Bake Bake Bake

This week has been incredibly bake-heavy. I was asked to make a few little Christmas treats for a church function, but as usual with food, I went a bit overboard. I decided we'd have Black Forest Parfaits, Christmas Tree Cupcakes, Pecan-Pretzel-Caramel Treats and Gingerbread Snowflakes.

Monday was making cherry jelly, dark chocolate mousse and vanilla macaron shells for the parfaits (note: baking at midday in QLD very close to summer is NOT conducive to perfect macarons) and then baking hordes of litle gingerbread snowflakes and once cool, dipping them each individually in royal icing. Time consuming, but v. delicious.



Tuesday night was for cupcake baking. Wednesday morning was for icing said cupcakes.



Wednesday evening, with one hour between getting home from work and getting to the church was for making a batch of delicious Pecan Pretzel snacks.We're going to call them Christmas Yertles, as they were made with the same recipe as Katherine used here but with a red or green M&M stuck on with chocolate to make them festive.



You'd think that after all that I'd use my Thursday off work for something not realted to baking, however, you would be wrong. As it was my wonderful friend Rachel's birthday the next day, I decided a cake should be made. Now, years ago Rach and I had glorious plans for a rainbow cake, but if I recall, it sort of ended up as a delicious but distinctly greyish mess. I also had some problems with a layer cake last year (note: it slid around everywhere and became a cakey puddle) and I never really got over it. This was my chance to fight again, regain my honour and emerge victorious. And I have to say, I was very happy with the result, if I was using battles as a metaphor, I was totally Legolas, coming out of the great war victorious and feeling sassy and stylish while I did it. To top it all off I coated this bad boy in icing made from melted down musk sticks (Rach ADORES musk sticks). It looked impressive (if not slightly off balance) when it was just pink and tall, but the suprise rainbow was pretty great, and it was a lot of fun to make.






P.S. I've rediscovered my love of the Hipstamatic App for my iPhone camera..could you tell?

For those left behind...

It feels like I never have time to draw anymore. This isn't true, as I am still getting some done, and compared to most, I'm drawing A LOT. But it still feels like I'll never have enough time. Time to finish commissions (sorry Jess, I'll get there eventually!)Time to finish my watercolour and ink series inspired by Panic! that I absolutely adore and yet never get round to. Time to draw new and wonderful things, or draw more mermaids because I now have a fabulous fish book. And in with all those projects, there's all the half finished, hardly started pictures, or other that only need the smallest amount of effort to be complete and yet they are forgotten or pushed aside.

This post is to have them on display in an effort to remind myself for when all that drawing time I'm hoping for becomes readily available....here's hoping









The cool thing about doing this was I actually found one that WAS finished! Ha!

Ye Olde (and totally awesome) Medieval Tournament

Last Saturday was the Abbey Museum Medieval Tournament and like last year, it was absolutely fantastic!

My lovely friend Stacie and I spent many many many hours making our dresses (at least three full days, I'm talking 9am-11pm sewing...with food breaks of course!). It made us think how much work it would have been in Medieval times....weaving your own fabric, hand stitching everything...gah! But I think our efforts paid off, we felt like very pretty ladies in waiting (next year we're going to try and climb the class system and be queens!)



It was a beautiful day, and everyone looked so good! Observe, the Tregenza clan of Cornwall.





Things I learnt?

1) Keeping up with my nieces is far more difficult than usual when wearing a 3kg dress



2) A pig on a spit takes almost all day to cook through, and makes me hungry



3) Medieval food is amazing



4) Dancing with big sleeves is a lot of fun

Oh if only dreams came true...

I had the most wonderful dream the other night....

As I stepped in to a local art gallery, I saw some beautiful white marble stairs leading down around a corner. I saw in wonder that they led down in to a pool of glowing aqua water, where people were just walking around, no need for air apparently. Just as I was about to walk in, some scientists pulled me over and asked if I would be a volunteer for the new wetsuit they'd created. I'm so glad Dream Me accepted, because the wetsuit turned out to be an amazing full body mermaid tail. I could breathe underwater like all the others but no walking for me, no sir, I was living the dream (inside a dream - oooo Inception!)

I woke up needing to draw it. Unfortunately I didn't spend much time on it, but I wanted to show you anyway. And though the hair and eye colour match my own, the similiarities really end there...call it artistic license...or maybe Dream Me really did have that tiny a waist.



Oh and that green light to the right? That was the room where the green air was able to be swum in and Emmy Cicierega showed me these little silver globs that inflated in to giant metallic pillows on impact with the wall.

For Amy...

The last picture of my commission for Alicia, hooray! What fun I've had with all of these! Horses are most definitely not my forte, thusi left them till last....I like this little green foal more than Rainbow Horse I think....

Did someone say sparkles?

My second last picture for Alicia's daughters, this one if for Amy. I don't really like it...but I imagine a little girl will enjoy it.

For Nikki...

For her youngest daughter, Alicia requested a flower, and let me know that the room was black and gold. I went on a bit of a glow overload with all of Nikki's pictures, this one is no exception. The three pictures will be framed separately but displayed as seen here.



When I thought of 'glowing flower' I immediately thought of Tangled, and then had a minor freak out that everyone would think I'd just copied it. So even though a lily (the flower they used in Tangled) is my favourite and would have been my choice, I made a conscious effort to not use one, and instead used inspiration from the iris, tulip and calla lily. I'm actually happy with how it came out!