A Day In The A Blue Mountains.

Thanks for visiting my blog. I welcome you to take your time and browse , visiting my bush garden and discovering the wonders of my city within a national park; Blue Mountains National Park. Via my blog you will travel with me through the successes, trials and tribulations of gardening on a bush block. I share with you my patchwork & quilting, knitting, paper crafts, cooking and life in general.
Showing posts with label Lavender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lavender. Show all posts

Monday, 31 October 2016

Purple #2

I'm having a purple theme to celebrate my sister's second children's book launch,
Don't Forget Purple.

This year we have a lot of purple flowers in the garden, most of them native plants which seem to love the fact that we've thinned out the undergrowth from around the bush block we live on.
I suspect that they are receiving more sunlight.
Native Iris

Native Iris

Lavender

Dianella

Native Finger Lime

Golden Pod Peas/Snow Peas/Mangetout

The golden pod peas are doing really well and so far none of the native wildlife seem to have noticed it.  That or the high chicken wire shield I've erected is working, even though the plants have emerged out of the top of the netting.

And here is my sister's book, Don't Forget Purple in the bookshop window along with one of the bears I knitted.



The story is based on a real life event with real life characters.
Purple is my niece's bear, or should I say was!


Here is Purple Mk II.  The family found out the hard way that purple bears are not easy to come by!





Sunday, 18 August 2013

Sometimes...


Last month, Mr Honey Pie and I made soap.


I love making soap. We don't make it often enough and usually wait until we have absolutely no soap at all and we have to buy it for personal use and then one lovely customer will send me an email and ask for another kilo or two.


That's when we know we have to make soap.  Which is what happened this time.
So we made soap. We made oatmeal soap with chamomile and lavender essential oil. We made rose petal soap with rose geranium essential oil and pink clay. We made lavender soap with lavender essential oil and lavender flowers. We made baby soap with just a hint of lavender and chamomile essential oil.
And then we let it cure.  We cut it. We let it air so that it could dry out a little more.
The house was filled with luscious aromas of the various essential oils.


One day, about a month after we'd made the soap, Mr Honey Pie sat me down and said he wanted to ask me something.
Mr Honey Pie NEVER says to me: "Honey, there's something I want to ask you."
NEVER.
That is, not until about two weeks ago.
He sat me down and he sat next to me and said,
"I've been thinking, what if I finish painting the kitchen and dining room?"
Well I was flabbergasted, firstly because I thought he had something life shattering to ask, and secondly because, well we only started painting the interior of our house well, like two years ago and everything came to an abrupt stand still...just like that.
I had seriously been considering getting in a professional painter and decorator, even though Mr Honey Pie is a professional painter and decorator.

Anyway, to cut a long story short...we painted. Or should I say Mr Honey Pie painted.  (I did help by rolling one coat of the main colour while he cut in.)

But before we could pull out the stinky cans of paint, the soap had to be packed carefully away, wrapped and boxed, to ensure no contamination with the paint fumes. 



Thirteen years ago when we had our house built, we chose neutral warm colours...mainly creams.  In the kitchen, you can see here, we painted a feature wall a sort of coffee colour.



In our previous house, the colours were sort of apricot-pink.



So far,the guest bedroom, the study, the two bathrooms, the lounge room and the entry have been repainted.  This time we chose blue as our main colour.


It just feels right.


But I'm not sure about the blue feature wall in the kitchen.  I was hoping that it would be darker.  But we've decided to live with it for a while and if we can't live with it...well, we'll repaint it.


And among the painting, we  hosted a birthday dinner for our Darling Daughter.
Our gorgeous Grand Daughter gets so excited about birthdays.  If she could have her way, she would have a full on birthday party for every member of the family with bunting, balloons, scores of guests, music and on and on.
But for today, she had to contend with paint fumes and a very messy dining room.
She had so much fun that her mum messaged me tonight to tell us that Miss Five was laughing in her sleep!
Well, we can't wait for the morning to find out about her dreams!




Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Easter Cooking


Here are my Easter treats all ready to gift to my sewing buddies.


I made lavender shortbread hearts and packed them into cello bags along with a chocolate Easter egg.


You can find the cutest Easter tags 






I went a bit crazy with the chocolate and...


certainly wasn't thinking ahead.
What do I do with fifty plus choc pops?

What are you cooking for Easter?


Sunday, 24 March 2013

Busy Cooking


I've been cooking treats to give as Easter gifts to my amazing sewing buddies.
I'll pack these into pretty bundles.


In Australia, pumpkin scones are very popular.
Pumpkin is at its peak at the moment so I thought I'd try my hand at some.
I received a huge Queensland Blue pumpkin at the last Crop and Swap so here is my result.
Eating wheat free means that scones are just about off the menu for me and most attempts at gluten free scones have been disappointing to say the least.
I'm happy to say that these are the closest thing to normal scones I've been able to achieve.
I'm still experimenting because my dough was too wet to work and I had to add another cup of flour before I had anything resembling dough.
But they are proving to be a hit with the family.


Monday, 3 September 2012

Day 247/366

Day 247...where has the year gone?!
Busy, busy, busy.
For those interested, here is our soap, all cut and ready to be sent on to our customers.

When we returned from our holiday the house smelt like heaven.
We sell most of our soap in bulk lots but I do wrap and label individual cakes too to give as gifts.
We started using the soap about two weeks ago and we're very happy with this batch.
I was bit worried as we had to change the oil used because we couldn't source the brand we were using previously.
This is lavender soap with lavender flowers added.
We also made a batch of baby soap with lavender and chamomile.
My most favourite is our Rose Petal Soap made with essential oil of Rose Geranium.
That's next on the soap making agenda.


Monday, 5 September 2011

Saturday Lunch.

The last time I made these I'd forgotten to photograph them before the family had tucked in.
So here's a photograph that I took last Saturday. 

I made two rounds of the shortbread and gift wrapped one to give to Second Son.  We visited him for lunch at his home in Sydney's Inner West.  I love taking a small gift of food whenever we are invited to friends or family for a meal.
I added a beautiful tag for effect (with graphic from The Graphics Fairy) and some lavender coloured ribbon (of course).  SS was duly impressed.
After a scrumptious lunch of rye bread club sandwiches and mini pavlovas (that my daughter made) we went to Sydney Park to walk off a few calories.  
Grand Daughter was overwhelmed by the playground facilities available at the park. What a wonderful use of space (which once housed a clay extraction and waste disposal site).  The park includes wetlands, dog-off-leash area, amazing playground equipment, a dedicated children's push bike/scooter training area, fitness park, walking paths and great views. 

It is Sydney's largest park.

I didn't take my camera, so photographs are not great as they were taken on my mobile phone.
These chimneys are remnant landmarks from the clay extraction works.

Sculpture on top of the hill.  Sydney Park, Petersham.
After our walk and play in the park we returned to Second Son's house for afternoon tea... kumquat and poppy seed cake, chocolate brownies (both made by SS) and lavender shortbread, with tea or coffee.What a perfect way to spend an afternoon.



I'm linking this post to:

Monday, 23 May 2011

Lavender Shortbread - Gluten Free.


Opps!

Wanted to post photographs of the two beautiful rounds of lavender shortbread I made during the week - but alas, this is all that's left of them!
The shortbread was delicious.  I used a Karen Martini recipe again and substituted plain flour with gluten free flour.

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