Bit of baking

Christmas time is definitely time for lots of sweets :) All these biscuits and cakes we love since childhood. Or for trying new recipes :)

Few days before Christmas Day we had some fun with Dom making chocolate biscuits.

Recipe I found on Pinterest, but modified it for our taste :) If you are interested in original recipe, go: http://nurturestore.co.uk/easy-christmas-biscuit-recipe.

For our cookie dough I melted: 85g unsalted butter, 2 tbsp of honey and 60g cane sugar. Then added 200g plain flour, 2tsp cinnamon and 2 tsp cocoa plus 1 tsp baking soda mix with 1 tbsp water. Then rolled it

Dom helped with cutting it and then placed on baking sheets and baked in preheated to 190 C oven for max 10 minutes.

After little cooling we checked them and Dom approved them :)

Yesterday I decided to try recipe for Sour Cream Coffeecake I have from instagram - made some research before, cause recipe is American and as a European I'm not familiar with measuring system used in it.

Original recipe from mixandmeasure (65 years in family):

cream 1 stick margarine and 1 cup sugar, add 2 eggs, sift 2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda plus 1/2 pint sour cream and  tsp vanilla. Mix well, put in large angel food greased pan. sprinkle top with mix of sugar and cinnamon. Bake 50 minutes in 350 F.

My version: 

cream together 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup sugar (I used only 3/4 cup of sugar), add 2 eggs, 2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 cup sour cream. Mix well. pour half of batter into greased angel pan, then sprinkle with 2/3 of mix of 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup or more chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts) and 1 tsp cinnamon, add rest of cake batter and sprinkle with rest of cinnamon mix. Bake 50 minutes in 180 C. Cool down and decorate with glaze of your choice (mine: icing sugar mixed with lemon juice).

Choose your version, bake it and enjoy!!!

Meet Tula :).

When we saw Tula first time about 3 weeks ago she was so small that I could keep her in one hand.

                                          Yesterday she became a part of our little family :).

She's bigger since we saw her last time but still small as any chipin is :).

She loves her food, her toys and definitely she's a playful little creature :).

Tula is checking cardboard :)

Playing with Dom's allosaurus :)

She loves cuddles and Dom loves to cuddle her :). He can do that all the time if we allow him :)

Plus she's kind of nocturnal for now :). I never have to woke up that many times when Dom was an infant :).

Sorry if pics are not clear enough, but my phone not cooperating with me when is bit darker in the room.

December, December...

Winter started... I should say 'raining season' started :)

Luckily for us not everyday is cold and wet, just bit of drizzling from time to time, some chilly mornings... But sometimes we have chance for day like this:

Or sky like this:

We can still enjoy nice walks during weekend :)

From other life fronts... I'm reading book 5 of Dark Tower by Stephen King.

Colouring new digi images

Making new cards

Dom is creating new masterpieces :)

And we all are waiting for new member of our little family - Tula :)

She's a chipin and Dom recognize her every time we see her with no problems :)

That's all for today friends :)

Happy Birthday to me 😊

Do you like birthdays?

I do, but not mine. I'm not type of party girl and I prefer not to see numbers showing how fast time is flying...

Oh yeah I reached 40 this year... to be honest with you I felt kind of old before my birthday. .. kind of depression or something? No idea...

Maybe because cold don't want to leave me alone, maybe because card I used for my digis ( back-up) seems to be corrupted/partially damaged and treating half of my digis as empty files :(

Last weekend my partner said: Come on girl, you are not old, stop to talk about prices, treat yourself!

  He was right! Can you imagine, I didn't saw my hairdresser for over half a year! I was more concerned about my son look then mine! 

So.... Yesterday in my birthday I went for hot chocolate, deal with few small things and then chilled out (half a day without my men). 

Today to treat myself and went to hairdresser and finally dealt with my hair and I feel like human being again:)

Also yesterday or maybe day before I found new issue of my crafty mag in my letterbox with this cutie pie as free gift 

and realized that it doesn't mater how old I am as long as I like myself, my life and all I'm doing.

So...

Yes I'm 40, but that just funny number :) Life is way to short to think about numbers, better to be positive and live the life the way we want! I like my birthdays again, just like when I was little girl :)

Till next post friends!

Stay positive!

Sneaky Santa game

Every year in our Etsy team we are playing Sneaky Santa game...

This year was challenging for me, cause my Sneaky partner did no wish list.

I had to play around - use everything I knew about her to find/made perfect gifts for her.

So...

Leda is bookworm from Sicily, Italy who making beautiful felt accessories and bookmarks. She likes cards, earrings and definitely handmade stuff. I like illustrations she sharing on her FB.

I thought... book! But which one? She has so many and I have no idea which she still not have on her shelf... That was lots of thinking :) Result:

You can see movie made on this book in cinemas now!

One of my first attempts with copper - red semi-precious beads inside cages.

Pendant with stone found by myself on local beach during Summer.

Images from Ching's shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/gjzcck?ref=l2-shopheader-name, I coloured for Leda :) I thought she can like them :)

Little Christmas card with stamp from Tiddly Inks.

Leda received her parcel today and looks like she likes her gifts, so I can show you what I found/made for her :)

What do you think about my gifts? Do you like them?

Winter is coming

Gee title of post like motto from 'Game of Thrones' :)

But fact is that the winter is coming... weather's changing here in the UK. More like 'raining season' plus lots of winds and low temperatures...

My wish to have here some nice amount of snow to have a chance to' build a snowman' (like in Frozen) with my little boy :).

So far when we are lucky to have nice sunny days we can spot this beauty:

I can say this year I saw a lots of them :) Sometimes even double rainbows with so intense colours... just amazing views :)

Yesterday's weather wasn't so nice for us... storm hit east side of UK... strong winds plus rain and hailstones for whole night.

Below you can see street in front of Dom's school today morning - it is like have one more river in the town.

Fingers crossed today we will have less rain... 

Forecast for tomorrow - no rain, dry and sunny spells... We will see..

Chicken stew 😊

I received new toy from my man - slow cooker 😊.  Yesterday I cleaned it and run it first time, then cleaned it again as stayed in instruction 😊.
Today was time to cook something in it!

Hmmm... I thought the best will be beef, but recepies I saw in net didn't catch my eye... maybe just I didn't found 'this one'.

So I decided to make kind of chicken stew. Why kind of? Simply because I put all I had at home into it 😊. So... in my stew you can find: 2 chicken breasts ( possibly bit too much, but my boys love chicken ), 2 small carrots, 1 small red onion, 3/4 of turnip, nice bit of celeriac, few halved baby potatoes, garlic clove, can of chopped tomatoes plus cup and a bit of water, bit of salt, black pepper, powdered garlic and allspice.
Near the end of cooking I added 2 handfuls of Frozen peas 😊.

Result of this experiment was not bad, but ... I need to try different cooking settings next time to be sure we'll not wait for our food too long 😊.

Plus add less water to have our stew bit thicker 😊. 

If you know some nice recipes - give me a shout - want to try something new next week with my new toy 😉.

Midterm, autumn and my time with Dom.

Whole this week we are spending together with Dom, midterm break at school.

I was doing my best to keep my son occupied :).

We were in Newcastle on Monday - Hancock Museum and dinosaurs, nice walk around city centre with finding Snowdog on Central Station (train station) plus yummy lunch in Chinatown.

On Tuesday we went to library of pick up some books for Dom and pop in to theatre to buy tickets for pantomime - details here: http://www.thephoenixtheatre.org.uk/whats-on/dick-whittington.

We had lazy Wednesday with little shopping and then some reading and listing the music athat home.

Yesterday I decided we need some nice walk doesn't matter is cold or warm. Sky in the morning was beautiful :)

We went to park 

Was really small chance not to finished in Ridley Park Caffè :). Yes we are guilty, we spent some time there too :) with nice piece of this yummy lemon cake

Then we had some nice time on park's playground area and after that Dom decided he wants to go to the beach :). After coming back home we where colouring digi stamps.

Dom and his markers :)

Me with my new pencils :)

And today we spent few hours in Whitley Bay - we found some hidden treasures there :). First was: Re-create Today - nice craft and workshop place on 35 Park View run by Alison. Dom fell in love with wooden ducks :).

Only few here - we saw lots more :)

Christmas stuff :)

If you want to know more about this place check: http://www.recreatetoday.co.uk/ or follow: https://www.facebook.com/recreatetoday.

Other place we found was little restaurant/cafe called: The Vintage Powder Room & Tea Shop. Nice interior, friendly stuff and great food :) You can find them on 164-166 Park View.

My Earl Grey :) 

Dom's chocolate - fruity cake :)

Definitely we had great week :) Hmmm I need to think about his next school break and plan something nice, cause I don't want to keep my son bored at home.

Bathroom, cards and high-protein snacks

What a relief!

Bathroom redecoration is finished!!!
Whole thing took about 1.5 week, but was worth it :) Everything new :) Tiles, spotlights, shower, bath, etc! I love our new bathroom :)

I supposed to update my cv - still not done :). I lost my wirewrapping mojo - hope will have it back soon..

During week I checked new stamp - free gift from crafty magazine.

Image by Helz Cuppleditch for Trimcraft - received with Dear Santa paper pack.

I was colouring 6 images in one go :)

1 from 3 cards - set 1

1 from 3 cards - set 2

At the moment waiting for rubber stamps goodie bag my man bought me from http://www.kraftinkimmiestamps.com/ from Canada - very cute stamps, just cannot wait to have them :)

From 'cooking' point of view I was making high-protein snack rolls today, result below:

My man said they are brill, checked them too :) They tastes like halvah. Recipe I found on pinterest :) If you want to try, check: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/202450945727237973/

Enjoy!!!

Life with bathroom re-do :)

We decided that is time to give our bathroom some make-over. After living in our home 7 years we were sick of wallpaper there. Now our bathroom is almost done :) New tiles, spotlights, bath etc. and no more pink :).

I'm laughing that I changed myself into 'rainbow catcher' - few days in row we could admire rainbows :)

Dom spotted this beauty when we were on a walk :)

Other day we were in mood for Chinese and I took my bamboo steamer out of box and made 'money bags' :) Hmmm yummy - Dom fell in love with sticky plum sauce :).

He was also in crafty mood one day - result above :)

I made this card for his Daddy yesterday - today is his birthday :)

And finally found a time to start book 2 of Dark Tower by Stephen King.

Fingers crossed our bathroom will be done today :) Cannot wait :)

Sweet potato mad :)

Why title like this? Because we decided we really like sweet potatoes :)

For long time I was making chips from them or use them as alternative when cooking my version of Shepard's pie.
Not much for so yummy veggie.
I didn't realized that is so many recipes using it, that I can make even sweet bakes like scones or biscuits from it...
You should see my face guys when I saw article on net, in simple words my jaw hit the floor if you know what I want to say by that :)

So in our last week menu we had 2 cooking experiments:
* sweet potato gnocchi
* sweet potato and beans patties.

I'm experimental cook, so not always keeping close eye on recipes, sometimes just remember general idea, sometimes doing something my way.

This week experiments turned out brilliant - my man decided he likes them both even better then other similar recipes we checked before eg. beans gnocchi - I'm not surprised really :)

For sweet potato gnocchi you need just 3 ingredients: baked sweet potatoes (2-3 medium sized), flour (plain, wholemeal or gluten-free - choice is yours) and salt (I used about 1/2 tsp).
Just mashed your potatoes, add salt and flour, make dough - soft but not sticky, rolled into sausage shape, cut into pieces, use fork on them :), cook in boiled salted water and serve with butter and garlic like us or with sauce of your choice :)

For Sweet potato and bean patties you need: 2-3 sweet potatoes, can of beans (any kind), breadcrumbs (1/2 cup +), 2-3 spring onions, 1 garlic clove, salt, black pepper, paprika or chilli (your choice), allspice (optional).
Bake or cook your potatoes (I baked mine), mash them, add half of beans - mash them, then add rest of beans, chopped onions, mashed garlic, spices and breadcrumbs, mix well, if too sticky add more breadcrumbs. Form patties, fry them and serve with salad of your choice.

Before frying

After :)

On the plate with simple tomato and onion salad :)

Yummy!!!