Car Rentals: 2012

Cactus Procrastination

Firstly, thank you so much for all the lovely comments recently - I really do appreciate reading them and cherish the smiles they bring.

I'm still plugging away at the socks, but allowing myself to get easily distracted! I'm justifying it by making other Christmas projects on the list - there's lots to do and not much time to do it in! If I haven't posted on here with soggy sock blocking pictures, start nagging me to finish them...

So back to the distraction - a money card for my nephew. He's at the age where money is the ultimate present, which makes it a little impersonal so I've created a card to pop it in.

He loves cacti, and has nagged me in the past to grow some from seed for him. I didn't oblige, but I did knit him one - that counts, right? When I saw Doodle Pantry were generously offering a free Christmas Cactus digikit for entering their November challenge, I couldn't resist - it's perfect, isn't it?

I've coloured the image with promarkers, and added glitter and glaze to the baubles. The backing papers and sentiment are from the same kit. I used distress inks in frayed burlap, faded denim and peeled paint on just about everything(!)

The parcel tag has a little pouch for the money and is embellished with more backing papers, card candi, ribbon and garden string.

I just need to replace those tatty notes with nice crisp ones and its good to go!

Entering into the following challenges:

Tags - Anything Challenges

Distressing - Passion for Promarkers

Sparkle, Sparkle, Sparkle - Cupcake Crafting

Anything Goes - I love Promarkers

Ribbon or Trim - Crafts & Me

Numbers (um...on the money - is that allowed?) - Nutcrafters

Flowers - Sweet Stampin'

Gifts - Sweet and Sassy

Time for a few more rounds of sock knitting; two at a time, top down...halfway across sole - not much further now!

More Handmade Christmas

This isn't the first time I've knitted a strawberry clock, but this is the most flamboyant yet! (See the other two here)

It's for my mother. Since she retired, she's taken up watercolours and has the most gorgeous garden studio to play in. It's painted the prettiest shade of duck egg blue, full of natural light with a glass desk and a wonderfully soft rocker in the corner to curl up in. Surrounded by the garden with its flowers and feathery visitors, it's a heavenly place to be.

To be honest, it's not a place where time matters, but she's loved my previous knitted clocks so it's time for one of her own.

I've knitted it in sumptuous yarns - angora, alpaca and crocheted flowers in pure wool. The white strawberry flowers are cotton just for a little ping. Ribbons and diamante butterflies fill the gaps and add a little more interest.

So easy to make this with love. The whole process is a joy. The socks I'm currently knitting for my father take more willpower to weave happy thoughts into - thin yarn, tiny needles and endless repetitive rows!

Entering into the Faux or Real Stitching challenge - Anything Challenge Blog

I've also made hmmm...it started out destined to be a tag, but I actually rather like it on its little easel as just a Christmas decoration. My starting point was the Kraft challenge - I've not tried using promarkers on this medium before. I've used the most basic of Kraft products, the humble brown paper packaging. The beauty of using this meant I could cut a sheet of it to go through my printer. As I have an Epsom, it naturally objected to this and I had to stick it to a sheet of copier paper to get it to run through.

The Angel caroller digi stamp is from Dearie Dolls, coloured with promarkers and a white pencil. I added papers printed from various Serif digikits, a wooden snowflake, ticket sentiment and a string and ribbon bow. There's distress inked edges on more or less everything - I love the stuff! Marvel at my restrain of not adding feathers this time - it was hard, I do have some pale brown ones....

Entering into the following challenges:

Colouring on Kraft - Passion for Promarkers

Don't be a square - Totally Gorjuss

Singing/and or Dancing - I love Promarkers

Circles - Crafts & Me Challenges

Use 2 or more Patterned Papers - Divas By Design

Snowflakes-Stars-Sentiment - Crafty Catz

Now...back to those socks!

Christmas Geeky Gift Making

I do like to make presents, which is a good thing as everyone now expects them from me! Sometimes the inspiration comes from snippets of remembered conversations with the recipients and others are a direct request - like "More Socks!!" from Dad :)

Whilst being gifted 'that giraffe', Kay was hunting for a slimline diary for next year. Her requirements were geeky...batman...or Doctor Who and "not cute". She failed in her hunt, so I promised to take care of it for Christmas. I picked up a bland slimline diary and got to work...

I used printable fabric from Card Creations, and set about designing my own backing fabric. I was inspired by this tardis fabric and used Serif to create my own. The printable fabric wasn't cheap and does print beautifully but the quality of the cotton itself is quite shameful. It's full of slubs, some of which are quite dark and is a perfect example of the cheapest cotton fabric available - meh. The strength of the glue used to adhere the fabric to the carrier sheet also makes the fabric quite crunchy and not particularly pleasant to sew with.

I added printable seam binding with her name on, ribbons and bells(!) and made and appliqued a felt batman logo. Doctor Who meets Batman...why not?

You can just see the lining peeking out in this picture - I chose a dotty fabric to tie in with her character!

And of course, a handmade gift needs a handmade box:

I used Snowy Day from Birdie Brown (Torico, if you're reading this, the offer of sending you the box I made last time I was playing with your digi stamps still stands!), coloured it with Promarkers and layered it up on the box top. No need to glue things onto a badly blended hat on this one! Woo! I stuck to a purple/lavender colour palette to match the diary. The box itself is made from the reverse side of Centura Pearl card stock, that I ran through the printer.

There are glitter and glossy accents on the digi stamp and tag, along with a ribbon "belt" using a diamante buckle that was in with some craft supplies a colleague gave to me in exchange for altering a top for her.

I still have a lot of presents to make, but boy does it feel good to get one under my belt! I have a strange urge to wrap this up in wrapping paper as well...anyone else get that?

Entering into the following challenges:

November Challenge - Birdie Brown

A Christmas Present - Nutcrafters

Plain & Simple - Totally Gorjuss

November Colour Challenge - Ribbon Girls

Christmas Trees - I Love Promarkers

Moon & Stars - Passion for Promarkers

Snow People - Sweet Stampin'

Fluffiness

I found the most wonderful digi stamp at Doodle Pantry - it would be great for lots of different occasions throughout the year, but as the need for Christmas cards is at its greatest right now, that's what I went with. I coloured the image with Promarkers and made the little birds into robins. Following on from the "include *everything*" mentality that the giraffe card caused, this is also an over-the-top card too :)

(I love how this picture looks like the finished card will be somehow elegant and tasteful...fooled you!)

Paper flowers, glitter, feathers, gems, stitching, beads, quilling, lace, ribbons, pearlescent printed card stock....

There is a complete childish glee in making this card. The little voice at my shoulder whispering, then screaming "LESS IS MORE!!" and the responsive blowing of a big fat raspberry as something else gets glued or stitched on!

Entering into the following challenges:

Use a Doodle Pantry Image DPDC29 - Doodle Pantry Blog

Untraditional Christmas Colours - Crafts and Me Challenge Blog

Shaped Cards - Sweet 'n Sassy

Anything Goes - Divas By Design

Lets Have Sparkle - Crafty Catz

Christmas Anything Goes - Crafty Bloggers Network

Stitching Real or Faux - Anything Goes Challenge Blog

Unintentional Mouse Theme!

The last two papercraft projects of the weekend before the sewing machine comes out!

First is a snowy mice digistamp from Dearie Dolls. It's a really cute image - I love the hanging hearts and the oversized button :) Coloured with Promarkers on Centura Pearl cardstock and mounted onto Kanban and ancient Sizzix Sizzles card/paperstock. The red star gems I bought recently - I clearly didn't look at them because the quality is awful; they're incredibly plastic-y, but I think you can get away with it on cards for distant relatives you haven't seen in decades...

Entering it into the Reds Challenge at Crafts and Me blog.

Secondly, a Thanksgiving inspired recipe - Pumpkin Pie. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in England, but we do like pie ;) Honestly, with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year I don't know how you do so many holiday preps so close together! I can't find the link for the image used - apologies if its yours. I don't have a pie coloured promarker...or a pumpkin coloured one either for that matter, so I've used blends to approximate them - love how you can layer them up!

Entering this into the Thanksgiving challenge at Sweet 'n Sassy

Warning...Ultimate Christmas Ornament Below...

Earlier this week, I met up with a wonderful friend for a breakfast date, full of milky coffee, bacon and egg butties and a good old gossip. And she bought me an early Christmas present. I feel I need to give a little history to our gift giving before proceeding, just to set the tone...

For my birthday this year, she got me a resin life size guinea pig for my garden. It's very realistic and I lovingly refer to it as the dead guinea pig - it freaked me out when I opened it (much to her delight) and it still freaks me out when I catch sight of it outside (much to her continued delight). For her birthday, and following a conversation where she declared that the best job in the world had to be a Penguin Feeder, I made her this:

And when I borrowed her spade to bury my beloved Catalpa earlier this year and plant a tree over him, I made this for the spade to say "thank you".

Then there was the eye-wateringly coloured tourist dish she bought me back from holiday and the torn off cardboard box end and biro Christmas card she made me...

So back to breakfast, and she is suspiciously gleeful at announcing she's got me a present, and hands over a gift bag, declaring that I will love it. I nervously ask if it's another dead animal and she looks a bit shifty. She tells me that it's the ultimate Christmas decoration; that it is everything associated with Christmas all in one marvellous little package.

I'm thinking holly...santa...presents...a tree...baubles...Christmas Pud...oh God, a Turkey...

I. was. wrong.

Ready? You might want to sit down...

Behold!

Yes! Yes, this is a Giraffe! With pink fluff! And pearls! And a glittered bow! And a beaded tutu! And ballet shoes..en pointe! And....white ankle socks!

It's hideous and gorgeous at the same time. I hate it and love it with equal measure. Most of all, it makes me grin like a loon.

It has, of course, been inspiration, for my Christmas card for Kay this year. But in blue, because I've faced pink enough in the last week!

And yes, this is a deliberately over the top card - it had to be. The digi stamp is a freebie from Starry Nights Studio, printed onto Centura Pearl card stock (Yes! I've found a way to make the Epsom take it!), coloured with Promarkers and backing card from Kanban. It took far too long to hand stitch beads and tiny buttons onto a ribbon tutu, but I love the effect. Then there is lace, more hand stitching, glitter, feathers, more buttons, felt snowflakes, gems, pearls, glossy accents, distress inks and a sparkly pom pom tail. She'll love it.

Entering it into the Pastel Christmas challenge at Totally Gorjuss, the Lets Get Cute challenge at Divas By Design, the Anything Goes challenge at Crafty Catz, Add Sparkle challenge at Ribbon Girls and the Christmas Anything Goes at Crafty Bloggers Network :)

I have a couple more cards on the craft table that I need to finish off, then I really need to make a start on presents. If you have any great projects for handmade gift giving, please shout out - any craft...if I don't dabble in it already, it might inspire me to give it a go!

In the Pink

As I mentioned last time, pink is not a colour I am drawn towards. My Promarker collection reflects this - I have a grand total of four pinks - pastel pink, magenta, pink mittens and wild cranberry. Blending is a challenge - the tones aren't that close to each other! I've used a digi stamp from Dearie Dolls printed onto Centura Pearl card stock (and the only time I've successfully got my Epsom to accept it!)

I used winter berry and a couple of greys to overlay to give me a broader range, but she's still ended up looking a little like she got dressed in the dark (my son's reaction was "Argh! Why has she ripped the snowman's head off?!", so perhaps she deserves a wardrobe malfunction...!)

I've added glaze to the snowflakes, the carrot, their eyes and her shoes. The backing papers are all from Nitwits and came free with a magazine. I've cut into the argyle-y one to frame the bottom of the digistamp. The pink crystals come from a candle making set from the early 90s - I can't bear to throw anything out, even if I can't see how I'll ever use it! The snowflake is a wooden lazercut, painted with white acrylic and decorated with glitter and a little button. And there you have it - one, out of character, pink card!

Entering into the following challenges: Paper Cupcake Pretty In Pink and I Love Promarkers Pretty In Pink.

Despite my protests, this was an enjoyable card to make and it's good to do something a little different to the norm.

More Birdie Brown!

I am totally in love with the digi stamps designed by Torico of Birdie Brown - they're easy for a beginner like me to colour and are charming without being overly cutesy. There's a good selection of free stamps available and more to buy from her etsy shop (the robots!).

First up is another of November's digistamps Just For You, made into a small hendacagon box (11 sides). I made the box template in Serif by butting up a small rectangle to a hendacagon shape made using the Shapes feature. By copying, pasting and shrinking it slightly, it's given me a perfect fit between the lid and the base.

I used Promarkers to colour the image and I *will* master a blended black hat eventually! But not today... To mask the overblended area that refused to be fixed, I've added glazed holly leaf punch outs and clear crystals coloured red with a promarker. There's also clear glaze and glitter accents.

The sides of the box are decorated with ribbons and ric rac with a snowflake glued to the bow. I plan on filling the box with handmade chocolate rum truffles for Christmas. I'm entering the box into the Anything but a Card challenge over at Sweet 'n Sassy and the Anything Goes challenge at the Anything Challenges blog, plus, of course, the November Challenge at Birdie Brown.

To add some variety into my Christmas crafting, the next image I played with the Dreaming Birds images and made two cards.

This card has soft pastel colours, a delicate paper doily, a little flower and pearl heart embellishment...

And buttons!

For the second card, I used promarkers to give the larger bird a rainbow wing, and then teamed it with lots of rainbow ribbon. The floral border stopper I made in serif - the flowers are just circles and hearts. By copying and pasting them in different sizes, it was easy to make a little floral strip.

I'm entering the rainbow card into the In the Garden challenge over at the Passion for Promarker blog.

Next up will be something pink for a couple of pink challenges - this will be interesting as it's not a colour I'm particularly fond of and certainly not one that I'd gravitate towards if left to my own devices! Plus, it'll keep me occupied whilst I'm waiting for these to arrive....

P.S Go visit Going Buggy: WIN a complete set of PROMARKERS!

Put a button on it!

Christmas card inspired by the Totally Gorjuss Anything Goes...with a Button challenge and the Texture challenge over at CraftyCatz.

The Gingerbread couple are from the Nitwit stamp collection, and I've used coordinating papers from the same range. There's also ricrac, lace, string, ribbons and of course...buttons! The stamped images are coloured with Promarkers - I think I'm improving!

I recently bought some Bookbinding Glue from Pinflair. This stuff is brilliant! The string on the card is attached to the edge of a card oval using the glue. It dried first, and that string is going nowhere - no more will embellishments like this be falling off! I tried some on string and scrap card, let it dry and then tried pulling the string off - the card tore, but the string remained attached to its card base. It has multiple uses and I'm looking forward to experimenting more with it.

Birdie Brown Free Digistamps

There's new free digistamps available from Birdie Brown :) I'm really enjoying seeing her blog and I like the monthly challenges - seeing what other people do with the same thing is inspiring and fascinating in much the same way as the Ravelry project pages for the same knitting pattern. It underlines just how unique each creation that leaves a crafter's hands really is.

This month there are two snowmen images to play with. I instantly fell in love with the Just for You stamp, whilst Snowy Day didn't really grab my attention. Having played with both, however, the former remains a favourite but the latter has grown on me considerably.

I made a card with the first digistamp, and while the characters are hand coloured, I created the snowy background to them in Serif.

See the little star buttons and ribbons on the bag? I confess they're covering up a bit of bleed through from the promarkers! His glasses and coat buttons have a little clear glaze over them, and I've added tiny seed beads to each dot on the doily.

Snowy Day has been turned into a small hanging gift box for the Christmas Tree. He's decoupaged onto the front, complete with a rainbow scarf and shiny nose! As this background was so much smaller, I coloured it by hand.

Both have glittery accents, and to give a sense of scale for the box, here it is with the card:

There's enough room in it for four of the little Christmas chocolates from M&S (the ones that come in the nets - yum!)

Silicone Disaster!

A weekend of card making here, and thanks to a recent reorganisation of my craft cupboard, old treasures have found new light. Including silicone gel.

I wanted to create a card using just brown tones and the Gorjuss On Top of the World stamp. All went well until I decoupaged the layers and this happened...

Look at the way the silicone has bled through to the front - the blotchiness on her face and pinafore! Argh!!

Luckily, I'd also coloured and cut out another image, which didn't have a home, so I layered it over the top. It's no longer just brown tones, but I'm pleased with the results. Vintage buttons added the perfect finishing touch:

Much better :)

Halloween

It's the morning after Halloween - such good fun last night! In England, Halloween is slowly catching on, and I love the growing community spirit surrounding the night. I love the effort the parents and children put in to their costumes and their eager faces when you open the door. We're very lucky here that the children dress like devils but behave like angels for the night - they only go to houses with signs of Halloween decorations and are enthusiastically polite over treats given out.

Last year, the treats were bookworms:

Book page pouches, with printed labels stapled on and filled with jelly worms. I can't remember how many of these I made, and it was my very first halloween living within reach of neighbours who might trick or treat. We ran out :/ Those last few children were given Christmas candy canes out of desperation!

This year, I started off by making broomsticks. I found sweets packaged to look like pencils for the base, printed out sheets of "wood" to wrap around them and finished with twigs and twine to complete the broomstick. The sweets were 20 for £1 - it's a great way to make cheap sweeties look special. You could probably use pixie sticks instead.

Here they are ready to give out:

See the cute Death figure? He's a free printable from Stitch Punk :)

I also made little pouches out of fabric with printed card labels (if anyone's interested in the labels, I can publish them as a pdf). Jelly snakes for decomposing eels and skidaddles for bat poo! Note to self: these were much faster to craft in bulk than the labour intensive broomsticks...and you need to do at least 60 of them next year...'k?

And using the same fabric, a little bag stuffed with Halloween treats for a friend's daughter

The skulls are hair clips made out of printable shrink plastic (skulls taken from a free digikit - Spooktakular available from Daisytrail) and hot glued onto clips. I also played some more with my alcohol markers and a Gorjuss On Top of the World stamp. (Edited to add I've entered this in the weekly challenge over on http://totallygorjuss.blogspot.co.uk)

I also made a card for my son, again taken from the same free digikit. He had posh Halloween chocolates from Hotel Chocolat (honestly, I didn't choose them because I knew he'd share....ahem)

Even the knife block got mummified! Free printable from What I Made - check out the rest of the site, it's visually stunning and there's some great projects on there.

Finally, we made two pumpkins - one real for outside, and other out of papier mache for indoors. The papier mache one was a pain to be honest - I'd forgotten just how time consuming it is to build up the layers with the drying time in between. I used a punch ball balloon which happily started to deflate after the first layer was put on. I cursed it at the time, but it's actually made a more realistic mishapen pumpkin that Mother Nature might have come up with. It blocked up my crafting table for over a week. I used orange, brown and yellow acrylic paints to colour it and then drilled holes in a swirl design with an electric drill (tip - use a face mask next time...orange gunk when you blow your nose...not attractive!) It's a little lame in the daylight, but looks really pretty when its lit at night, honest.

The real pumpkin got drilled too - this was so much fun to do apparently (my son insisted on doing the grrrr...manly thing with a power tool) We punched out one larger hole to ~~shove~~ artistically arrange a plastic rat in, hot glued smaller mice to the outside and used a battery operated 20 green led light set in the smaller holes, while the rest had white light shining out from a powerful led push light. I pinned a triple bow to the top. This was easily the fastest and simplest pumpkin we've ever done, but it looked really effective.

I stood it on an upturned waste paper bin which is an opaque plastic and hot glued glow sticks inside it.

Very blurry picture without the flash....

As it's blustery, but gloriously sunny this morning, I'm off to wrap up and sit in the garden with a cosy mug of hot chocolate - Autumn is my favourite season, and I want to make the most of it while it lasts!

Discovering....digistamps!

I've always been a secret fan of colouring in throughout my adulthood. When I was a young girl, I spent hours drawing and colouring in pictures of my own devise or printed. Including the illustrations in books: especially Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series, much to my sister's disgust as the ink would bleed through the page and obscure the text on the reverse (pah! - like we didn't know them off by heart, anyway!)

I've recently discovered a whole world of people who also like colouring, disguised with grown-up sounding tools - alcohol markers, blending tools...digistamps. I had replacement felt tip pens twice a year growing up - one treasured set each Christmas, and another of my own choosing during the Summer holidays bought from Woolworth's with carefully counted out pocket money. Each set never lasted through the time from one set to another, and I'd spend many hours soaking the inners in vinegar, or sucking the tip to try to breathe just a little more life into them. How much more fun would that have been with alcohol markers?!

Armed with newly acquired Promarkers from Letraset, and my good friend Google, I found this wonderful site - Birdie Brown, a digistamp designer who has really cute images to buy. She also has a few free digistamps which are perfect for novices like me, venturing into this new craft.

I picked her Gnome Boy in a Wood to start out with. Here are the results:

Apologies for the rather blurry picture - the weather is really miserable today, and my little point and squirt doesn't like it!

I had so much fun making this little card - I can see this is going to be another craft that I really love...if you're into this kind of colouring, and have any tips or sites to share, please shout out :)

I've also been busy crafting for Halloween and can't wait for it to get dark and for the doorbell to ring - will share what I've been making next time.

Happy Halloween!!

Greens are better with bacon

Running uphill is not fun. It's worse than normal running. But I keep forcing myself to join the people-who-like-to-run-that's-so-weird on weekends for hill running and stair climbing, on the slim chance that it makes the flat running seem less horrendous. It might just be plain old torture, but either way my calves will look fabulous!

But you know what makes running better and most certainly improves swiss chard? Bacon. The other day I realized, as I often do, that I forgot to take meat out of the freezer to thaw. It was suggested I have bacon. I didn't feel like eggs, and I had some fresh swiss chard from Nick's house, so I made this instead.

It was awesome.

I've made versions of this before (chard with bacon and potatoes, chard with apples) but with this particular iteration I do think I trumped myself. It's because I put the apples and the bacon together, and added cider vinegar to cover up the lameness of greens. I was just about to write something about the balance on the palette of the sweet, salt, and acid but I stopped myself because who the heck says that? Someone who's been watching too much Masterchef, that's who.

Apple Bacon Swiss Chard

Ingredients

1 head swiss chard of any colour
1 apple, chopped
1 package bacon
~2 tablespoons cider vinegar
garlic powder to taste

chop your bacon roughly into 1 inch pieces. This is actually a bit easier if your bacon is still slightly frozen
Cook your bacon! To the crispiness of your preference. I personally like my bacon nearly carcinogenic. Floppy bacon is just disgusting.
While the bacon is cooking, peel and chop your apple and prepare the chard. I chop up the stems like celery, and tear up the leaves into bite-sized pieces.
Set the bacon aside and drain some of the fat, leaving enough to cook your greens in.
Toss the apple into the pan and saute for a couple of minutes (and garlic too if you like). Rinse the chard in a strainer and add to the pan without drying completely (so the chard has some water to steam in). I added a bit of garlic powder here. The bacon was salty enough that it didn't need more salt.
Add the vinegar and stir the chard until it cooks down enough to put a lid on it.
Let it steam, stirring occasionally, until the chard stems are your desired tenderness. If it looks too soggy leave the lid off. I find the time differs depending on the freshness of the chard, how much stem there was, etc., but I saute it for around 10 minutes. Do lots of taste tests because that's a guesstimate!
Once cooked, top it all with the bacon and enjoy!

For the record, yes, I ate half a package of bacon for dinner, and the other half for lunch the next day. I am not ashamed.

Crispy Chicken Tenders with Dijon Dipping Sauce

I strive for alliteration in my titles, can you tell?

I have been neglecting my posting. Life is full! But that's no excuse because people need to eat, and they need paleo recipes to do so! Good thing I'm not the only paleo blogger in town or we'd all be starving :D I do have a long list of posts in mind, and I shall endeavor to get cracking with the actual writing of them down. So, without further ado, here's one that I've made at least 5 times since taking the picture of the first try and vowing that they were delicious enough to warrant a post. Chicken Nuggets! With Dipping Sauce!! Chicken is just so boring on it's own. It needs help. Help your chicken out.

Crispy Chicken Tenders with Dijon Dipping Sauce

I make mine coated in almond and coconut flour. I think they would be fine with just one or the other. A word of caution about the mustard. I made it once with a mustard that had some serious nasal clearing properties, and it was a bit much. Possibly horseradish? Anyway, pre-test your mustard is all I have to say.

Ingredients

Tenders

2 boneless chicken breasts
~ two handfuls of almond and/or coconut flour (I use roughly one each)
seasonings, to taste (I use sea salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic powder)
1 egg

Dipping Sauce

Two parts mustard (I use French's Original Dijon with Chardonay, pictured on the right...it's lovely, and I think it's paleo but for the Chardonay. You purists will just have to make your own mustard)
One part honey
1/2 part olive oil
ground ginger, to taste
sea salt, to taste

Heat some olive oil in a pan. I use a bit more than normal so that my tenders are nice and crispy!
Get your batter ready. Mix flour and seasonings in a bowl, and beat an egg in a second bowl.
Slice your chicken in nugget sized pieces.
Coat each nugget in egg and then the flour mixture and toss in the pan (hmm..I just wondered for the first time if it wouldn't be sensible to mix the egg into the flour to make a batter, and then toss the chicken in it to coat.....gonna try that next time....)
Cook until crispy on both sides. Mine are done by the time I make the dipping sauce and tend to my side dish. I always crack open the thickest nugget just to be sure.
For the sauce, just stir everything together, taste it, and add whatever you think it needs to be worthy of your nuggets.
Dip and consume!

I would have loved these as a kid...SO much better than McD's.

Conclusions from Wheat Month: only butter tarts are worth it

Wheat Month is done, thank goodness. For those of you who didn't read this post, I ate wheat every meal for the month of July in order to have a proper celiac test. I'm still waiting on the results of the test, but after eating gluten more frequently than I ever have before, I know for sure that I will be living a wheat free life from now on. Here's some things I noticed during wheat month that have contributed to this conclusion.

It seems to have made me allergic to working out. During wheat month, whenever I worked out I would get these tiny blisters all over my stomach. They were itchy and would go away a few hours later. There could be a confounding variable (heat rash?) but it never happened before, and hasn't happened since dispite lots of hot days. Who wants to eat something that gives them a rash?

Wheat makes me squishy. I didn't look much different to others (I gained <10 lbs), but I felt softer and less lean. And apparently my wheat weight all went to my thighs because my shorts got a bit tight (and my backsquat didn't go up eough to account for that!). To be fair, the wheat is not entirely to blame. I also ate a lot more sugar during wheat month becuase I was allowing myself to have every delicious thing that I could think of in case I never ate it again. I probably got half of my wheat from dessert, and I'd do it again.

Wheat destroys my will power. I don't know what it is about wheat. It's not addictive to me in the sense that I don't have sudden uncontrolable cravings. But, I did find that once I started I couldn't stop, if it was in front of me I'd eat it (the pre-dinner bread basket syndrome). I often have fairly good self control, but I would find myself eating another slice of bread or another cookie, even if I was full and didn't really want it. This resulted in guilt. When I did my first paleo challenge I finally stopped associating guilt with food after years of considering it to be the enemy. With paleo, I never felt bad about what I was eating. I'd eat as much as I wanted, and I'd stop when I was no longer hungry. The lack of guilt, and the feeling of control, are totally worth giving up wheat.

Wheat makes me slower. I'm a terrible runner to begin with, but when I was on wheat I was extra wheezy, requiring breaks even on a 400 m run. It was like my first week at CrossFit all over again.

Wheat makes me lazy. I had become used to making my own paleo bread, snacks, and treats, and enjoyed knowing exactly what I was consuming. During wheat month I was much more inclined to buy processed food than to make it for myself.

Wheat products don't taste as good anymore. Overall, I think I needed that horrible binge, where I was forcing myself to eat what products even when I didn't feel like eating them. I've long since believed that you don't need wheat in your life and that you can do quite well without it, but this convinced me that I don't really want it anymore. If you've gone wheat free and have been so for a few months, but still find yourself badly craving some of your favourites (dreaming about pizza?), I suggest you actually give them a try again. You might find that they'er not half as tasty as you remember, and that you actually prefer the more flavourful paleo alternative (and that they make you feel like poo). I ate A LOT of those former favourites during wheat month, none of them were worth it.

Except butter tarts. I will cheat once annually on butter tarts.

Time Again

It's been over a year since my last blog post - it's easy to fall out of the habit of updating, and the more time that passes, the harder it is to pick it up again. I hope this is a fresh start to blogging again, because it's nice to be able to look back and see what I got up to!

It's also been just over a year since I knitted this:

My first knitted clock! It was a huge amount of fun to make, and it hangs in my living room and continues to make me smile every time I glance at the time. I've wanted to knit another one for a while, although with other projects vying for my attention, I just haven't got around to it until now.

But with a commission request for a housewarming Strawberry Clock, I could ignore the urge no longer! I present clock the second:

Again, it's a knitted cover for a vintage style clock. I'm not quite so keen on the deco-style numbers on the face, but this was the only clock I was able to find in this style and it's growing on me. This time, I've used a grey woollen moss stitch base, double knitting weight, with eyelets again for ribbon.

The flowers and leaves are slightly different on this one. The leaves are cotton 4ply, knitted rather than crocheted and double thickness. They have more structure, and I love their petite neatness. The flowers are also in cotton 4 ply, and are the same pattern as the original, but these have little knitted button middles and I've added some pale green embroidery threads to the petals.

There are 7 strawberries dangling from one side. As these are knitted in 4ply rather than DK, they're more compact than my original. Plus I actually thought about where to put the french knot seeds on them so they're less haphazard than the first! It feels as though it's evolved - a little more conservative than its big sister, but still a lot of fun. I hope the recipient loves it too.

The other recently finished commission is a bunny. A lucky chimney sweep bunny! A colleague had a knitted chimney sweep given to her when she got married, and wants to gift her daughter with one for her wedding day this August. Patterns for knitted chimney sweeps are a little thin on the ground, but I really fell in love with this Alan Dart pattern, despite having a few gripes with it!

Isn't he cute? Her colour theme is purple, hence the waistcoat :) I made a gift box for him to go in, from sheets of posterboard and brown Kraft paper. It's something I enjoy doing, but I need more practise in to iron out some of my own design flaws!

I have a blissful couple of weeks off work, and plan on catching up with plenty of crafting. Sewing, crochet and knitting awaits - and perhaps a bit of box practise too! And who knows - maybe I'll even blog about it ;)

P.S. I've bought another clock to knit - should I stick to strawberries or try something different?