This blog post is brought to you by Andrew's house, my Internet USB thing is having troubles getting to my house so I decided to come here. I made a new dress this week, I think I may wear it to my sisters wedding but that has yet to be decided. I have had some trouble getting the zip in and it's looks very rough on one side :s perhaps I should just hold my arms at my sides the entire day? 
 I had an idea of making a white and green poker-dot dress for the wedding but Christine brought me this great Q bed duna cover and I thought it might do instead. What do you think?

 I had just enough space on the floor for my pattern pieces. Yey!

 Please overlook the quality of the pictures. The light in my room is shocking because my window backs on to a high fence.

 I have a petticoat under there but it deficiently doesn't give enough poof for the dress. Looks like I need one with some tulle to keep it stiff

 I also had a lovely business holiday with Ross and Andrew a few weeks ago. Sydney is a really lovely place. I wouldn't mind living there one day.

Adjusting

I have had a few fun projects on the go, over the last few weeks, all preformed in my tiny space. 

I can now fully appreciate the space i used to have!

 A gift for a two year old, Happy 2nd Birthday Addie

 A gift for a one year old, Happy 1st Birthday Rachael. Yes the traditional gift of plushy meat.....

 Rachael and myself at her party.

My newest dress! I am really quite pleased with it. the folds are placed fairly evenly and although they did give me rather a head ache I think it was worth it. Still deciding on a belt to go with it.

This is me stealing my parents internet as I currently don't have it connected were I live. I recently moved in with a group of random strangers. Honestly i'ts a very normal yet very odd thing to do, you are putting your trust in to a group of people you have never had a chance to get to know. There are currently two girls and three boys, apparently we are expecting another boy soon. They are defiantly a fun bunch! ages ranging from 22-33yrs

Anyway here are some things i have found interesting:
1. Boys are very easy to live with there easy going and willing to eat food experiments.
2. Boys are also not inclined to clean up after themselves.
3. Boys seem to shed allot of hair! seriously it's worse then mine!
4. when in need of clean clothes boys use dirty jackets jammed full of more dirty clothes instead of a clothes basket. ( I found this rather amusing)

There are a few not so desirable things like the lack of cubourd and fridge space, but i guess that happens with so many people!

Well i haven't had allot of time to blog or anything top blog about.... oh well. we have had two birthdays, so two more cakes. I really do need to find somebody who knows how to use fondant properly! i am not so good at getting it to look as smooth as it is supposed to be.

This is the inside of the cake. It is two chocolate cake layers. The filling is a heady combination of chocolate custard filling raspberrys and thin disk like layers of chocolate.

The out side is fondant.

cake and migraines

It was Andrews 21st birthday yesterday, yey. A few months ago Cristine (his mum) and I decided we would make him and awesome birthday cake, we through allot of ideas around and i think we were going to do Dr Who or star wars. Unfortunately her surgery meant that we wouldn't be able to the cake together, no need to add more strain then necessary. I decided that the cakes we thought of were too hard by myself so I'd go for some thing simpler and smaller. I'm only learning how to do cakes and i am limited.so.....

Two small 10cm cakes and two medium cakes

The inside was checker board so each layer needed to be constructed like this. I don't have a photo of what the inside ended up looking like but Andrew does :)

Dirty iced the whole thing with buttercream (contains neither cream or butter, go figure)

added fondant in white and multicolor to mimic Lego bricks

The end result has many flaws, but you know what? for my second time using fondant I believe I did good :)

On a different note, I have been getting migraines for years. I don't know when i first got them but i remember having them for allot of my life. Recently they have been getting worse, around one or two time a week. I also have been getting a sore back after sitting for more then an hour. Andrew in his wisdom told me multiple times to go see a chiropractor, so now I have. Here are my x-rays.

(head and neck)
The blue line is were the bones are supposed to be in a normal person. The faint red circle is were my bones are touching (no they are not supposed to be that friendly) and growing new bone to try and support the weight of my big head. hence the added strain on my spine produces migraines.

(back/lower spine)
what can i say? you should see a perfectly straight line...oops

The good news is that it can and will be fixed, the down side is the cost! I should have become a chiropractor! or brought a cheaper car....

I thought I would share the progress of my darling little treadle machine. I am restoring it on a tight budget so it's unfortunately not going to be totally true to the original state. I hope to make it look good anyway.

This is the damage it had. It had looked like some one had shoved it in the back shed for years. There were allot of stains and water damage to the lid.

This is what it looks like naked :o soooo brown!!!

To make it all match n the top I have stripped back the first layer. The wood underneath looks really good so I intend to find a nice deep stain then varnish the lot. I also need a new belt for it, at the moment I don't really know were I'll find one, any ideas?

My first cheesecake was not exactly as Donna Hay had instructed. The top cracked while baking and the mouse well it simply ran away, but most of it did get eaten so it's promising at least.

Happy birthday Micky

These cupcakes were requested for a 17th birthady. I recived only good reviews, so I call them a sucsess.

I had four different designs but it seams I only took photos of three. You get the general idea

mac•a•roon

Yesterday I had my second attempt at the delightfull french treat of macaroons. I was given a beautifal little book " Secrets of Macarons" by Jose Marechal. I was particulay interested in learning to make these propery beacause thay are a gluten free treat. Many deserts can be adapted to becomeing gluten and lactose free but they often lose something in translation and taste slightly odd.

The book has 25 pages of informatin and techniques before you even get to start you little creations. On my first attempt a few weeks ago I decided to skip the first and go directly to the recipe. What I made were brown blots of chewy biscuit that had the unfortunate resemblance to a small animals bowel movement. The nextra effort in making an Italian meringue defiantly makes a difference to the crust. The almond meal created a problem as well, the only sort i could get was far to coarse and needed to be sifted mutable times to remove impurities, resulting in a bowl full of almond bits i have no clue what to do with.

I do believe my Macarons to be a success, unfortunately having never tasted a "real" macaroon I have nothing to compre it with. I may have to entice somebody out to coffee so I can have a the chance to sample and compare.

Today i have officially graduated and have a Cert IV in Disability work. The event took around two hours, I'm not sure if it was worth the $80! I felt like a kid playing dress ups in the heavy black robes and stall. It was satisfying to finally have a formal close, we finished in October last year and the actual receiving of the piece of paper has seamed a long time coming.

The only thee from our class who attended

The guy that handed us our papers did comment that I had a unusual name... then he said congratulations .

Dads awesome photography skills ;)

This however has not turned out to be the path I had hoped it would become and once again like so many other I am left with the question "so, what now?"

“Has anyone seen my pins?” this is a all too common theme to our house, for some reason although I have HEAPS of pins I can never find them! for my birthday Tab made me the cutest little pin cushion in a mini tea cup.

I have seen cup cake pin cushions but haven’t gotten around to making one. So I made a larger version of tabs. I used a tea cup I brought from the op shop, the pattern I loved but the china is very heavy and thick. The inside is allot smaller then the outside and it just doesn’t feel right. So I used that one for the cushion. Instead of fabric I used some left over rolled felt, curled it around in a spiral, (held together with a few stitches). Then lots of glue around the edge.

Well I was on a roll and I still had to many pins so I decided to use the top of my thread jar. This one was simple and a logical place to Have a cushion.

The Epic and Glorious story of my very own cake wreck

So it is my birthday on Sunday so I dedicated my only day off this week and a half to making myself a birthday cake. *deep breath* i am not the worlds worst baker, i do make a tasty and well presented cake. Unfortunately today the cake was just not going to work.

First, I have used my two chocolate and vanilla recipes, theses I have used many times with no problem. the choc cakes failed to reach there normal heights, i wasn't worried tho. Then while my vanilla cakes were backing i peeped in the oven to discovered my pan had broken. I like to use sping form pans and have never had a problem but alas my batter was running all over the bottom of the overn. I shoved a tray under the pan to stop it leeking more than had to scrape off the crap from the bottom as it was starting to smoke. all that time with the door open made yet more flat cakes.


Then my gluten free cake, i tried a lovely new vanilla recipe while mixing the cake the mix master decide it wanted to have a RDO and simply stopped mixing...... Yep all was going well. The GF cake took an hour in the oven and it's dry on the outside and soggy in the middle.

No i am not done. i Figured it would still be ok because my trusty Buttercream icing is always a winner and will normally cover up my mistakes...... yep you guessed it, the dam stuff just wouldn't blend properly.

My three teair cake has come down to a complete wreck the supports also arn't doing a very good of supporting and the cake is slumping as we speak. Good thing my family will eat it anyway :)

Skoda Fabia Advert - Original Cake Car

Love this add!

if you are having a bad day, i think it's time for a laugh
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-never-inhaled.html

vintage swimsuit

Q:Do I swim at the beach?
A: not often.
Q:Do i need a new swimsuit
A: NO.
However I do believe that a hand made vintage style swim suit would look lovely in my fashion folio so....... for my next trick i will make one.

I am biased and do not really like the swim wear that is commonly around these days, most of them leave little to the imagination. other then that who decided triangles were attractive? well anyway y here are some classics that i like.

I am very impressed by the lil black number

So I am currently dong some sketches to see what style I decide to continue with :) Wish me Luck

My new dress is my first crack at the art of self drafting patterns. I am happy with the result and the mistakes are only there to be seen by other sewers who know what to look for. The waist breaks up the fabric so the pattern is not to over bearing.
I would love a nice pair of black Mary janes, I've been on the look out but it's back in to boot weather and the ones i have seen look far to expensive and flimsy.

Cake pops are the brain child of Bakerella, no that's not here name but it is her cooking site. This very smart lady has created a new trend in tasty treats.
I have been seeing theses pop up (he he i made a joke) for a while now while looking at different cakeing sites. I have been wanting to try them and so i decided that i would give them a go.
Cake pops are a crumbled cake mixed with frosting, rolled in to balls frozen, poked with a stick and covered in colored chocolate. They are both simple yet fiddly. In my attempt I used a soft vanilla cake recipe and used her suggested frosting. The result as you can see wasn't to bad for my first try.
Problems:
1, my first reaction to tasting one was YUCK!
2, the choc was far too thick, needs thinning.
3, the cake was all squishy and cold

I had intended to take them to life group (salvos bb study) but decided that they weren't good enough. So i put them in my clear cake plate with a dome, that lives on the bench and is there for anyone to eat from. I had expected dad to kindly tell me they were bad and then bin the lot. However he was quit taken by them and ate quiet a few that evening. the next cupple of days other family members had a go and also seemed to like them. It took me a while to work out the problem. the ingredients of the pops are highly milky and as i have a intolerance to lactose i stay away for those sort of products. So the cakes are actually ok to eat, but as i am not used to eating the milk it tasted terrible to me! Strange hey! so my issue is now.... i love baking but how am i to tell if it tastes good! bi think i may have re aquatint my self to the taste of "real" food :O

I am currently going about making some dresses from scratch not just patterns but fully drafting. i find this process slightly frustrating but it's not top bad. The main problem at the moment is that I am very distracted. for some reason i can't seen to stick to task and manage to waist my time doing something else! So my plan is if i post my idea i will have to see it through :) at least that's the plan.

I picked up this lovely fabric today on a really good special. It is cotton sateen or something similar. I just love the sound it makes when moved. I am a big fan of having my dress sound good as well as look good, like how a nice petticoat will give off a pleasant russle? Does that make sense? Oh well, I get it any way.

I was thinking on making it along theses lines. i think the skirt is a little full for day were tho? do you agree? I think the v back would be a good challenge for me, obviously the zip would have to be on the side. I have made a few dresses with side zips and on a whole i think i can make the dress look neater.
i am going to do a little sketch and play around with a few elements to see what i can change and so on :) i would like it to sit nicely with and without a petticoat.