I Need To Get My Meal Planning Mojo Back!

Linking today with At Home With Mrs M for Meal Planning Monday and I'm An Organising Junkie for Menu Plan Monday.

Meal planning has just gone by the wayside for the last month or so, and I can really tell the difference! Both in my attitude toward cooking (couldn't be bothered!) and in our grocery spending. I shouldn't let Christmas and the holidays put me out of routine, but they always seem to. So it is time to get organised again!

I had a browse through the library cookbook shelves and brought home these lovely books.

I love Julie Goodwin. She was the winner of the first Australian series of Masterchef, before it went all pretentious. Sorry, just my opinion, but I don't watch Masterchef any more. I liked the first series - Julie is a mum like me, and won Masterchef with recipes that she cooks at home. Now it seems to have become more staged, with ridiculously fiddly recipes that would be ridiculously expensive to cook.
Julie's recipes are great cook at home recipes - no half page long lists of ingredients or complicated techniques.

So I will be cooking from these books this week.

Monday
Vegetable curry puffs with stir fried greens and honey carrots
Jelly and ice cream (bit of a kid's dessert, but it is a HOT day today!)

Tuesday
Zucchini slice with potato wedges and salad
Pineapple upside down cake

Wednesday
Vietnamese chicken salad
Rhubarb and apple pie

Thursday
Spicy beef burritos
Mango parfait (love parfait - sounds so posh but really just layers of whatever I feel like. This one will probably be fresh mango, coconut yoghurt and crushed gingernut biscuits).

Friday
Chicken parmigiana with sweet potato wedges, cheat's tabouleh (so-called as it uses couscous instead of bulghur) and coleslaw
Walnut and pear gingerbread cake

Saturday
Aussie burgers and chips
Custard tart

Sunday
Egg and bacon pies and green salad
Fruit salad and ice cream

Choc chip cookies - already made these this morning as it is a hot day today - 38 degrees C (100.4 F)
Lemon slice
Finger buns
Cherry Ripe brownies
Fig bars
Hazelnut biscuits

Let's see if I can get back into the swing of things this week!
I have also realised that I need to keep better records of the meals I cook and the family's reaction to them. For example, when I try a new recipe and everyone raves about it, I need to make note of that. I always think I will remember, but I never do! I have just been using these blog posts as a record, but I think I will go back to my old-fashioned handwritten ones as well, so I can make notes on them. How do you keep track of your successes (and failures!)?

Hopefully!

Opinions and Suggestions Please!

As I am planning (fingers crossed!) on opening my Facebook 'shop' on 1st February, I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions.

This will be my Facebook header and profile picture.

This is my yarn label.

And these are the 'spiels' I plan on posting on Facebook pre-opening.

So this one I will post about 10 days before opening:

 

 Welcome to Tiny Toadstool Cottage!

 

I am very excited to be introducing my new Facebook enterprise and I hope you will stop by often for a browse.

I have always loved crafting of all sorts, particularly wool crafts. I find it particularly important to use natural materials in my crafting – wool, alpaca, silk, bamboo, cotton, wood.

 I will be offering numerous items here, with the main focus being on my hand dyed yarn. Other goodies will include hand dyed playsilks, hand knitted clothing, homewares and toys, felted playmates, toys and clothing, hand sewn clothing and toys and whatever other crafty goodness I decide to make. I have so many ideas, my head is spinning! Suggestions are always welcome.

 

Have a peek at the photos to see some of the goodies that will be hitting the shop soon!

Please check back here for details of Tiny Toadstool Cottage’s opening!

 

And I would love to have you visit my blog as well – you may see some sneak peeks of works in progress!

www.tinytoadstoolcottage.blogspot.com.au

 

 

 

And this I will post a week before opening.


We are getting close to my opening day of 1^st February 2016. Excited, but nervous!

 Today I would like to go through the operation of the shop.

Items will be offered for sale in what I am calling ‘Parades’. For example, the first parade will be ‘A Parade of Hand-Dyed Yarn’.

Parades will be offered for sale every week on Wednesday evenings, beginning at 8pm AEST.  The sale album will be posted for preview from Monday morning, so you should have plenty of time to view and choose your favourites!

 

Every fortnight, the parade will be hand-dyed yarn, following a particular theme.

 

Every alternate fortnight, the parade will be some other fun item, such as hand knitted or hand sewn clothing, toys, etc. Some ideas that I already have in mind are:

A Parade of Gnomes

A Parade of Hand-Dyed Playsilks

A Parade of Hand-Knitted Baby Jackets / Bootees / Hats

A Parade of Knitted Play Food
A Parade of Tea Cosies
A Parade of Longies

 Suggestions welcome!

 

So the first parade will be previewing from the morning of Monday 1^st February, with the sale opening on Wednesday 3^rd February at 8pm AEST.

 
Hope to see you there!

Sorry - lots of reading there! For anyone who has managed to make it through to the end, what do you think? Does it all make sense? Sound OK? I would so love any feedback you have to offer.
Thanks so much in advance!

My absolute dream would be to see people stashing my yarn on Ravelry - wouldn't that be so cool?!

Yarn Along - Not Really Reading

Joining today with Ginny for Yarn Along.

I am cheating a bit today and sharing a DVD I watched, rather than some reading. I have been doing more DVD viewing than reading at the moment as I knit, dye and skein yarn furiously in preparation for the opening of my little shop on 1st February.

 

 

 

The Age of Adaline is one of those movies that hubby fell asleep in the first few minutes, but I loved! Graceful, elegant, well-spoken characters, just divine.

 

Harrison Ford was in the movie and they also had flashbacks to him as a younger man. When I first saw the younger version, I was certain the man had to be related to Harrison Ford - he even has the same sideways smile! But after watching the bonus features, I found he is an Australian actor who they found doing Harrison Ford impersonations on Youtube. It is uncanny how much he resembles Harrison Ford.

 

And the costumes - oh my! As I love vintage, the costumes were wonderful to see. Many of them were actual vintage clothing of the era, borrowed from private collections. I just love to see a movie where everyone is so well-dressed.

 

It was a delight from start to finish. Blake Lively was just gorgeous. Well worth watching.

 

 

This is one of the knitting projects I am currently working on. It is a knitted monster from the wonderful Rebecca Danger. I am planning on turning it into a rattle toy, I think.

 

And does anyone recognise that yarn? Some may remember it as the ugly yarn from 2012. I had some left and ugly yarn would be the perfect yarn to make a monster! It is hard to see but the ugly yarn has little specks of lime green in it, so I dyed some lime green to make the ears and eye patch. I actually like the ugly yarn so much now that I am planning an ugly yarn dyeing session! Watch this space! I have so many ideas for yarn collections - my head is spinning!

 

 

Some of my dyeing to date. The top one is a sock yarn; the bottom two are alpaca, but it is hard to see the more subtle colours on the computer.

I will keep you posted with my progress.

 

 

 

 



While You Were Away

I am currently sorting through and selling a lot of books. I am finally parting with the majority of my homeschool books and I am just happy that with Facebook there is a way to sell them and know they are going to another family to help in their homeschool journey.
I also have many of my grandfather's books. My grandfather was a travelling book salesman for Oxford University Press after the war and spent lots of time away from home, travelling the country via train to show his books.

This isn't my grandfather - it is what one of the country train stations would have looked like.

He gradually worked his way up at Oxford until, by his retirement, he was in top management. As such, he had a lot of books at his death and lots came to me, as the resident book lover in the family. When I was a child, I loved nothing better than to visit Pa's library. And since then I have always wished for a dedicated room of my own for a library.
But sadly, I cannot keep all the books (I wish I could!) My most treasured would have to be a signed first edition of Patrick White's The Tree of Man, with letters from Patrick White to my grandfather. But there are so many amazing treasures. My grandfather would always file any letters from an author pertaining to their book inside the front cover of the book itself. So I have found letters from lots of famous people. They are all staying with me, in their original book.

But this is the booklet I wanted to show you today.

My grandfather was a medical officer in WWII, serving in Singapore. As such, he was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942 and became a POW at Changi for the duration of the war. When he returned home in 1946 (after spending time recuperating in Burma), there were so many general knowledge things that the returned men just did not know about. So they were all issued with this little booklet. It contains sections like politics, general news items, show business, the war itself (as they heard nothing about the progress of the war while prisoners), the home front, etc.

I suppose until I found this little booklet, I hadn't thought about all the information at home they would have missed out on. It would have been like coming back to a strange new world, with people talking about all sorts of unknown topics. My uncle was a baby when Pa left for the war and in school when he returned. I cannot imagine missing all those years of your child's life.

I am so interested in the history of the World Wars and hope that we will never forget the sacrifice made by so many.

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and blessed New Year!

 

 

As for resolutions/plans for 2016, I will post some of my ideas in a few days.

 



Found a vintage toadstool for New Year!