The Difference 30 Seconds Can Make...

...To a bag of microwave popcorn.

Option 1 - 2 1/2 minutes.

Option 2 - 2 minutes.

I know which option I prefer. Lol

Bye for now, K

P.S.  I was too late to link up with The Little Drummer Boy today.  With the Anzac Day March and then being busy with other things, it completely slipped my mind. Whoops...

White-Choc Easter Tarts

I made this Friday Food Find earlier in the week & took it to a friends place when the kids and I were invited out for lunch.  I had seen the recipe before Easter but hadn't quite found the time to make it, so I had all the ingredients already. (I had to check the date on the cream before starting, and it was still good.)

I found the recipe in a Coles catalogue.  You can find it and other yummy treats here.

Mmmmm... straight to the hips!!

INGREDIENTS
250g pkt of butternut snap cookies
375g pkt NESTLE White Melts (but I had to improvise)
1/3 cup (80ml) cream
20 solid chocolate Easter Eggs

METHOD
1.  Preheat oven to 180 degC/160 degC fan forced.2.  Combine White Melts and cream in a heatproof bowl; microwave uncovered on medium (50%) for 1 minute; stir.  Repeat process in 30 second intervals until melted.  Stand for 15-20 minutes or until cooled and thickened slightly.

3.  Place cookies over 20 holes of two 12 hole shallow patty pans.  Bake for 3-4 minutes  or until soft.  Remove from oven; using a metal spoon, carefully press softened biscuits into pan to mould into a cup shape.  Allow to cool.

4.  Spoon white choc mixture into bisbuit cases; smooth top.  Top each tart with an Easter egg.  Refrigerate until set.

ready for the fridge

This was pretty easy.  The hardest part was moulding the biscuits to the pan.  I tried a teaspoon but that wasn't terribly succesful.  I found a soup spoon to be the most effective.  You need to move quickly at this stage and be careful not to burn your fingers.  I ended up putting one tray back in the oven because they cool very quickly and go hard again.

It actually made 21 little tarts and by 8 o'clock that night there were NONE left.

Bye for now, K

WIP: A Gypsys Cushion

Remember the little peak I showed you a couple of weeks ago back here.  This is the story that goes with it...

A couple of years ago I offered to make one of my cushions for an old friends newest baby girl.  I hadn't actually spoken to this friend for a number of years but I'm quite the sentimental type so I still made contact with her mother to find out if she thought my friend and her new husband would have been interested in one for their first little girl. 

Well, without giving away too much of their story, this is the cushion I made for their first born.  It was loosely based on a snugglepot & cuddlepie theme. 
 

Last week they finally recieved the cushion for their second daughter, so now I can share it with you.  (I'm not sure if any of them read the blog so better to be safe.)  This time I was asked if I could make it a Gypsy themed cushion.  Or perhaps something with butterflies if Gypsy's was too hard.  I came up with this.  (Shows you that there is CLEARLY something very wrong with my camera, or at least the operator.  Same camera, a couple of years apart).

I haven't done anything else of this kind more recently though.  We were busy with Easter crafts, then spent the long weekend on the South Coast of NSW.  Today, the kids & I are off the the Riverina region for a couple of days.  I do have several that I should be working on.  Perhaps I'll have time next week for them.  I do hope so, but we'll see...

Bye for now, K



Happy Easter

I hope you all have a LOVELY Easter!!

Isn't it wonderful that Jesus loves us SOOO much that he died on the cross for all us sinners and then rose again!!

Let's recap the week in the Creator house...

 

Stay safe and enjoy the rest of your long weekend.

Bye for now, K

 

Stained Glass Egg??

So we have had a pretty busy week with Easter crafts & sweet treats. This was a VERY simple one we tried. 

Miss Pants and I cut a heap of tissue paper into small pieces that we could put on the contact.  (The leftovers went into a plastic container with lid for future crafty endevours. Lol)

I drew a rough outline of what they wanted to make on the right side of the contact then peeled the backing off & taped the contact, sticky side up, to the table top.  H decided to do an Easter egg & Mr Magoo chose a Cross.

Miss pants was way too busy with the scissors to actually make one.  As much as I wanted to make my own, I felt that I should really be supervising her cutting efforts in the interests of health & safety.

When they were done we put another layer of contact over the top and then they cut our their designs and blue tacked them to the windows :)

Ta Daa (lol)

Bye for now, K

P.S. There'll be more craft coming in the next few weeks. 

More Easter Crafts

So I know I normally do a new Food Find on Fridays, and if you were waiting for one I'm sorry, but I decided to share more of our Easter crafts with you instead.

With only one afternoon of after school activities to get to this week it left time for us to get creative!

Firstly, I'd seen a poem about Jelly Beans and Jesus so we turned some eggs filled with jelly beans into Easter gifts.  I typed up the poem, printed it out, attached it to an Easter themed cello bag which we put the jelly bean filled eggs into and voila, instant non chocolate Easter gift.

  Then I thought we'd make a little Easter Garden like the one I saw here.

I had REALLY hoped to make this with the kids, but time got away from me so we did this instead.



We used the packaging from a kitchen appliance, a yoghurt container, the Crosses Miss Pants made at Sunday School, some felt & a lot of glue.  (Again with the shocking photos...)

Mr Magoo was responsible for cutting a hole in the mountain for our tomb to fit into

Miss Pants looked after the glueing

H created the path to the tomb

We covered the mountain with scraps of felt in greens & browns

 

Bye for now, K

Mmmm Chocolate Crackle Nests...

I saw this recipe here, and decided I would give them a go.  I had a BAD experience the last time I made chocolate crackles (almost 20 years ago, Oh my, that makes me feel old), so I wasn't sure how they'd turn out.  The recipe said they'd make 10 large ones.  I'm assuming that large would be like those JUMBO sized muffins, because I made 28.

Anyway, I started with the standard Chocolate Crackle ingredients...

4 cups rice bubbles (I just used home brand Rice Pops)
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup dessicated coconut
5 tbspn cocoa powder
250g copha, melted






Mix all the ingredients together & spoon into patty pans.  Using the back of a spoon press the mixture down in the middle and along the sides, forming a nest.








I made mine in patty pans in muffin trays to form them, then removed some of them to see how they went.









They aren't TOO bad.  (I'm not real fussed on the speckled eggs though, but they look cute)

Bye for now, K

Yesterdays Kids Craft

I've never done a Wordless wednesday before but here we go...

Yep!! We had to eat all those. Bahahahaha

Can you tell who created each egg??

Linking up with My Little Drummer Boys

Bye for now, K

School Holiday Sanity

With the Easter Holidays just around the corner for us (and for some they have already begun) I thought I'd share a couple of blog posts with you.  Perhaps they'll make your School holiday time easier, or at least a little less...pressured, for want of a better word.  The pressure off course comes entirely from ourselves!  I'm not generally one of those Mum's that prepares for School holidays by stocking the fridge with bottles of wine.  I wouldn't even say I'm one of those Mum's that LOVES school holidays and having the kids home with me 24/7, but I guess I'm a happy "inbetweener".  If I feel organised and prepared I breeze through.  If not, well, let's just say I often find myself ducking for cover FROM myself. Not a good thing for any of us.

This holidays I have oodles of craft things in the pipeline.  Heaps of Easter craft things (which I really should have started weeks ago, but I'm sure the kids won't mind dragging it out), some general craft & even some Autumn craft things to work on.  Even as I type this the kids are working on decorating some paper easter eggs with buttons, ribbon, Easter stamps, stamp markers, coloured paper, glittery pom poms, coloured pencils and hopefully a little imagination of their own (I am resisting the strong urge to "show" them how to do it).

Even with all the ideas I have already, I came across this book at Woolworths while shopping for a few Easter eggs today, and couldn't leave it sitting on the shelf. It has some cute ideas for treats that would be more appropriate for Spring, so I can look forward to that too. 

So, those posts I wanted to share...

This post MAY help you stay Clean & Organised...  I have only been "trying" to stick to the 4 daily tasks (and anyone who has visited my house will know how much trouble I have with clutter). I was already MOSTLY sweeping the floors on a daily basis anyway, but sometimes you just need to hear it, or in this case, read it, to actually have that "Oh yeah" moment of realisation.

This post is the first in a series of five this week from Naomi at Seven Cherubs.  It deals with improving self esteem as a mother.  Even without the school holidays to deal with this would be a GREAT series for ANY Mum to read. (There is also a vlog on her site where she talks about her own disagnosis of PND.  I have her permission to share it with you but I'll do that some other time.  Feel free to go and find it now though if you feel yourself being lead in that direction.)

Well, they've finished their eggs now, so I'd better go & clean up some mess! Lol.

Bye for now, K