Softies

I've been busy lately, it might not seem like it from my lack of blogging, but honestly I have!

I've been spending the last few weeks sitting on the floor in my loungeroom, watching Buffy and sewing, sewing, sewing! I love making softies, and I really love the idea of making characters from live action movies and tv in to adorable little calico creations.

Two of my great loves at the moment are Game of Thrones (which you can see from this ) and The Avengers. So of course, my latest softies paid hommage to those two great loves.

From Game of Thrones: Eddard (Ned) Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen

And from Avengers: Loki, Thor, Hulk, Iron Man

These are all available for purchase here at my new Etsy shop!

Cupcake Drive

As a follow up from my Pie Drive and upon request of friends, I recently had a Cupcake Drive.

In much the same style as the Pie Drive, four flavours of cupcakes were available at 6 for $12 or 12 for $20. We had:

 Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

 Wagon Wheel Cupcakes

 White Chocolate and Raspberry Cupcakes

Malteser Cupcakes

Though not as profitable as the Pie Drive, it was still a great week! If you would like to order any of these cakes, or others, please visit me at Flame Tree

Being Medieval - 2012 style

The Abbey Medieval Festival is an event I look forward to every year.

There's nothing quite like it. Sword fights, a castle, oil wrestling, gypsies, spiced mead served from a cauldron, venison pie, jousting, toffee apples, camels, cannons, hearty stew, ladies in amazing dresses, knights in shining armour, fire twirling, archery, dancing, stilt walkers, falcons, mulled wine and so much more!

Last year, Stacie and I made dresses, and couldn't face making new ones again this year. So we opted for some sweet headdresses instead. I was really happy with how my horned creation turned out. I got lots of comments, and we were asked for a photo at least 30 times! Fun!

I've become a bit crazed about archery ever since The Avengers came out. I'm intensely attracted to Hawkeye so when given the chance to have a go, I was pretty excited.

Until next year Medieval Festival.....

Pie Drive!

I left my job in May, did I ever mention that? I left because 4 years of office work was enough for me, my poor little creative brain couldn't handle days of looking at numbers and talking to customers about products I didn't care about. So I left, and have been absolutely loving my life of baking, drawing, sewing and reading ever since.

I don't however, love not having money. That's been a bit lame really. Luckily though, I have wonderful friends that love baked goods, and that were happy to support me. With this in mind, I created a facebook event called:

The Baking for Ballet Pie Drive

(so called as I needed money to continue with my beginner ballet adventures)

Four pies were available for purchase, and three kinds of macarons.

 Banana Split Pie - Banana, Chocolate and Peanut Butter

 Ruby Pie - Chocolate, Raspberry Mousse, Grenadine Jelly

Winter is Coming Pie - Chocolate, Black Cherry, Meringue

Comfort Pie - Pumpkin with Salted Caramel Pecan Glaze

 Spiced Cinnamon Macarons

 Red Velvet Macarons

Salted Caramel Macarons

Now, when I made this event, I was expecting maybe 6 orders from my closest friends because they felt like they needed to help me out. I certainly wasn't expecting to a total order count of 54 pies and 302 macarons! So began a week of frenzied pastry making, tears over failed macarons (and cheers over all the successful ones), dancing, singing, whisking, melting, egg separating, and salted caramel sneaking.

The two most uttered phrases from friends picking up their baked goods were 'The house smells AMAZING!' (which I loved) and 'Oh Lauren, you look sooooo tired' (which was true, but not as loved.)

The week also consisted of a lot of driving and trying to navigate city streets, as every night was open for deliveries to those friends living further away. I am so grateful to my friends Kirsty and Rachel for accompanying me on the deliveries, reminding me to collect money, keeping track of orders and to Rachel for driving around the city and southside on the final night because I was so exhausted I thought myself in danger of crashing the car.

Thanks to everyone who supported this crazy but really fun endeavour I had more than enough money to cover ballet for the rest of the year and be able to live like I had when I had a job.......for a while at least (more on that in my Cupcake Drive post)

I'm sure that I will hold another Pie Drive one day soon. It was a great experience and I did really enjoy seeing all of this on my table every afternoon.

If you, dear wanderer, live in the Brisbane area and find yourself wishing for something sweet, please visit my new page on Facebook - Flame Tree I'd love to bake for you!