A Nice Surprise And Good News

Yesterday I was delighted when this book, Simple Printmaking arrived which I was lucky enough to win in a give away on the Cut Out And Keep site.

The book contains various household projects using different types of printing methods which can be done at home. Block, lino and stencil printing are just a few which are featured. 

The projects in the book range from decorative papers and cards to printing on cushions, bags and curtains. All the templates for the projects are included with clearly written instructions.

Some of the projects are suitable for Little L to join in with such as marbling and printing using potatoes and leaves plus Caleb's art class is just moving on to printing at the moment so the book may come in handy for him to use as well.

A free tutorial for a tote bag project featured in the book can be found here.

My good news part comes from a college visit with my eldest son last night. It was an open evening for parents and the children who had already applied for one of the courses had an interview with their tutor. He had chosen an electrical installation course and was offered a place which he will be starting in September. I'm so pleased that he has got what he wanted, I could burst. I rang my Gran ( who is 90 ) this morning to tell her the news and she was ecstatic. My Grandad was an electrician and my Dad used to be an auto electrician so maybe that is why she was so happy. Anyone would think it was me and Gran starting this college course because we are so excited.

New Recipes

I've not been doing anything crafty lately so I thought that I'd share some of the recipes which I have been trying out recently.

This onion and bacon tart , I made at the weekend. It is more like a yorkshire pudding with onions and bacon added than a tart, it was nice though.

These oven roasted sausages and potatoes I have made a couple of times now as the children will eat it with no fuss as they all love smokey sausage.

Pizza muffins is definitely a favourite in this house at the moment. Even my Gran has asked for the recipe. I've made these about 6 times and they can be frozen but they never last that long in our house. Little L says that she loves them so much, she could take them to bed and cuddle them. A bit of an odd thing to say about a savoury muffin but she got her point across that she really likes them.



The Chestnut Incident

They say that you learn something new everyday well yesterday I found out that chestnuts explode and make a right mess doing so. My sister had sent me some chestnuts along with a recipe for me to try out. I began weighing ingredients out with the chestnuts already in the oven and that's when the banging started. I ended up spying on my oven from the hall way through a crack in the door ( I'm not fond of loud noises ). The chestnuts were taken from the oven when I was brave enough to venture back in to the kitchen where a couple more exploded. My oven was splattered with chestnut as was my work tops and kitchen floor. This also teaches me to read recipes properly before I race ahead and start, I should have put slits in the chestnuts before roasting.

After cleaning up I was left with a bowl of butter and broken chocolate which was ready for melting so I popped on to Pinterest to find a recipe. This is what I ended up baking, chocolate fondant cakes. They were lovely eaten both warm and cold.

At least now I know to prick chestnuts before roasting, that's if my nerves could take handling them again.