above :: visual dare #15

Lauren felt her spirits lift as she looked around the bustling promenade. After wandering the globe and hopping country to country, she’d arrived here, and the promenade lined with cafes and boutiques, looking out over the bay was full of activity and happy people, felt welcoming, and so she rented a small flat, not overlooking the water, but within walking distance, and started laying down roots.

Today was her first time at the annual family fun day, and she found herself drawn to the waters edge, surrounded with loved-up couples and young families. She looked for her friends as she slowly made her way towards the hot air balloons at the other end of the open space. Still alone as she reached the ticket box, she paid her fare, and waited as the attendant held the gate open. “Find a spot, love, take your pick. The baskets will take five people, so don’t be shy! We’ll launch in ten minutes or so”. One basket stood empty, save for the pilot, and with a quick smile, she climbed in, and leaned on the side of the basket, taking in the joyous atmosphere. Feeling the balloon lift, Lauren turned around, holding tight, and then her heart slammed to a stop when she saw the third person in the basket. Could it really be Paul? Her Paul?

~~~

I’m linking up with Anonymous Legacy for this little flash fiction challenge, just in the nick of time! As always, I will say that while I love comments, please bear in mind I am NOT a writer, and the small fictions I share here are just for fun with friends. Please comment with kindness, it is a big deal to me to be putting my writing attempts “out there”.

5::20 ~ Turkish Delight Slice {including recipe}

OCCASSION: A stroke of genius, really. Just to put it modestly.

BRIEF & RATIONALE: I made Mars Bar Slice. I thought it might go well using Turkish Delight instead.

SOURCE: My own recipe – see under the picture.

EASE OF MAKING: 10/10. Be lazy like me and you’ll only have one bowl and one slice pan to stick in the dishwasher. Winning.

CHILD FRIENDLY? Depends if you are willing to share chocolate, but in theory, yes.

REALITY V COOKBOOK: Not applicable.

TASTE: Off the scales delightful

FINAL VERDICT: Total and utter genius. And yes, I am modest, I know.

INGREDIENTS:

220g block of Turkish Delight

50g butter

3 cups of Rice Bubbles

200g block of milk chocolate

METHOD:

1) Break up the Turkish Delight into small squares and, keeping two individual squares, place into a heatproof bowl, along with  the butter.

2) Place bowl over saucepan of boiling water, and melt the Turkish Delight and butter. The inner Turkish Delight jelly takes quite a while to melt, so don’t freak out, just keep stirring, just keep stirring, just keep stirring, stirring stirring.

3) While stirring and waiting for the mix to melt, take one of the two squares of remaining Turkish Delight. Open mouth, place chocolate inside mouth, close mouth. Chew. Swallow. This step is CRITICAL. What if the chocolate is POISONED? That could get embarrassing at your next take-a-plate function.

4) In a large bowl, mix the melted Turkish Delight and butter with the rice bubbles. The mix is quite thick, and won’t completely cover the Rice Bubbles.

5) Once you’ve mixed as much as you can, break the milk chocolate into small pieces and melt in a heat proof bowl over boiling water.

6) Take the sole remaining square of Turkish Delight. Yeah, you know what to do now. Can’t risk a fluke, now, can we?

7) Once the milk chocolate is melted, add it to the Rice Bubble mix, and stir until evenly coated.

8) Press the mix into a small slice tray line with baking paper and pop in the fridge

9) Make a cuppa and enjoy!

10) Pretend you know nothing about a slice when your friends come around after seeing it on Facebook.

 

{NOTE ON COMMENTING :: wordpress, in their infinite wisdom, have changed their systems, and if your email has ever been associated with a wordpress/gravatar account, it won’t let you comment without logging in. If you are so inclined to comment, but have difficulty, please just add LWD to the start of your email {ie, LWDyouremail@wherever.com}, and I’ll know to remove it should I want to reply by email. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding. It bugs me too.}

menage monday

I missed this last weeks deadline for Ménage Monday, but there is always next week for a chance to join in again. I had a play around anyway :

Slowly, my eyes flicker open, then slam shut to stop the pain. I groan, trying to make sense of where I am. The smell is strange, sterile, antiseptic. A hospital? But it seems too quiet. No beeping machines, no squeak of rubber on lino as the nurses rush past. I can hear the breeze outside, and the birds singing. I swallow, painfully, searching for clues. Colours, lots of colours, flashing fast, nothing staying still, the world of my memory rushing around me. A spiked drink maybe? Music all around, I feel happy, I remember singing with my friends. Then, nothing.

I give up as I hear a nurse come in. “Oh, you are awake!” and I try to turn my head to face her. What is happening? I can’t move!! The panic must show in my eyes, and she leans over into my field of vision, her kind eyes level with mine. “Try and relax, you are ok now. There was an accident, but you’ll survive this.” And then it rushes back. Pulling away from the club, the lightshow changing colours, and then the laughter gives way to twisting metal as we slam into a taxi.

~~~

As always, I will say that while I love comments, please bear in mind I am NOT a writer, and the small fictions I share here are just for fun with friends. Please comment with kindness, it is a big deal to me to be putting my writing attempts “out there”.

{NOTE ON COMMENTING :: wordpress, in their infinite wisdom, have changed their systems, and if your email has ever been associated with a wordpress/gravatar account, it won’t let you comment without logging in. If you are so inclined to comment, but have difficulty, please just add LWD to the start of your email {ie, LWDyouremail@wherever.com}, and I’ll know to remove it should I want to reply by email. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding. It bugs me too.}

rolling rolling rolling

This pencil roll was a little side project I was puttering along with last week, in amongst everything else. It came about after I got a message via Facebook, asking if I made the rolls to sell, by a lovely UK lady who’d found my blog, and a post where I’d made pencil rolls using this fabric previously. I bought this fabric around 4 years ago, and it has made an apron for my mother in law, two, now, three, pencil rolls, and a little sewing kit for a friend. I think I’ve just about exhausted my supply of this fabric!!

 

We’ve had a lovely weekend, hanging out, a bit of sewing on a bag, some embroidery for a new little project (which I’ll share tomorrow), and getting the garden ready for spring, interspersed with some Olympic watching – Bear has declared he is going to the Olympics to swim “because I like swimming, and if you want to watch me, you can just turn on the television, and there I’ll be!”. Keep an eye out in 2024, and when my boy is up on the podium, remember, you heard it here first!! Monday is shaping up nicely, the sun is shining, and truly, it’s too nice to be trapped indoors, so I’ll stick to short and sweet today! Have an awesome Monday x

Sunday Snippets :: Olympic Fever edition.

I’ve had a late night watching day one of the Olympics and cheering on the Aussies. Lucky I don’t need to think too hard about today’s post – it’s time again for Sunday Snippets link up with tinniegirl.




{I should explain, for the benefit of my northern readers, why a shorts + singlet photo is worthy of inclusion – I’m in Australia, and technically in the depths of winter. Three cheers for global warming!}

bloggers boogie :: the desperate housewife edition.

This weeks Boogie is inspired by Skipper, the Domestic Guru herself, who responded to my call last weekend for some of my friends favourite songs. She kicked us off with “Dynamite”, which is my high rotation fave to bust a move while houseworking. And so, here we are, my morning play list. What do you have playing while doing housework?

HOW IT WORKS: Blog up to five songs between Saturday lunchtime and Sunday lunchtime in your local timezone. Any theme. Any reason. Doesn’t matter. You decide.

Or if you have done a music post during the week, that’s ok too, join the party as well!

Come back and leave a comment to join the fun – I’m yet to find a linky that works on WordPress nicely.

Not a blogger? Just join in in the comments – link to the video, and even just list your five!

I will also be popping up some random clips over on the Facebook page if you are a Facebooky type and looking for some fun.

IT WOULD BE NICE (BUT NOT ESSENTIAL) IF:

You hopped around and commented on some other boogiers blogs.

You linked me in your post (or heck, even grabbed the button). Even to the front page is fine if you are wanting to schedule your post in advance.

The button, if you are button-type blogger:

<div align="center"><a href="http://thedovenest.wordpress.com/category/music/" title="Little White Dove"><img src="http://thedovenest.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/button-boogie1.jpg" alt="Little White Dove" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

{NOTE ON COMMENTING :: wordpress, in their infinite wisdom, have changed their systems, and if your email has ever been associated with a wordpress/gravatar account, it won’t let you comment without logging in. If you are so inclined to comment, but have difficulty, please just add LWD to the start of your email {ie, LWDyouremail@wherever.com}, and I’ll know to remove it should I want to reply by email. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding. It bugs me too.}

industrial crafting.

For those who’ve been around here for a while, you will know we recently did a pretty major renovation/extension to our house. And while the space is lovely, and we really like the design and layout, I find myself increasingly frustrated. 12 months on, and we are still working through finding the ideal storage solutions for some areas, and tidying up some decorating bits and pieces in others. The storage thing is bugging me. I feel like I am drowning in a tidal wave of “stuff”. Partly because we have a lot of stuff (ie, we have three children, a compulsive crafter/bookhoarder, and a man-of-the-house slowly losing shed space to storage needs), and partly because we simply don’t have the appropriate storage for the stuff we have. Coming back from holidays, there were two rooms I walked past/into, that literally made me want to cry. Had I been by myself, I think I would have sat down and bawled my eyes out, I was that overwhelmed. The first was my studio. Starting life as the office of a studying accountant who sometimes crafted and had a heap of books, it is now the hub of my creative life. I craft in here. I run my photo business from here. I blog in here. The small people craft in here. And the makeshift hodge podge of storage simply isn’t working. I’ve sat down and drawn up plans, which my father has very graciously taken to turn into two purpose built cabinets. Though, to be honest, when he said “sure, just knock me up a plan with measurements and I’ll make what you want”, I don’t think he was expecting shelves and boxes and drawers and drop down tables of every configuration. So that’s the studio, in progress.

The other room, and this I’m sure a lot of mums can relate to, is the toyroom. It’s a new room, and truly, I love it. It’s a double bedroom with builtins, and on one wall, my long-suffering husband has painted stripes, 2 foot high, and then built me the children a massive wallmounted chalkboard. There is a cute little wall decal, and some boxes mounted to the wall to serve as bookshelves. We KNEW this room would be the problem room. Three children, two boys, one girl. They have STUFF. So we hit up IKEA and bought a heap of tubs, which we (and by we, I mean he) built runners in the wardrobe to fit them. Toys packed in, all well and good. Except at least half the boxes are too high for the children. And some things don’t fit. Never fear, said I! We’ll rotate toys! No access to the cupboard by small people…which meant the tubs lived on the floor…you can see where this is going, can’t you? And I’ve had jack of it. So Wednesday I bought two flatpack cube shelves, and assembled them. Now the small people have a)easy access to the toys on rotation, and b) no excuses for toys on the floor. Part two of the toyroom makeover, was a little project I’ve been thinking of for a while. So yesterday I raided the shed, and armed with MDF, a saw and a power drill, set to work, and built this little rack, to mount on the wall to hang their dressups on.

What do you think? I think the white needs another coat, but I’ll do that once I’ve mounted it and puttied it up. Not bad for a couple of hours work, and ALL BY MYSELF. Even if I did need help to work out the keyless chuck on the drill. But I did it! Now, just to decide on the perfect wall for it, and find a stud to attach it to. That’s my job for this afternoon, I think, while the small people paint. Our busy morning finished with a trip to the craft shop and the cheapy shop – craft shop for some thread for me, a little embroidery project inspired by Meg, and the cheapy shop for some canvases for the children, one each, and I’ll going to let them loose with the same colours that the room is painted in, to mount on the one blank wall in the toyroom. Should be fun. Might try and squeeze in some sewing time to and get a bag done, so I can play with the new orange fabric sitting on my desk. So much creating to do, so little time. Thank goodness tomorrow is the weekend and I can get my craft on. Friday, you’ve been kind so far, let’s rock the daylights out of this afternoon!

4::20 ~ chocolate crackles

OCCASSION: holidays, baybee!

BRIEF & RATIONALE: the recipe was on the box of rice bubbles when we made mars bar slice, and the small people nagged, er, suggested I make them.

SOURCE: Rice bubble box.

EASE OF MAKING: 9/10

CHILD FRIENDLY? Yes (melted ingredients)

REALITY V COOKBOOK: 6/10 – all my copha mix seems to sink to the bottom, so they weren’t as chocolatey as they should have been.

TASTE: 9/10 – even allowing for lack of coating, I’m not a big fan of the texture of Copha.

FINAL VERDICT: Awesome party food/sometimes holiday food. What child doesn’t like chocolate crackles??

wordless wednesday

I am absolutely SLAMMED at the minute, so cheated with a Wordess Wednesday post. These are a set of four little lunch wraps I made as a custom order for a friend, for her two little boys. Two of each fabric, with the inside either blue PUL or brown, and a velcro closure.

P. A. R. T. Y.

Oh yes we will! There was a very special birthday around here over the weekend, one ending with a ZERO. A very wise woman once said, it seems worse to see it in print, so I won’t name the person or the number, except to say she’s a pretty awesome lady, and I love her to the moon and back. This birthday was, to us, a bit of a fresh start, leaving behind some rough times and shining a light ahead. And somehow, it fell to me to make the cake. I pondered a bit, and then settled on a plan. Pans were bought, and Wilton paste. 5 hours in the kitchen later, I’d burned through a dozen eggs, a litre of milk, and 1.5kg of flour, as the cake stack grew before me. Brilliant. Cake of Awesomeness is rocking. Stage two saw four blocks of chocolate and two cartons of cream converts into a rather large bowl of ganache, which set in the fridge as I attacked the butter once more and joined the layers with buttercream. Ganache applied, and then more buttercream, and colours. I took a deep breath, and started decorating. I had this grand vision of a beautiful flower-covered cake. Instead in looked like a clown on an acid trip drew a sunflower on top. *sigh*. Next on my to-do list – buy a cake nail and attend a cake decorating course.

Oh. And Bear tells me I didn’t do a very good job on the top layer. It doesn’t taste like anything except cake. Thanks baby.