Cupcakes

So you can't have a birthday party without cupcakes right?

So for mine I made some chocolate with chocolate chip cupcakes decorated with vanilla butter cream. Now I have a bit of a thing going on with cupcake toppers. Living in a house with 3 other males I wanted girlie colours, so what better colour than pink and lilac. The cupcake toppers were so easy to make, I just used Prima flowers that I hot glued to a cocktail stick. If I had, had time I would have put a little sparkle in the middle (like I did with the bridal shower cupcakes I made), but I had so many things to do on the day that I really didn't have time, either way I think they just give a cupcake that little extra deliciousness!!!! I also cheated due to lack of time and used a Betty Crocker mix, which made 24 cupcakes in total.
UPATE: I received an email a few weeks ago to join in a cupcake party over at Screaming Sardines blog
there are some fabulous cupcakes to look at and you will love having a look at her blog, go check it out.

For more ideas and fun check out the Blogger Block Party, there is lots of fun activities that you can take part in.

I have linked this up with:

Birthday

It was my birthday on Tuesday and I hit the big 4 0 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My dh went crazy and bought so many helium balloons, this is just a few of my favourite. There are so many all over our entire house that it looks like a balloon store. We had a little get together with some close friends and I had a fantastic time.

Bridal Shower Cupcakes

Today I have been busy baking and decorating cupcakes for a friends Bridal Shower, her wedding colour is bright yellow, hence the sunshine yellow butter cream. I also made some cupcake toppers using prima flowers and also made a word document, using circle shapes and owl clip art, (the bride to be has a thing about owls) I printed and punched them out with a circle punch, inserted a cocktail stick between them and glued them using a hot glue gun.

UPATE: I received an email a few weeks ago to join in a cupcake party over at Screaming Sardines blog
there are some fabulous cupcakes to look at and you will love having a look at her blog, go check it out.

This and that.................

I have been having trouble with blogger again and have been unable to comment on any of the blogs that I stalk! well with a little bit of searching I managed to fix it and so far so good I am back to commenting on blogs. I hate reading a blog and not commenting, so I try to as much as possible.

I am having a great time not having to go to school and I am finally getting round to doing all the things that I had to put off due to lack of time.


Today I hope to sort out my craft room in the basement, it is so bad that I cannot even see the tables. I would take a before picture but seriously it looks really bad, think of a tornado in the basement and you get the idea.


On another note, summer has finally arrived in WI and we have had some really hot weather, I am talking 97F, and I am loving every minute of it. We have been out on the boat quite a few times, but for some reason it doesn't seem to hold the charm that it did last summer. Maybe, its because the river is quite high and its a little choppy or maybe we have seen it done that and worn the tshirt and that is that.


I have discovered a new place for catching a few rays, the trampoline, it is due so comfortable and great for topping up my tan!


On another note I hit 40 in a few days time, I am not sure what I think about all that! However, to celebrate or commiserate we are having a small get together with some friends. This is the invite I made, I blurred some of the details so its not completely like the photo in real life. So this is me when I was a baby, I am not sure how old I was, but it is the only pic of me as a baby that I have.

Other news I forgot to share last month: I saw Elton John in concert, I was so lucky to get tickets, they were not cheap mind you, but there is no way I would have even got the chance to see him if I was still living in the UK. I went with another English friend, and we had such a great time, singing our heads off and dancing the night away!!!

Right, I must stop blogging and get on with tidying the basement..................

Graduate

With all the craziness I forgot to mention:

I graduated on 13 May (a friday!) in Human Resource Management. So I am no longer a student, no longer have to go to school. The relief...................

No more homework
Having time to just do nothing
Time to clean the house and to be able to keep it nice
Time to bake nice things
Time to relax and enjoy life without stressing

It was all worth it, but now I can have some me time and time for my family.

Skype Down

So I went online this morning to let a friend know that if she was free I would try and skype her later when I got back from dropping the boys off at school. For some reason I could not log into skype. After many failed attempts I decided to remove skype and download it again. Big mistake, skype apparently is down all over the place, I read somewhere that there is a fix to get it back up and running but I can't download it. Not a good start to the day as I was looking forward to a nice chat.

Tornado in La Crosse

My last post was on the crazy weather we were having here in La Crosse.

My Sunday dinner of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, parsnips, roasties and carrots was not to be this Sunday.

I only had 20 minutes to go before my Yorkshire Puddings would be done and the power went off. I had absolutely no idea why. We decided we could save the dinner and have our Sunday dinner the next day. We were all starving so decided to go out and get something to eat. It was not until we got about 5 blocks from the house that we realised the damage the storm had caused, trees were downed everywhere and roads flooded. It was not until the next day when eventually power came back on that we found out it was a Tornado. I am so glad that we didn't incur any damage but my heart goes out to those that did. The scale of damage is not as bad as it was in Joplin but at least 200 homes have been affected by it.

Well apart from not blogging much in the last few weeks, I have had to contend with the weather!!!! hail stones previously and just when I thought the snow had finished we went and had another 8 inches dumped on us. My poor daffodils thought it was time to start flowering only to be covered by a whole load of snow. Luckily not all had blossomed so there is plenty more to come up when the snow has gone!

Hail Storm

Strange weather a couple of weeks ago, I couln't believe my eyes, I have never seen anything like this. Luckily no damage done to anything, at least I think there was no damage.

Cucumber Sandwiches and Salad Cream

The traditional English cucumber tea-sandwiches consist of sliced cucumber on white bread spread with butter, with the crusts cut off and salad cream!!! Salad cream is a separate post in itself, so for now I will just stick with cucumbers. So, what is the difference between an "English" cucumber and the cucumber over in the USA? First off all, there are about 100 varieties of cucumbers cultivated around the world. About a third of them are for pickling. The remainder includes varieties that are best cooked and a number that are more popular in Asia or Europe than here.

There is nothing wrong with the common slicing cucumber you find over here, if you like seeds!!! but the English cucumber in my opinion is so much better: It is usually sold wrapped in plastic, this reduces water loss, and it is usually not waxed and therefore does not need peeling. It goes by the name of an English cucumber or it is also called seedless, which is not completely true, but unlike the cucumbers I find over here the seeds are edible, they are not hard but very soft and are much smaller. The seeds in a cucumber (and especially in an aging cucumber) are what makes it bitter, so a semi-seedless English cucumber is less likely to be bitter It has been bred to be more easily digested than some other varieties (Less burps). However over here is is much more expensive than regular cucumbers.

Now I did have the grand idea of growing some English cucumbers from seed, thinking that the summer is warmer and generally longer than an English summer so this would mean that I maybe would not need to grow them in a greenhouse which is the usual way in England. I have looked everywhere for seeds and if I am correct Telegraph Cucumbers are the ones that I can remember my dad growing in his garden at home, so I think they would be OK to grow here, but alas I just cannot seem to find any English cucumber seeds in the shops around here. There are so many different varieties of cucumbers for sale but not good old English cucumbers. So if anyone reading this knows where I can buy some English Cucumber seeds then please let me know.

Coffee filter seeds - into compost..................

Here are the Zinnia seeds I sowed using the coffee filter method. They now need potting on!!!!! Just take a small tooth pick/cocktail stick and gently lift the seedling from the paper, make a small hole in the compost and put the seed in it. That is basically it, just sit back and watch them grow. WARNING this is addictive, to the point that you will end up with far too many plants than you wanted!! so caution try to not sow to many of one type!!!!! I have also planted some other seeds that I started off exactly the same way: nastutium, dianthus, hollhocks, peppers, lupins,

Coffee filter Seed Sowing

Take 1 regular coffee filter wet it under the tap, squeeze it slightly so that it is not soaking but just nice and wet.

Lay out the filter and place your seeds in one half of the filter.

Fold the filter in half

and half again

and again

Put in a small plastic bag, seal, label and wait ...........................

Seed Sewing

This year instead of losing loads of plastic cups for starting my seeds in, I decided to try making my own with newspaper. This is what I came up with. Cheap and cheerful!

Spring is NOT on the way!!!!

Just when I thought spring was on the way, look what mother nature decided. I thought we had seen the last of the snow, but in my heart I knew that it would possibly snow again, I just didn't want to believe it. Oh well, that's what happens when you live in Wisconsin!!!

BREAD RECIPE

Sam’s Bread

So here is my recipe that I have been using for 4 years now. It took me a while to get this right and it was only through experience that I eventually got by bread the way I like it.. So if you don’t get it right the first time then keep trying, just remember you can always add more water if it is too dry and add more flour if it is too wet.
Do not over proof your bread, this can result in bread that loses all the air when it is put in the oven, it will taste good but not as good as if you did it right.
Put the following Ingredients into your bread machine in the order shown:

2 cups hot water (not so hot that you cannot put your hand in it though)
1 table spoon of olive oil or vegetable oil
4 cups BREAD flour
3 teaspoons of bread machine yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (granulated or caster sugar is fine)

1. Turn your bread machine onto the dough cycle, my machine is a sunbeam and it takes approx 25 minutes to mix and knead the dough.

After about 10 mins you will see what the consistency of the dough is like at this point if the dough looks too wet add more flour if it is too dry add more water. Your dough should be the consistency of very soft play dough If it is too sticky your loaf can be saved by adding more flour even if the kneading cycle is finished just take it out and add more flour, enough so that you can shape it. If too dry it is best to notice before the cycle finished as it is much harder to add water out of the machine.

2. After 25 mins is up take the dough out of the machine and shape into a loaf, put into a greased pan (I use spray oil) approx size of my pan is 10x13. Open the lid of the bread machine and rest the pan on top, put a tea towel on top of the bread hanging over the sides of the tin.

3. Allow the bread to proof for a total of 1 hour and NO more. It is important that after 1 hour that you can bake your bread straight away so make sure before your hour is up that you already have your oven preheated to the correct temperature.

4. Bake in a preheated oven for 30 mins, 425F
5. Take the bread out of the oven and out of the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.
EAT and ENJOY

If you do try this recipe, please let me know how you got on with it and if you have any questions I would be happy to answer.
I am hoping one day to actually post pictures of the process, but because its something I do every day I just keep forgetting.

Blog Header

You may of noticed a little change at the top!!! I just managed to make my own blog header. Now I cannot take all the credit for this, I did have some help from the lovely Kristin from My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia. You can find a link to change your own blog header right here. Thank you Kristin for such a fantastic tutorial.

Bread

Proofed and ready to go into the oven.

Straight from the oven, I wish you could smell it, it makes my mouth water just thinking about eating it, but I have to wait a couple of hours for it to cool down. Please excuse my bread pan, I do not wash it as I have found that it makes a better loaf if i don't, I just spray it with vegetable oil before baking and after give it a wipe down with a damp cloth, this way the bread does not stick to the pan.

Quick take a picture before it is all gone!!!!!! There is nothing like fresh bread with butter and jam YUM

Treadle Singer Sewing Machine

Look what I managed to score on craigslist! I am doing a happy dance right now. It was advertised at $40 but I got it for much, much less!!! Can you believe I got it for $25 ????????

When I picked it up it was in much worse condition than this. The actual machine was all seized up and the needle wouldn't even move, some WD40 and a husband got it moving smoothly. We got the dremmel out to polish up the metal parts in certain places, and it started to shine a little bit with a good old clean.

I also applied some Old English Furniture Almond Oil and this has really helped with the cracking veneer. But it still needs a lot of attention and tender loving care.

The bobbin cover is missing so I need to hunt down one of them and as it is a treadle machine I also need to find a belt for it, so if anyone has refurbished one of these cabinets/singer machine I would really appreciate your feedback/tips/tricks.

The cabinet the sewing machine is housed in is another story, the close up shows how the wood is blistering and cracking, it looks much worse in real life.



I first thought about completely removing the veneer from the top and maybe just sanding down the wood underneath and re staining it. But, I asked Katy over at Mom and her Drill for some advice as I had seen that she refurbished a piece of furniture with a similar problem and she offered the following advice:
"put a sheet on the desk and apply a hot iron, it *may* reactivate the glue and make the veneer lay down flat. You would pile something heavy on top til it dries.
If this doesn't work there other methods, involving cutting the bubbles and squirting glue underneath.
I was too lazy for all of that, so I just refinished it how it was and I'm going to try the hot iron trick".

Any suggestions on how to repair, replace the missing pieces of veneer?