pink fish blue fish

I love the sample swap at SIT! I have participated every year and most attendees who don’t really feel like they have missed out. Basically we make 5 of the same items, anything we want really but they all have to be the same ‘thing’, although colours, fabrics etc can vary. Then we are put into groups of 6, do a special dance (!) and swap our items with each other. And we go home with 5 beautiful handmade goodies from other bloggers! A big thanks to Cass who is running it again this year.

This is what I made…

I’m not sure what to call them, I wanted to do a little case to put in your purse or car that has a travel sewing kit, notebook and pen, bandaids, tissues etc and this is what I came up with! The sewing is a little wonky but they are made with love, with fabric I love and I used my snap press for the first time 🙂 I look forward to seeing what I receive in the swap, only 5 sleeps to go!

Another fun part of SIT is the name tag swap. Gillian ran it this year, and we were each given a person to make a name tag for, and someone else makes one for us. It is all a secret though so you don’t know what will turn up in your letterbox!

I had Fiona as my partner, and using this years colours of red, white and blue I made this little diamond pieced star. I actually bought the diamond paper pieces at last years SIT!

My name tag arrived while I was in NZ so I had to wait another week till I got home to see who had made it and what it looked like! A big thankyou to Kelli for my lovely name tag, you must have spent a long time hand stiching it, it’s beautiful 🙂

So another year has gone by and it’s time for Sew It Together again! Yay! This year we are heading to Canberra and SIT coincides with the amazing Handmade Market. I have read about these markets all over blog land and am so excited to actually go.

Sheridan has done an amazing job (again) with organising a great weekend! We are kicking it off on Friday with a shopping trip to Addicted to Fabric, Bison and then Shop Handmade. Saturday sees us at the the Handmade Canberra market and then onto the Crowne Plaza Canberra for the main event, the Saturday Crafting Session. We get to talk, craft and shop late into the night, with a break at the Tongue and Groove for a delicous dinner. We will round off the weekend with a fabric stencilling workshop on Sunday and then it’s time to go home 😦

It will be an amazing weekend (I speak from experience, the last 2 SIT’s were awesome!) and it wouldn’t be possible without Sheridan and her trusty sidekicks Donna and Kelli. So thankyou for all the hard work you have put in for us, it is very much appreciated!

Another thing that makes SIT so great are the sponsors! Every person who comes recieves a goody bag full of samples and other cool stuff. There is also a giveaway table where we each get to choose a prize, and the prizes on offer are amazing! (Yes, I have said amazing too many times, but I’m not sure how else to describe SIT, it is amazing!)

These are some of the sponsors for SIT 2012:

• Polly Pratt
• Handmade Canberra
• Craft Schmaft
• Crafty Mamas
• Possum Blossom Patchwork
• Fat Quarterly
• Pink Chalk Fabrics
• Ink & Spindle
• Kelani Fabric
• Clare’s Craftroom
• Kate Conklin Designs
• Straight Stitch Society/Liesl + Co
• Suzy Hausfrau
• Innergreen
• Sew Vintage
• Bendigo Woollen Mills
• The Red Thread
• RicRac
• Posie Patchwork

So a great big thankyou to all the sponsors for being so generous!

Next…. the name tag swap and sample swap 🙂

This beautiful little girl arrived at our house today. She was made by the very talented Michelle from Poppy, Bean and Bloss. I have been wanting to order a Waldorf Doll for pink fish for quite a while but finally got around to it when we sold the house. I thought it would be nice for each of the kids to have a new friend to cuddle on their first night in the new house.

Michelle’s gorgeous dolls are handmade and you get to choose hair colour and style, eye colour, skin tone and clothing colours.

I can’t wait to see my little girls face when she sees her new doll on Wednesday night!

I am very excited to be going to Sew It Together again this year! Last year we had a ball in Melbourne and I can’t wait to get to Sydney for this years event.

The name tag swap was on again, this year we had to make a name tag with the colours of brown, yellow and orange. This is the tag I made for Cath…

And this is the gorgeous tag I received from Esther…

Aren’t I spoilt! I also received the cute yellow fabric in the background, a SIT giftbox and 3 huge chocolate coins that are no longer with us 🙂

All I have left to do between now and SIT is pack and clean the old house, move and unpack into the new house and sew up 5 scarves for the SIT sample swap once my fabric finally arrives!

Can we just pretend I blog on a regular basis? That way I won’t feel the need to do an awkward post full of excuses explaining why I haven’t blogged in so long, how I’ve been so busy with work, kids, family, that we’ve sold the house and bought another one and moving takes a lot of time etc, etc, etc.

Thanks, I’d really prefer not to do that post 🙂

Thanks to our very healthy zucchini plants, we have had heaps of zucchini’s this week! This is what we made with them…

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Sounds weird, I know! But my 4 year old blue fish, who won’t have anything to do with zucchini  loved it and yes he knew what was in it!

1 ¼ cups SR flour
¼ cup cocoa
¾ cup sugar
splash of vanilla
pinch of salt
1 egg
½ cup oil
¼ cup milk
1 medium zucchini, finely grated 

I just put it all in big bowl and mix it with a wooden spoon. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake at 180C for 35 or until just cooked. 

You can eat it plain, or put chocolate icing on top, or sprinkle choc chips on top before you bake it. Yummo!

Chicken Lasagne, with 3 bean mix, zucchini and carrot

I’ve been trying to incorporate more beans and legumes into our diet, and a little less meat. So this is a recipe I made up as I was cooking, and was suprisingly really yummy! The kids loved it too which is always a bonus 🙂

500g chicken mince & 1 diced onion – brown the mince and onion, till the mince is cooked through.

1 tin of 3 bean mix (rinsed and mashed slightly), 2 grated carrots, 2 grated zucchinis – add to the mince mixture, cook for a couple of minutes

add pasta sauce (I often buy passata, which is cheaper, and add garlic and fresh basil – yum!) – and simmer on a low heat while you make the white sauce.

This is how I make my white sauce, it’s easy and quick, and I’ve never had a problem with it being lumpy. You can make it like this, make your own recipe, use premade sauce or even ricotta cheese works nicely instead of white sauce. Whatever works for you!

In a saucepan melt 2T butter, add 1 T garlic and 2 T flour. Stir quickly to combine. Add about a cup of milk and, using a whisk, keep whisking it until it comes together. It will look lumpy at first, that’s ok, keep whisking and it will get there! I just add a bit more milk until it’s the consistency I like. Then I’ll add parmesan cheese if we have some, to give it a bit more flavour.

Now you’ve got your 2 sauces, layer them up how you would a normal lasagne. I like to put some chicken sauce on the bottom, then the pasta sheets, chicken sauce, white sauce, and keep going until you’re nearly at the top. I finish it off with pasta sheets, white sauce then grated cheese. Bake at 190C for around 45 minutes. It’ll take a little longer if you used lots of pasta sheets. We have ours with salad and garlic bread, delicous!

not the best photo, but it was so yummy!

Sew of course!

It’s cold and wet here this morning, so after I dropped the kids off at kindy & school I came home, turned up the radio, and got sewing! I’ve been working on a boys shorts pattern, and I think I’ve got a good fit/style now. I’m still thinking I’ll add a cargo pocket to one leg, boys need pockets you know! (excuse the less than average photos, I’ll add modelled photos when the kids are home!)

Then I made this super easy skirt for pinkfish. The fabric is from retromummy and is so sweet! The ballerinas run down both selvedges, so I just cut it through the middle, sewed up the side seams and added an elastic waist. Told you it was easy! Just so you know, pinkfish wears a size 7, and this skirt only used 1/2 metre of fabric (and it’s long skirt on her).

Look what came from our garden today! We haven’t had much in the way of home grown veges lately as everything got fried in the summer heat. Well, I lie, the silverbeet just keeps growing and growing, but how much silverbeet can we eat?! The chooks have got most of it lately 🙂

Now what can I make for dinner with eggs, pumpkin, chillis, peppers, tomatoes and one lonely little zuchinni? I think I better look in the freezer!

Yippee! I am sooo excited to be going to what is likely Australia’s first ever crafty bloggers weekend!

Sheridan is the awesome crafty chick who is organising the whole thing. That’s right, a whole weekend for crafting, eating and a lot of talking! And she’s doing it all in her own time and is not being paid a cent! Talk about committed to the cause 🙂

So a big round of applause to Sheridan, and also to my wonderful husband who agreed this would make the best ever birthday present for me 🙂

You can find out more about it all here.

Can you tell I’m excited? 🙂