Cooking Before 10am. Yes, I Am Crazy.

On Sunday I ran into one of my loveliest friends at church and made a date for morning tea this morning.
It was all planned, we would bake delicious goodies, set up our blankets of the lush green oval behind my place and let the kids play while we chatted and sampled the yumminess.

Of course I had forgotten that to make the pesto scrolls I had intended there was no way I could have dough made, kneaded, risen, kneaded, mixed with pesto, risen and baked by 10am.
My usual alarm (the little girl) goes off at about 6am every morning so I thought I could maybe complete this impossible task of scrolls.
But of course this morning was not the same.
I woke. Early. In my half asleep haze I looked up at tthe baby monitor. What? No sound? She must be asleep still. Check volume. Yes it is on. Well I am going right back to sleep while I can!

I assumed the most I would get was 5 minutes.
I woke to my husband's alarm at 755am. I looked at him, he looked at me. His face said "Why are you still in bed!?"
I grabbed the baby monitor. Volume was on fairly high.
Oh.
Oh darn.
I guess in my half asleep haze earlier that morning I had changed the channel.
Ooops.
I switched it over and thankfully there was no screaming, just baby talk, chattering to herself.
Phew.

I leapt out of bed, got baby up and fed and looked at the clock.
Hmmm....I had one hour to bake something delicious.
CUPCAKES!!
I made myself busy and by 10am (still in pjs) I had these:



Mmm yummy AND pretty!

Of course silly old me had a lot of cake batter left after doing one tray so a second followed and then I finally had the chance to use my star molds.



I love them.
They were given to me by the special friend who I was meeting with.

So I packed up the pram with blankets, cupcakes, bbig jug of cold cordial and cups and set off.
It was lovely.
We will be doing it again.
And again.
But maybe next time I will think ahead and prepare my dough in advance, so she can try my yummy pesto scrolls.



Oh yeah did I mention the little girl LOVES the toy I made her? :)

Bread Making fun

When we went food shopping on Saturday I bought something I have wanted to buy for a very long time....


Proper bread making flour! A lot of it!

I sifted (oh yes haha lame joke!) through some recipes and decided to go with this one:
http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2007/06/bread-making-for-beginners.html
It was very easy to follow and my arms got a great work out with all the kneading.
The flour is very different from usual plain flour. It doesn't have that bleached crazy white look. It kneads up a lot easier and quicker too.
So this is what I ended up with:



The perfect loaf!
I didn't add any seeds as this loaf will be shared with our daughter but I will make some more and do some experimenting.
I also made a sweet chili and cheese loaf using a mixture of my mum's, grandpa's and store bought sweet chili sauces. My grandpa's one is VERY hot chili but tastes so good.
The silly husband pulled off a big chunk of the saucy, cheesey top and scoffed it down. He doesn't tolerate hot chili so that was a bit of a mistake! I had to remind him to eat th bread part too....To avoid fire in the mouth again.
Looks like another sunny day outside so what can I bake today?
Pesto and cheese scrolls?
Herb & Garlic loaf?
Spinich and cheese twist?
The options are endless!
.....
....
...
..
.
Cinnamon scrolls?
Mmm!

The Three C's. Crochet, Cooking and....Crappy Weather!

Yesterday I tackled some unfinished projects. It feels rather nice to actually finish things!

Though I would love to say it was sheer determination that made me do it there was another little thing helping me along.... Our internet was down. Well, not just ours! Our lovely service provider had outtages in almost every state! Just a tad frustrating but at least I got things done.

I dug this toy up I started for Eve a long time ago..... Finally stuffed it, popped some eyes on and finished up the head. My crochet was looking so messy at the top (silly me should have started the other way around but I was freestyle crocheting, had no idea what I was doing!) that I went the sneaky way of finishing and closed him up flat and gave him a weird head tentacle thing.

Getting the dog's approval...



Can I eat it?



I think I like you...Like like you.



I love this rainbow yarn!



I still have some left but I cant decide what to make!

Finished up this little baby blanket but a bit smaller than I had hoped as I ran out of one of the colours. Had a great suggestion of turning it into a cushion cover. Might do that!





It has come to that time of our-pantry-is-so-empty-so-is-the-fridge-what-am-I-going-to-EAT?!? We are due for food shopping this weekend so things have been getting creative the last few days. Though I am impressed we have made the food we bought last time stretch out so long.
So I rummaged in our big freezer and out popped a tiny little frozen mound of pizza dough. Mmmm pizza is nice for lunch on cold wet days. So I cracked open a can of flavoured tuna, cut up the last 3cm cube of cheese we had and threw it all on the dough. Baked for 20mins and out came perfection!



Eve saw my lunch and then refused hers. She stole a piece of mine and she loved it too!

I cooked up some pasta for dinner last night using some leftover sauce from the freezer but was hankering for something yummy for dessert....
I grabbed a bowl and started throwing random cake-like ingredients in. Mixed it all up, chucked it in a dish and popped it in the oven, hoping it would be edible.

I would have gotten a photo of before....But honestly I didnt have the time. It came out of the oven and was consumed while sitting in bed watching NCIS with the hubby. This is what was left this morning:



It was good, good, good! Yummy and dense, moist and chocolatey. I had put oats and ground linseed in there so it has a healthy side to it!



And that was a nice way to end the day.
Today I need to drag myself and the little girl up to the library to pick up some books and to probably pay a fine though I returned the books, I think the recent long weekend might have stuffed it up somehow. Oh well!
I just hope it doesn't rain on us..... Eve does not like being under the pram plastic cover. Don't blame her, I'd hate it too!

Cleaning Frenzy Is On!!

After all my efforts of the big cleanup in our study I came across a minor hurdle. I love this hurdle, I married him and had a child with him. He has a name.
He bought a new computer. Well not really, he borrowed money to buy one as our last one was at the end of it's life.
So after my days upon days of cleaning out that room, he came in, and left a storm of old computer parts, boxes from new computer and random crap he had picked up along the way behind him.....Hmf!

So I decided to start again.
I looked at my mountain of wool, thhe freshly washed ones were dry but there was no way they could ever possibly fit in my big tub. So I went searching for other alternatives for storage.
I entered our bedroom......

Let me start by saying our bedroom has always been the messiest room of the house.
When our daughter was born it was as if Winter had come early so all we could do was coop ourselves up in the one bedroom with our tiny little fan heater and hope we didn't freeze overnight.
The days weren't much better. I found myself staying in the room most of the day with the heater on full.... Which of course meant that dishes started to move in with us, dirty washing began to pile up. I was so busy with a newborn and washing her nappies that our clothes barely got a look in!
After we emerged from the 'newborn haze' I started to get the room clean. No more dirty dishes, no more mountains of dirty clothes....Ok well I lie there, we somehow always have dirty washing lying around. I do at least one load a day and since there are three of us I was getting confused.
Then I noticed something...... My husbands mountain of clean washing (that he had always said he was going to put away but always got distracted so never did) was spilling onto the floor, right next to the mountain of dirty washing.
I was a bit furious!
I had been washing his clean clothes for months!
NO MORE!

In my search for storage for my newly clean wool I found an old set of plastic drawers in our bedroom, so I figured I would clean out our bedroom first then get the drawers out.
Well!
The room was a big job, it took me two days, endless hours and many loads of washing but it is finally clean. I am still catching up on the last load or two of washing and thee man does need to put a small pile of his stuff away. But it is so improved!
I moved our bed around too due to the one night it got freezing cold and my flu worsened overnight thanks to window above my head.

Still getting used to it though.
The best part, appart from stepping back looking at it and going "OH YEAH!" was the things I ffound under the bed!
It was pretty scary since we have had a mice problem from the second we moved in. I had no idea what I would find.
But it was good! I found a huge bag of clothes from before I was pregnant, all my old favourites!
Yippeee!
Of course there was a lot of rubbish under there too.....
But the worst part was when we moved our dresser.......
We have heard scratching noises behind this dresser for a while....I don't like it, I hate these wild mice, they are the one thing that make me go "eek!"
We pulled out the dresser.... Behind the dresser there was a small hole in the wall, had been there when we moved in but apparently it was the gateway for our mice residents to their new home. They had built a nest in the gap between our dresser and the wall!
So I squealed, ducked in with the vacuum but had to get the man to pick the nest up and put it in the bin as there was no way it would fit in the vacuum and NO WAY I was getting any closer to it!
There were no mice in there (PHEW!) but it was still awful.
But I feel much better knowing it is gone.

One of the things I found hidden under the bed was this hat:


I had forgotten I had even made it!
Oh and she tried a bit of her first Easter egg too....



She loved it of course!

The other thing I have been doing every day is going outside for a nice walk. I get a bit cooped up cleaning all day so it is nice to get some fresh air after all the hard work.



We cleaned up our loungeroom yesterday, moved all the furniture so we can use the fireplace and got rid of our broken coffee table. The room looks so big now!
I'm not a huge fan of cleaning, but the results are so worth it, I feel better being in a nice tidy and organized room. And yes, I am bonkers. :)

Since today is Sunday, and Easter Sunday at that, we will be going off to church and then coming home to maybe a bit more cleaning. I'll probably do a small room like the bathroom, I'd love to have a day of rest but I think if I do I will lose all momentum and nothing will happen.