Daily rhythms and a surprise...

When I suggested the other day that we all look through those long forgotten UFO projects my mind had been fixed on the fabric and thread kind, but as I was cleaning up my sewing room yesterday it was yarn which caught my eye, most especially a crochet rug I began last autumn but did not get far along with.

So here we are in another Australian autumn and I'm rather toying with the idea of returning to this project and seeing it through to completion before winter's end. Staying home for many months should work in my favour with regards to that plan, but I'm also considering a basket of leftover yarn from last year's Sweet Pea blanket (Attic 24 pattern) which I made for Rafaella...

I did in fact begin a new blanket with them but my cast on row was too tight (I did not think to use a larger hook for that part) and the more rows I crocheted the more obvious that curved cast on row became so I just packed it away rather disappointed and too busy to start over. 

But it's been a long time between hooked stitches so I'm going to unravel it this weekend, perhaps whilst watching one of my favourite Jane Austen's, "Persuasion", and then start over. 

Two blankets to play with, but which one first? 

I'm rather partial to colour you know, and the sweet pea palette is more 'me' than the sandy seashore tones of the other UFO.

Have you found something to work on or finish from your UFO bundle?

In the kitchen I've made a return to breadmaking, something I did a lot of before we moved here. Through 2015-2018 most our our bread was home made and though there's been the odd spurt of home-baked loaves since then, it's the exception rather than the rule...but life is fast changing for many of us and trips to the grocery store will be few and far between now, so the rhythm of making three loaves a week is back...and it makes me happy. Mr E is rather chuffed too.

The first loaf this past week was a light rye, lovely and moist and wonderfully delicious.

I also baked an Apricot Shortcake that day, equally as yummy.

My husband and I grew up in an era when bread was always on the table alongside the evening meal and though I can go without it these days, he truly loves to have a thick slice or two beside his dinner plate. 

The Apricot Shortcake was an experiment, the base and top made using the same recipe as my Strawberry Shortcake (with a teaspoon of vanilla extract added) but I switched the centre layer ingredients to apricot jam and a large tin of drained apricot halves.

Wow...we love apricots in our family and this is sure to be made over and over, so I thought you might like the recipe...

APRICOT SHORTCAKE RECIPE

125g butter (we use vegan butter)

110g caster sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat all of these together until light and fluffy.

Fold through -

110g plain white flour

110g white self-raising flour

Spread HALF of the dough across the base of a greased and lined round springform cake pan.

Warm 3/4 cup of apricot jam and spread it over the dough.

Spread the drained apricot halves over the jam (I used an 800g can - that would be a 28oz can for the US).

Spread the remaining half of the dough across the apricots - I dropped spoonfuls all over and then gently pressed down with floured hands once all the dough was in place.

Sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar across the top of the dough.

Bake in a 180C (375F) oven for around 50 minutes.

A couple of weeks ago Blossom had gifted me a bowl of her homemade vegan chocolate mousse, which turned out to be more of a very rich fudge - truly scrumptious, but it needed something 'tart' to balance the sweetness.

I made a crumb base in my food processor from walnuts, almonds, macadamias and dates which I pressed into four ramekins.

Then I spread the fudgy mousse over the base....

...before topping with my homemade lemon curd. This lemon curd is very tart and ovo-vegan (we use our own hen's eggs), which gave this dessert the kick it needed to impress my husband.

I had to try it before I offered some to my husband, right?

So good. Just so good.

LEMON CURD RECIPE

3 large free-range eggs

1 tablespoon (20ml) of lemon zest

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 cup honey

4 tablespoons of coconut oil (80ml)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon cacao butter (around 9 discs) - this is optional but totally worth it

Gather all the ingredients before you begin as once this begins coming together its quick.

Whisk together eggs, lemon zest and honey in a saucepan, then place on the stove over a medium heat. Immediately begin whisking in the lemon juice, coconut oil, vanilla and cacao butter.

Continue to whisk until everything melts and the mixture begins to thicken. 

Remove from heat and pour into a container to cool, and store in refrigerator. 

In the fridge this will last for around 10 days.

Our hens are back in their coop now that the worst of the wet season is over, although as I write this there is steady rain falling outside.

They have really missed this area while contained up back in the pool enclosure for more than two months, and having them back in their home has eased a bit of the stress here (they kept escaping from the pool enclosure) as well as brought a small sense of normality to daily rhythms.

Our girls lay 12-14 eggs every week, which is more than we use, so my elderly next door neighbour excitedly accepts 2 or 4 at a time. 

The yard is a mess, I have to tell you. After the extreme heat of our tropical summer and early autumn combined with the wet season, there's been nothing but weed control and bugs...yet despite that I allowed a few of our basil plants to go to seed and they have produced scores of new plants just in time for the best growing season of our North Queensland year.

We use a lot of basil, oregano, parsley, rosemary and thyme, and though some of the herbs have struggled to get by our basil and oregano have flourished.

Now I'm waiting to see if the oregano will go to seed as well. It survived the sweltering weather due to sitting in shade under the large Ixora bush all summer.

As I said the other day, it's been really difficult not having Blossom, Cully May and Rafaella visit each week, or for me to visit them. How my heart leapt yesterday when Mr E and I received drawings from the girls! They made me cry and then smile with delight because now we have them on the front of the refrigerator. I cannot wait to hug them close again when all this has passed.

NEWS - the surprise!

Blossom has just allowed me to give you a peek at her almost ready to launch online baby wear shop.

My girl has been honing her dressmaking skills for the past 3.5 years, and being homeschooled she knows well how to research, learn, practice, test and then repeat the whole process until she is fully satisfied. 

Of course, she may not admit this, but she's actually never fully satisfied and for the next 'however' long years of dressmaking there is ahead of her she'll continue learning and honing her craft because that's just how God made her to be.

The sweet little outfits are gorgeous, and so very well made...there's even a bit of vintage Tilda I see!

The label for her baby and toddler wear was inspired by her two girls, Cully May and Rafaella Lucy...

As soon as the online shop is open I will let you know.

May God bless the work of her hands.

It sounds as though the rain has settled now so I'd best be away to play in the garden with my man.

He has a wheelbarrow full of mature compost ready for me to plant seeds and there's nothing better than soft wet soil to pull weeds, plants seeds and seedlings, and to enjoy the earth beneath your feet.

I'll leave you with this beautiful photo I took yesterday. Butterflies are everywhere in the garden at the moment but they do love colour and mostly I find them on flowering bushes or here enjoying a vibrant potted plant waiting to be planted out.

Bless each and every one of you,

loving hugs

Gentling our days at home (and that BOM sneak peek)...

I am cherishing the early dawn hours each morning when I can wander around the yard, feed my chickens, water the garden, savour the first coffee of the day, read my Bible, pray and breathe. 

The sky has been covered in cloud till about 9 or 10 each morning this week so my photos are darker than usual, yet it's a true depiction of the early hours I spend outside before scuttling inside for cool relief. 

IN THE GARDEN

The chickens are loving the ramshackle pen my husband made for them and there's plenty of shade for dust baths during the hottest part of the day. The guava tree in there is alive with bees and flowers, no doubt all the chook poo is helping, and the two hibiscus trees bloom constantly.

I was asked what the big cream drum is inside the pen. It's a compost bin Mr E built, one you can fill and tumble turn each day. One side has food scraps and the other has leaf litter and grass.

With hubby home on holidays now there's a lot of heavy manual work being done everywhere. That massive pile of mulch I showed you the other day has made it's way to the rear of the property and around the garden beside the pool. 

Our main focus is planting more shade trees and fine tuning the outside waterways and pump wells for the next wet season.

Below you can see some holes behind the large shed and these are where hubby dug out palm trees. Later today he'll fill them with strong saplings which will grow over the top of the shed and offer wonderful cooling shade in the afternoons.

Down the side of the shed three trees are already flourishing and we're hopeful by this time next year they'll at least be as tall as the shed and make a big difference. 

We removed most of the bromeliads from another garden about six weeks ago and after covering it with compost Mr E added a four inch layer of sand. At the time we were just thinking to suffocate any weeds and let the land rest until March or April when we'd plant vegetables. 

But funny things happen when you add good compost from your kitchen waste to an empty garden bed - even with a thick sand covering.

Up have popped a dozen or more thriving tomato plants, some in flower, and what looks to be a pumpkin or cucumber plant also in flower!

We've been told over and over that tomatoes will not set fruit in the tropics at this time of the year due to the 'everyday' high temperatures and humidity so this will be an unplanned but interesting experiment. 

Elsewhere around the garden there's been a lot of growth from the poinciana tree, in fact it's as tall as me now. One day we hope to sit underneath it's branches with cool drinks and a snack in the late afternoons. As it's grown five feet in just eight months we might see that dream fulfilled in another couple of years.

The winter veggie patch is untended at the moment, playing host to most of the outside potted herbs and plants because it's easier to keep them watered all together (we have to manage the water usage diligently until we can drill a bore) and they get some shade there in the morning and the late afternoon.

We will compost and mulch this garden bed when we have time, and then plant all the herbs,  geraniums and marigolds as a border, but for now there are far more needful chores to get done.

If you read the blog as we went through the January/February monsoon and floods earlier this year you'll be aware we had sandbags around the house, water lapping at the doors and four pumps moving water away from the house 24/7 for ten days and nights. In that event we learned there was much to be done around our yard/home with the guttering, water courses, pump wells, and plants in order to prevent that same result in this coming wet season.

Since March my husband has done so much - even fixed our entire roof because we lost a ceiling which flooded the laundry in February. He's also replaced and re-routed much of the guttering, replaced the pipes which carry water from the pump wells to the storm water drain down the road and now must  attend to digging and preparing more pump wells. We had two in ground, but now we'll have more. During the monsoon we had four pumps running constantly but only two were in wells so once he's completed the next stage of prevention we will have four. 

At the moment he's dug out along the side of the bedroom and a pump well is in, but he still needs to add pipes and the pump, plus the metal cover.

I'm so grateful for the cloud cover as he does this (even though it's triggering more migraines) because they are big jobs and he's doing it alone. 

Our Cockatoo friends come every morning and evening for a meal and today a Corella arrived to join them. It's the first time we've seen one here.

You would laugh if you were here with me in the mornings. There's always at least one bird sitting on the clothesline waiting for it's turn at the feeder and I always warn them "Do NOT poop on my washing or no more breakfast for you!" 

So far they are listening.

One of the four cuttings I took from various frangipani trees earlier this year has decided to flourish whilst the other three chose to depart this world as compost.

I am praying this one is a red frangipani - apparently the coloured ones are less prone to bugs and disease.

The strawberry guava near the back of the house looks like giving another bumper crop as it did after Christmas last year, but the fruit is so tiny that I occasionally ponder whether we should pull it out and plant an orange tree there instead...but the bees love it, and it's very pretty.

Our olive tree near the back door is happily offering forth new leaves and appears to be much happier there than where we'd originally planted it. As the months go by we discover more and more 'happy' and 'unhappy' planting spots around the house. The happy ones we nurture, the unhappy ones are marked down for a compost intensive. 

IN THE KITCHEN

With no work commitments until late January, my husband's schedule is fluid and we tend to eat when we're hungry and not to a school timetable - which is very gentling to our days.

Each morning is the same; fresh fruit salad, muesli and yoghurt with a freshly brewed iced coffee. 

Lunch is whenever Mr E comes in for an afternoon break from the heat and usually consists of crackers, cheese, olives, fruit and dip, or perhaps a toasted sandwich and boiled egg with carrot juice or kombucha.

At night I've been making things like spanakopita, roast chicken and vegetables, lentil dhal and rice, mexican corn & avocado salad with thick slices of sour dough, spaghetti bol, loaded potatoes or crumbed chicken and salad.

The other day I had loads of carrots to grate (because our chickens love grated carrots) and once I had a few days supply for the hens I kept on grating (love the Kleva Sumo Slicer for this!) so I could bake a carrot cake. It was a recipe I'd not tried before and oh my, it is the best one ever.

I baked mine in a large square tin so it was a little quicker than the recipe and easier to slice and store.

Covered in lemon cream cheese icing it was a delicious hit with the family!

IN THE SEWING ROOM

You saw the other day how I chose to display four of my orphan stitchery blocks, and I've finished another since then as well. 

But two projects I have LOVED sewing this past week are dolly crib sets for Rafaella and Cully May...

Cully May is the bright and bubbly one of Blossom's girls so I've made her dolly crib set in reds, green and yellow. Have to say it was even fun to make the mattresses!

Rafaella is quiet and rather shy, so I chose pretty pinks and aquas for her set...

The little white cribs were $20 each from Kmart (Australia) and the crib bedding sets were all sewn from my stash of fabrics and wadding. Can't wait to see our granddaughters reactions on Christmas Day. In fact I'd make them dollies too if I had a simple pattern and some spare time...but that's okay because they do have their beloved bunnies which go to bed with them every night so I imagine these will become special bunny cribs.

SNEAK PEEK

Next year I am sharing a brand new free Block of the Month. The project will run for ten months and I'll launch this project with the first block on January 1st...

I loved making the large pocketed memory book "Phyllis May's Kitchen" this year and thought the 23rd Psalm would be very special finished as a small book with pockets for keeping prayers and bible study notes.

Each block becomes a page and I won't be showing them until the day they're released but here's a look at the inside of the cover without any pages yet...

I would LOVE for you to share The 23rd Psalm : 2020 Block of the Month  photo on your blogs or social media because that's the best way to let your friends and followers know about it.

Just alternate click on the BOM photo and save it to your computer or tablet. Use my blog address as the link.

((thank you))

Well, this is my last post until after Christmas, so dear readers, friends and sisters-in-Christ, may I offer you heartfelt gratitude for being here through 2019, reading and commenting, sharing bits and pieces of your own life along the way, encouraging and inspiring me, and for praying when I had need or you felt led.

May our LORD JESUS, our precious Saviour, become your all-in-all today and every day. May He guide your hearts and minds to love Him more, direct your paths to safer shores, provide your needs more than your wants, lift you high that you may not fall, season your tongue with words of grace and truth, capture your attention when the world lures it away, and cover you always in the shadow of His wings.

merry and blessed Christmas dear ones