this moment – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. – soulemama
(feel free to add a link to your own ‘this moment’ in the comment section below)
Not long now until Easter is here………
I’ve come accross some lovely and pretty Easter ideas lately, thought I would share – to see the links of the below photos for instructions and more of my ‘pins’ click over there on the right xx:
this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. – soulemama
(feel free to add a link to your own ‘this moment’ in the comment section below)
I have been working on setting up another blog for a couple of months now and it’s (almost) finished so thought I would share with you my experiences and a few photos from my travels.
Apart from European holidays, neither my husband (then ‘boyfriend’) or I had seen much of the World so in 2007 we went on a fantastic trip, we stopped off first in Hong Kong, then flew to Thailand where we spent a couple of months travelling through, then through Malaysia and to Singapore. We then flew on to Australia and spent 6 months there before flying to New Zealand where we hired out a campervan as our temporary ‘home’. We then visited Fiji, Hawaii and several stops accross the USA before heading back to the UK in March 2008. Since then we have visited Brussels, Prague, Rome, Marseille, Scotland, and we spent our fantastic honeymoon in Japan.
We both love to travel and I really hope to be able to visit Japan again one day – I adore the country, the culture, the language, the food, the history…..everything about the place! Also on the top of my list is Russia, China, Mongolia, Kenya, Norway and Canada……hopefully one day a couple of those destination dreams my become wonderful memories!
I’ll hopefully finish off updating thost other places very soon, but for now feel free to head over to Bedbugs and Beaches (there will be a link up there at the top of the page too)
This is a great quick and easy meal to prepare in the morning ready for popping in the oven 20 mins before needed. It’s got all that’s needed for a healthy meal for toddlers, children and adults and it’s delicioulsy tasty too!
Ingredients:
1 x small cauliflower, chopped into florets, lightly boiled or steamed
Any kind of pasta (I used approx 180g pennoni rigate), pre-cooked and set aside
1/2 pack any type bacon
1 x cup grated cheese
1 x large teaspoon wholegrain mustard
seasoning
basic white sauce (I would put weights though I never weigh the ingredients, milk, butter and flour are required though I’m sure a shop-bought white sauce would do the trick)
Method
Chop up the bacon and fry in some butter until crispy. Add in the pre-cooked cauliflower and pasta and stir before adding to a dish:
To your basic white sauce add the seasoning, mustard and cheese (saving some cheese for the topping) and stir together. 20 mins before the meal is required, pour the sauce over the pasta, sprinkle with cheese and bake in the oven at approx 200C until piping hot through and cheese has turned golden on top.
Serve with fresh salad or greens.
Hooray – it’s giveaway time again!
This week I’d like to introduce you to Countess Ablaze – the adorable Etsy shop stocking tons of beautifully hand-dyed yarns in an array of colours. There is a huge selection in the store, which is based in Manchester, UK and the lovely Lynsey has kindly offered one lucky winner the chance to choose any skein from her store as a fantastic prize!
I am the lucky owner of some of the iron oxide lace yarn:
And I intend to knit a scarf with it, I will let you know how my progress is going with that soon!
Here are some of the other beautiful yarns currently available in her store:
For yoru chance to win,
Either:
(or do all 3 for 3 chances to win!)
The winner will be drawn on 18th March – good luck everyone! xx
And for the winner of the Chunky Bunting giveaway I have used random.org to select a winner………………..
Congratulations Carrie.W!!
(PS. I have been flagging a bit on the creative front this week – I have just been knitting squares for the Aids orphans in South Africa but head over to 1st Unique Gifts to catch up on what the others are doing!) x
Ooops, I’ve been a bit slow at sharing my husband’s Birthday pictures with you, his Birthday was on 24th February so it was a while ago!
I made him a chocolate cake with chocolate icing – I used the classic chocolate cake recipe from the Be-Ro book though instead of putting the mixture in 2 x sandwich tins I added it to a smaller cake tin and left it in the oven a bit longer but not so long that it was dry, the result was a deliciously moist cake which was even better served warm with double cream! (lets avoid counting calories for this one!)
We went out for a lovely lunch together and my husband enjoyed slow cooked pork belly on a wholegrain mustard mash which her enjoyed a lot. Hope you had a lovely day gorgeous husband x
this moment – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. – soulemama
(feel free to add a link to your own ‘this moment’ in the comment section below) 
I stumbled accross this vintage Triang highchair on ebay and couldn’t pass it by without putting a bid on it – I won it for just £5 (despite it being an hours’ round trip to collect it!). I really like the colour it was but it was looking a bit dull and tired, plus there was a fair amount of rust on it and our move to Australia requires all rust to be cleaned/covered so I thought it best to try and restore it.
I can’t say it’s been an easy task – I tried some Nitro Mors. Yucky, horrid, and awful to the environment, it didn’t seem to do much apart from leave cloggy mucky lumps behind. Luckily, my very dear friend managed to provide me with a Black & Decker Mouse. Oh it was fab, that and a small amount of elbow grease was all it took to get it in a state ready for spraying. I decided to spray it as there are so many small spindles and areas I just didn’t think that my painting skills would leave a very good outcome.
Anyway, here it is after it’s first coat of pink spray paint:
I’m pleased with the final result, it’s not perfect but it will do for now until it is shipped accross to Australia (we needed to sort out the rust on it before the shippers pack everything up hence the need for doing it up now) I like the shade of pink that it is so I may keep it that colour for good.
Here’s my first attempt at a bit of lace – I got the pattern from ravelry here and it’s a really great first pattern, I have got this far but decided that I don’t think that the yarn is right for this pattern so I won’t be doing anymore of this one but thought I’d show you my first lace attempt anyway!
I have been reading these beautiful baking books, I’ve been trying to find a lovely cake recipe for my daughter’s second Birthday at the end of the month. There are some beautiful cakes in these books – even some that look exactly like Russian Dolls! I think I have settled on a cake that I found on Pinterest, I’ll let you know if it worked out at the end of the month!
Hope you’re all having a lovely week xxx
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