I’m no Donna Hay

and I don’t even really like cooking, to be honest (the sheer day to day “what are we going to eat ..and the I’mmmmm Hunnnnnngggrrry” really gets me down)  but i still thought I would share this quick and easy and very yummy slice that the kids will devour in no time at all.

Now that I think about it, perhaps I should find a recipe that isn’t quite so tasty, but they still eat it, and then it might last a little longer.  Anyhow.  I am not so organised as to have a photo of the finished slice, but its so so simple, you dont really need a picture to get the idea!

(and I borrowed Amy’s idea and hit Donna hay’s website for some gorgeous food photography and styling!)

QUICK CHOCOLATE SLICE

1 cup coconut

1 cup SR flour

2 tabs cocoa

1 cup RICE BUBBLES

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup (125g) butter or margerine

1 tabs water

2 tabs syrup

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, stir together well.  Melt butter,syrup and water together (microwave works fine) Tip over dry ingredients and mix until combined.  Press into try and bake moderate oven for 20 minutes.  Ice while warm (with simple icing sugar, cocoa and hot water icing)

That is all there is to it. Super easy to double, and if you have kids at the right age for them to be figuring out measuring, a great one for them too.  And it travels well – this is my go to slice for picnics and outings where a robust type of food is required!

The bell has rung, so I had better go and take this very slice out of the oven.  Let me know if you make this one and what you think of it!

Cheating?

I got EIGHT pages done yesterday, in a very short time. It sorta felt like cheating, but felt OH so good to get them done and looking mighty fine too, even if I do say so myself.

The reason for this abundance?  I finally got some of my digital/hybrid pages printed. Yep.  They came in the mail – and although I am not all that happy with the WAY some of them were printed (borders cropped when the page was created the right size and the like) for the most part I am happy. I am yet to find an online photo printer that does things perfectly.

Anyhow, you’ve seen these all before in their original digital form. This is what they look like stuck down on a bit of card and prettied up to go in an album.

Seeing as I had so much white space (bit of a waste photo printing wise!) I was able to crop off the digital matting that I had done and was printed strangely (missing the sides) and then I just stuck it down on a bit of card.  I like. I matted this one narrowly – again with white space – and then just stuck down on a bit of card…this was from a challenge that Nicole issued earlier in the year. Feels forever ago.Another challenge layout…that printed not-quite-right (borders removed!)  but waste not want not, I made do. Not my favourite, but I do love the story!

I LOVE how these three questionnaire layouts turned out!  And so so simply. My embellishments are languishing sadly in a draw! 

I don’t know how I forgot about that yummy striped paper,love its colours.

Not as happy with the way I treated this one (was the first of the three that I stuck down) I wish I had done it the same as the other two.  But its still nice.

And last but not least, another one with borders cropped (grr) so had to be creative.

I forgot one- that was only seven!  This one below was about christmas, and I think it will go into a mini album about Christmas that I have sort of started (as in gathered materials and very little else).  Instead of a December Daily – too much of a commitment – i thought I would   gather snippets of Christmas photos each year, along with the letter I send out to family and friends, and special letters received  (placed in an envelope). I am not overly happy with the title, but as it was 8x8 I had trouble fitting other letter stickers in the space and was feeling too lazy to print out a title on white card. I think this page was orginally 8.5x11 in in digital format but I printed it 6x8, and it printed Ok, just lost some of the kraft coloured border along the top and bottom. Lesson learnt – plan ahead and make your page the SPECIFIC size that you wish to print.  6x8 is quite a nice size, and cheaper than a 8x10 ! ;-)

So there you go, an overload of pages.  I could have spread them out and shared over a period time, but I am just too impatient  (and forgetful I have to say!)

Third and final call

You may have seen these collage pages on occasion before. One of them is done and dusted, never to be scrapped again, and the other will have to come out again and be done for the youngest child. 

And lest you think that cropped scallop is an integral design element, let me set you straight.  It is covering an unfortunate accident involving something sticky that didn’t want to come off.  Lets pretend its there to break the eye from that patterned paper!

So there you have it, my time wasting efforts for the first day of the school holidays, after hearing “I have nothing to dooooo” from the oldest child in the first 2 hours after getting out of bed. Funnily enough, she found something to do when I suggested that she wipe clean the kick board on the kitchen cupboards!

The Wedding

My computer is back!  Here are some quick favourites from the wedding I photographed last weekend.

I can’t decide if I like the faded look or the nice and bright photos (some are more suited to one than the other).  Trying to get as much editing done as possible – but thankfully most of them require only just a little tweak here and there.

And here is an arty farty one: kinda appropriate for an old fashioned country wedding.

As I weed through the photos, doing my second pass and editing as I go (first one binning the outright crappy ones) I am finding I am weaving a little photographic story.  I am always disappointed in myself in not getting ‘the perfect shot’ but when I see them as a whole, I am pleased that I have captured the feeling and personality of the day. 

Anyhow, I’ll feature more of my favourites and technical talk over at puddin n pie as I get some more editing and culling done!

Right now I have to chase a porky pig out of my garden.  I am afraid in my quest to get him quiet, he has become obsessed with me. or perhaps fixated on the fact that I am the one providing the tucker!

Pig post coming soon!

some forced blogging downtime

Now I haven't been neglecting you, dear readers, out of laziness. On Friday my brand spankin' new computer, died. Kaput. Just like that.  I was horrified  - but relieved that when I had purchased the new computer I also invested in a nifty little backup system that picks up every new file that I save.  Plus I have all of my old computer's stuff on my external hard drive. So things are not too grim - apart from the expensive new machine not working that is!  Its gone off to have its insides examined.

So in the meantime, blogger and I are having some differences, as I haven't got Live Writer on my laptop and blogger doesn't want to upload photos for me. So, some enforced blogging downtime - which just so co-incides with me heading off to muster some sale cattle for a couple of days.

Remind me to share a couple of wedding photos with you when I resume blogging - I shot a wedding on Saturday - solo.  This was a much bigger wedding than my cousins a couple of years ago - and the crowd much less polite and harder to get away from, making my job quite difficult no matter how firmly I spoke. Anyhow we got some good shots, and I just have to wait for my other computer to get back so I can edit the photos.

See you soon!

Outside my comfort zone

I was in a funny old mood this afternoon and was also feeling quite lazy scrapping wise.  I printed out this collage that you’ve seen many times before, this time it is for Georgie’s album.  I love that each kid will have a page to remember this time with a minimum of effort on my behalf!

Like I said, in a funny mood. The paper doilies were on my desk, unused from another project I was going to do, but didn’t get time (and they didn’t arrive in the mail in time in any case)

That’s how lazy I was feeling – i even used my own handwriting – and just printed out the journaling thing I made after seeing one that Nicole had used (see a couple of posts back).

I think this page took all of 10 minutes, not counting the wasted time on the computer looking for a free printable journaling label that looked like four brackets joined together (do you understand what I mean?) but was plain at the same time. But had lines for writing.  I dont ask for much, do I?  I am sure there is something like that out there, so point me in the right direction, please!  I still have a hankering to use some on my NEXT page!

Anyhow, best go and get tea started – the days are getting longer – and we love our afternoons outside in the cool evenings – but it means that we are later getting in and getting bathed and fed.  Time to get started on a summer routine so at least the kids get to bed at the same time (holidays being a little more flexible of course).

And another plug for Windows Live Writer – it even allows me to crop my photos from within it – and other limited editing abilities.  This makes the blogging process so quick – the longest part now is downloading the images and the time I take to drivel on here!

Coming up next post:  Meet Pig Pig.

Mad notions and ignoring frogs

Amy wrote a post about the frogs in her life, which is based on this quote by Mark Twain.

'Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.'

So I have crossed off a couple of the everyday frogs around here, but am resolutely ignoring some of the other ones. (Just so when my beloved asks me what I did today, I can nonchalantly  reply “oh, nothing” just to really annoy him.  Payback for all of the times he’s stirred the crap out of me just for the fun of it!)

Anyhow, where was I?  Oh yes. Mad notions.  I got the idea in my head I wanted to include part of a gift bag on a page, that my daughter got for her fourth birthday. Yes, I do realise that she has just turned six. Wanna make an issue of it?!

This is the result (Nicole Southworth I am not, so don’t expect much!)

The bit from the gift bag is the little girl thingy on the left hand side. And just because the lighting was awful when I photographed the whole page, here are some closer details.

The bottom left photo is actually a quick little 4x6 collage I made up in PSE as I didn’t print many photos from the day (I don’t know why, I took HEAPS) so dropped in some more from the party to finish telling the story. Very pleased with that part of the page, and how the other two full sized shots combined so well with it.  The funny little tag thing is also from the gift bag.

This side of the page and how it came together I am not so sure about. But it is another page done and another story told – which specifically referred to the gift bag and how much my daughter loved it (and its the thing I remember most about the gifts she got – apart from the skirt granny made her, which sadly no longer fits. And that my niece, and her mother ;-) have been waiting to be passed down to them, as they loved the skirt just as much as we did. Sadly, I didn’t think to take a full length photo of Georgie wearing the skirt at her party, but I am sure I do have one from other occasions. We got a lot of wear from it!

A note – those thickers are the super cheap foam ones I found at our local (ha ha – two hour drive!) discount $2 store. While they aren’t quite as sharp as the AC ones, I love em. Budget friendly AND cute. A winner!

And seeing as I am in a frog ignoring mood, I just might make another page, just for the fun of it!

light hearted advice

I did this quick – and again paperless (my paper stash in both digital AND paper aren’t going to get any less with this sort of behavior!) for my husband.

Its a 12x12, so I will have to find a good printing place for these larger digi pages I am starting to amass.

Off to try and finish off that photo book that I have neglected, even though I want to be playing with my real supplies!  But I MUST get some things finished!

I am not sure if this will enlarge if clicked on (the one fault with windows live writer it seems).

just because

I was looking at this photo (the one in the header) , taken late in the afternoon and thinking about how much I love that time of day.  I also love dawn, but not so much love the effort involved in hauling my tired carcass out of bed to enjoy it.

I plan to print this at home.  Turn off the background and just let the text and photo print straight onto the cardstock (cream like the background). Getting lazy – no patterned paper!

I’ve got another page planned -  a lift of one I saw just this morning that I adore. Hopefully I will get time to have a go at it tomorrow.

Now I am heading outside to the garden – and to let the pig out for a run. Another post there, all about the pig! One coming soon, I promise.

Socks and random blathering

Yes, socks. They are the bane of my existence. Especially come school time and the 10 pairs that each child had at the start of the school year have somehow dwindled to three pair each.  Somewhere in a parallel universe there are some socks having a mighty good time (image below from the internet)

Anyhow, my laundry  - which is basically a shed well detached from the house – is one step closer to being  renewed, with the builder man putting us on his list.  When he will actually arrive is anyone’s guess, but when he DOES show, the building is being torn down, new cement poured (which will alleviate the flooding problem I have every time it rains) and new building put up.  It will be in the same spot, but it will feature some sliding glass (second hand) windows, corrugated iron walls (again second hand, but unused) and a nice screen door (again second hand!)  I think I have enough tiles left over from tiling the bathroom to do the floor!  that said, its never going to look like this….     Budget allowing, I am wondering if I might get them to line the inner bottom half of the room with this mini orb…and I am sure I will be able to track down an old timber door (again second hand! there could be one hiding in our shed already possibly!) that I can turn into a bench top to go over the one small cabinet and set of draws I intend to purchase from the hardware store (you know those white flat pack things). I would dearly love a new sick, but the huge double stainless steel ones I have already will suffice, especially with a good scrub and a new stand built with for them.

I already have those cheap as chip galvanised steel shelves (remember the set that took me FOREVER to put together!) which small to medium sized plastic storage boxes can live on. Everything must have a lid or a door as open storage doesn’t work for me – I’m too messy for one, but this room is still a shed, with dust, spiders and other furry critters liking open boxes. Although I am hoping the screen door and screened sliding windows will keep the furry things at bay!

I would love to see your laundries!  If you post a laundry pic on your blog, leave me a link in the comments, and I just might share how truly rustic mine is! :-)

Technorati Tags: laundry,random

inspired by nicole

If you are a regular reader here then most likely you will have seen the work of the fabulous Nicole Southworth, who I now count amongst my friends even though I have never met her in real life (but we are working on remedying that!). Gotta love the internet!

One of her recent layouts inspired me, but not in the usual way.  Here is the layout that Nicole did (Nic, hope you don’t mind my borrowing this!)

And no, I did not scraplift the layout, as brilliant as it is! :-)  My eye was taken by the stamp that she used to journal with – one that she has had for years (I doubt it would be one still available).  Now I have found that I am not an inker or a stamper (those inkpads that I bought a while back have gone dry without even being used!).  So I made my own digital version, to be used fully digitally, or printed out and used hybridly. (is that a word? )And the best part:  NO MESSY INK REQUIRED!

And because I lack the patience to do (or find out how) dashed lines, my version is slightly different!

I lack the ability to give you a place to go and download this, however should you like to use this for yourself in either jpeg of psd format, leave me a comment and I will email it to you!  Just because I am in a sharing and procrastinating mood!

Its sized to 4x6 where Nicole’s original stamp is more square, but you could easily crop it in pse to achieve the square shape. (and there are no lines along the sides, as per the original)