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.