORK!!!  HELLO!! I'm at home!  Luckily Hubby was working and called me to say they were there so Mia and I went to pick them up.

The first parcel contained some goodies from Lyn at Molly Chicken.  She sent me some yummy fudge and old skool British sweets, yummm!  How luck am i?

And, she sent me these beautiful little shoes and bandana that she made, i even commented on them on her blog!

Thank you so much Lyn, you made my day!

There was another package but I'm going to save that for tomorrow, watch this space!

One last thing, it seems we have a budding artist in the family!  Here is Mia painting her first picture at playgroup this morning, of course the paint didn't only end up on the paper.

Illustration Friday

This is my attempt at Illustration Friday.  The theme is REFLECTION.

I'm quite out of practice with my drawing, not having done any since i did my A levels (9 years ago).  I'm hoping that taking part in this will help me improve.

Photoart and Self Portrait Day

An older picture of Mia and me.

We have winners!

We have 2 winners from the Guessing game!  They are:

Norbu

and

Gwen

Email me your details and I'll send you your surprise prize!

The answer, by the way, is the Labyrinth Sweater from Unexpected Knitting.  You can see a larger version on the cover.  The idea is that you knit a looooong strip with mitred corners then give it to the recipient who then has to work out the puzzle and put the sweater together.  I'll be posting pictures of the finished sweater as soon as i get a few hours to figure it out!

Thanks Catherine!