Egypt and blergh

I have just been on a fabulous holiday to Egypt for five days, but now we've come back to horrible English weather and an absolutely evil cold/cough bug so Im too ill to write any more

What if Starbucks marketed like the church?

I also found a really interesting and thought provoking video
http://www.beyondrelevance.com/index.cfm/pageid/913/postid/24/index.html#e5059

Without ceasing

Every time I resolve to write more on here, I never do.
So now my resolve is to write if I want to, about anything I want to.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about trying to regain my relationship with God, and about the local churches here. I have these ideas and thoughts all the time and I never say them to anyone, maybe I should?

I want church to be exciting, challenging, touching, friendly and many other things yet most of the time I find it is stand up sit down, sing hymns boring. I dont want to leave the methodist church - I am sure I am here for a reason but what is it? In a church that relies on SO many meetings how can someone who doesnt even go most of the time change anything? How can I make them see that this generation and younger want to connect with God desperately but need to do so in the ways which come naturaly to them, so that worship is an extension of themselves and their personalities, not a formal traditional pattern which they just take part in on a sunday. I think the history of the church is great but do you really think that the heights of my amazement at the creator of the universe dying for me can be expressed by singing hymns I dont even understand?! I need to keep this yearning alive, but I Also want to be doing something about it.

Today I've been reading about 24/7 prayer and I found a beautiful poem about it by someone called Lisa Borden



WITHOUT CEASING

And this is how we pray
Backs nestled into the hammock
Faces turned toward the stars
The warm air lifts against us
And we are quiet, quiet
As you, God, speak to us
About how big you are

And this is how we pray
Sitting on the leaf strewn ground
Peering across the pattern of sun and shade
The clear pool under the giant fig
Where the monitor lizard slips through the water
And we whisper our worshipful thanks
Again and again

And this is how we pray
Standing in the kitchen
Speaking out the worries in our minds
Telling this perfect parent God
Just how small our faith feels
Conscious of how sweetly ludicrous
Our doubts must appear

And this is how we pray
Curled into our duvets
Safely tucked in on this wind blown night
Thoughts far from here
With our friends who sit in vigil
Waiting for a precious life to pass
Maybe even tonight

And this is how we pray
With longing
And with hope
With stress
And with joy
With daring
And with simple words

Puzzle website

Wow a great website with a puzzle for each day
www.jigzone.com

Sketches

Hi
Heres some of my latest journalling, just some quick doodly pages. One based on cacti and their flowers, and the other on a pattern from some material. I like how the pages are so quick to create and are bold and colourful.

Mexican gherkins

Anyone know how to pickle my mexican gherkins?
I have some kind of spiced vinegar we used for making chutneys last year but I dont know what to do with it to pickle these things?

Christmas cards.

This is what I have been working on this last week.

A child-like cut-out Christmas tree with shiny baubles done with a hole punch.


Recycled paper baubles which can be removed and used as decorations. It says Best Wishes in gold glittery embossing powder at the bottom.

Recycled paper VERY shiny stars

These are my favourite but are larger than the others - these are A5 rather than A6.

Christmas cards

Pictures coming soon - today I have started making Christmas cards to sell on my website!!

Blogging

What I really love about the blogs I read is how chatty and friendly they are. I love learning about other peoples lives and seeing all the things they have cooked or made. So why when it comes to me do I seem to keep forgetting to blog because nothing has happened!!!
When in reality I have
- made some lanyards
- possibly got someone to share my workshop with (must ring her again)
- started doing kids club again with my husband
- got a real block on doing silversmithing at the moment for some reason (must do some next week)
- my tomatoes are being got by the cold as they ripen so the nice green ones are in the freezer now to make chutney later, as are the tomatillos
- my sweetcorn are still not readybut are hopefully protected from the cold.
- my mexican gherkins are ready to pickle but I have no jars
- one of my peppers has turned a beautiful bright orange in a matter of days!
- I made some lemon nutmeg scones off someones blog - temporarily forgotton whose
- I also made some honey scotch pancakes with my special honey to help my poor husband with his infected impacted wisdom tooth.
- we made beautiful chicken valentines with pea and potato mash for tea yesterday

And I think nothing has happened!!!!!

Too long since I've been here

You ever have a time when life seems so busy but at the same time so empty of anything you want to blog about? - no cooking,no crafting, very little jewellery making - just my everyday life! Maybe I should blog more about that - make it more personal and not just crafty stuff?
What do you think?

Art journal and lanyards

Heres my latest art journal page which I finally managed to get done about 6pm yesterday so just in time for the Friday deadline on Craftster - yesterday being being Friday.

The theme was Connections - I used a lot of recycled stuff, envelope, magazines, brown paper envelope, postcards for pictures and cut up to make the mini-cards inside the envelope.

This is the mini postcards inside the envelope. The white one is from a recycled card and the others are from magazines. The small writing says "What could better explain the relationship betwen nature, human life and the planet, then pressing a seed into the ground and a shoot emerging - crying out to be looked after - and then giving up a tasty, fresh vegetable."

And heres my latest kindof jewellery. I've been working on some lanyards to hold ID badges and this is the prettiest one I think.

Bah humbug

Sorry guys, I've not been updating this too much, Im too busy and ill. I will try and update when I can but to be honest I've not got much done! My garden is still growing though.

Back from holiday

I forgot to say that we were going on holiday for a week and although I took my computer with me to our "holiday" at my parents house I didnt really use it much.

(Edit: my sister complained I didnt say what a good time I had with her on our holiday so here goes....We had a great time with my sister at my parents house when they were away. So much that we might go back again next week.)

Heres a card I've made since I got back though. I quite like this one although it took a lot of steps to make it, and its not the best photo but I cant be bothered to take another one.

More vegetables again!!

Wow - I cant believe I am getting so excited over vegetables but I am - we are going away for five days tomorrow and I hope it rains for them, else our hard work might be dead by the time we get back.

Sorry for the dodgy evening pics but I wanted to share these now

Our peppers have flowers on them
Our Asparagus pea have funny toblerone-ish pods

We have our first tiny tiny tomato
Our other fiery radish is doing cool
And for anyone else who like me has no idea about how sweetcorns grow I have a revelation. What you saw a few days ago peeking out of leaves is now this cool hairstyle AND...
... further down the plant where honestly there was nothing yesterday is now this!! A sweetcorn. And theres others coming on the plant - gosh its so exciting, I really hope they survive out holiday

Bits and bobs

Hi, I thought it was about time I posted a photo of me - so heres a recent one from last week. Im on the left in the green top, then my husband in the middle and my sister on the right. We had an amazing day of shopping in the morning, a picnic in the park for lunch and Franki and Bennys for tea (O:
And heres another recent page in my journal - this weeks theme was "secret hiding place" and I cam up with this which kindof fits. The photo is one I took of a place which is very special to me, and the postcard I had had for AGES and wasnt sure what to do with it.

The vegetables are doing GREAT as well - yesterday we harvested out first rats tail radish to have with our salad but it was SO hot you could only have tiny bits - its obviously a different type of radish so I gotta find out what to do with it.

And today I get the answer to my wonderings about what sweetcorn look like when they are growing - the answer this morning was..giant grass seeds. You can just see him starting to come out here. I hope they turn into proper sweetcorn cos I cant find anything on what they are supposed to look like!
And lastly a card I made this morning which I think is quite cool.

Altered journal and silver jewellery

I've been doing an altered art journal with a craft website http://www.craftster.org/ and I thought it was about time I shared some of it here.
Its made using an old book and is a cross between a sketch pad, a journal and a scrapbook. Some of my pages are more collaged then these ones.

This one was part of an architecture/doors and windows theme.

This one was done on the train, frm a postcard I had.

And this is one of the very first pages I did but its prettier in real life

I've also not shared my new siler jewellery which you can also see on my funky week old website. www.gemcraftonline.co.uk

This is just an open ring with a hammered texture

This one makes me think of the moon with its holes and craters. Its also got a brushed finish.

More of our vegetables

It seems our vegetabes are growing overnight - I am sure they are always bigger in the morning. Well some of them anyway - the sweetcorn are growing massive and are taller than out bin now but no sign of actual sweetcorn yet - the weather seems to be stalling others but I hope they will be ok

Heres the mexican gherkin plodding along - the seed pods arent getting much bigger but we are getting more of them.
Oh and then our beautiful rose from our wedding - it has lovely flowers but it keeps getting bashed by the wind and they fall off.

This little guy wins a prize for persistence - one of the tomatoes which i didnt pot up weeks ago but couldnt bear to throw away - he has now earned the right for a bigger pot
And the rats tail radish - we have two and I cant decide whether to eat the radish root or wait for the supposedly edible seed pods
And also coming along nicely our squash plant - I cant wait to see these actually flowert

A sneak preview

Today I went to a scrapbooking day - I still need to get a proper album but heres a preview of some of my unfinished layouts with our wedding photos, FINALLY. I still need to add a few more things to them and some writing but I like the colours and the style.

Banana bread for breadmakers

This isnt a new recipe but I've made some alterations recently and I've not shared it before.

I wanted a banana bread recipe but one that was a bread and not a cake, like banana bread normally is. So I adapted this from a white pumpkin bread and I make it in my Panasonic breadmaker althought I am sure if you wanted to get messy hands you could make it by hand - I cold try it?

Its a little bagel like in texture and makes really good toast - personally I like it with honey and peanut butter or jam and peanut butter but thats just me. And you get a great taste with the brown and wholemeal goodness as well as fruit and protein - if you add the sunflower seeds which give it a nutty taste. It freezes well and toastes from frozen.

Ingredients
300g bananas mashed (About 3 bananas)
2 tsp dried yeast
300g strong white flour (OR 200g strong white and 100g strong wholemeal)
200g strong brown flour
2 tsp salt
60 ml lukewarm water
100 ml milk

Optional
1 tbsp honey
50g sunflower seeds (these are a new addition and make it amazing)

Recipe
-Add yeast to water for 5 minutes
-Now add all the ingrdients except the sunflower seeds to the breadmaker. Try and leave an area of flour free from bananas and milk and add the yeast mixture to this section - mix the yeast with some of the flour until it makes a paste - this will 'sponge' in the rest part of the breadmaker program, but I wouldnt worry if you dont manage to do this.
-If you have a breadmaker with a separate section for putting raisins etc then add the sunflower seeds to this and they will be added to the mix part way through.
-The setting I use is a large wholemeal 'raisin bake' loaf - this takes 5 hours.

Let me know if you try it

Cards

Heres some cards I've been doing recently which I can post now without spoiling any surprises.

Heres a card I made for a customer the other day - Im proud of this one. Its simple but stylish and was made of request or a wedding the following day whilst the customer did their shopping for an hour. She chose the blank card and then specified hearts and the wording. The rest was up to me.

I've also got new fairy papers recently which I've been playing with.

This was a Congratulations card to my sister for passing her driving test. I LOVE the large button wheels on this one, I sewed them on so they could be taken off and used if wanted.




Same sister but different fairies for getting 3As and getting into the uni she wanted. Its a tissue paper background with cut out stars and fairies.

Vegetables

Heres the highlights of our vegetables so far - althought they are having problems with the weather here, its really wierd and changeable. Sometimes too cold for some plants to be outside, and sometimes so hot they burn if you forget to open the greenhouse. So it will be interesting to see what we get in the end. Hopefully some of the wierd and wonderful ones will turn out good. We are just getting buds and flowers on some of them now as well as on the tomatoes.

Top left: Mexican gherkin

Top right Asparagus pea

Middle right: Tomatoes, either Tigerella or Tomatillo

Bottom left: Sweetcorn

Bottom middle: Rats tail Radish

Bottom right: Pepper

We also have more of the same plants along with some squash as well.

Canadian Muffins

I was going to start off with an introductory post but decided to go straight into blogging instead.

I have been looking for a recipe for Canadian Muffins for a while now - I remember my mum and I used to go to the Candian Muffin Company before we went shopping and they did the most amazing muffins. After the help of someone on Craftster http://www.craftster.org/ I have discovered that Americans think an Engligh muffin is like a flat bread roll, we think an American or Canadian muffin is like a cupcake - and thats what they normally are like over here, but actual American muffins are not as sweet as a cupcakes and I think theyre denser.

So here my first attempt at raspberry muffins from http://www.muffinrecipes.net/

1 medium egg, beaten.

2 ½ cups of plain flour

1 cup of fresh raspberries

1 cup of milk

½ cup of melted butter

2 tablespoons of sugar

2 teaspoons of baking powder

¾ teaspoon of salt.

Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

In another bowl, mix together the egg, milk and the butter; then add to the dry ingredients and mix.

Add the raspberries, stirring so they are spread out.

Pour into muffin cases .Bake at 190°C for 25 minutes.

Theyre not bad, a little salty maybe and also I ran out of baking powder so made it which I think is a little more tangy. They're quite tasty and almost scone-like which I think is good. Definitely heading towards muffin rather than cupcake - I think I might prefer some wholemeal flour in as well thought.