Kitchen creativity

Plenty left over for lunch tomorrow!

Okay, so my future does not belong in food photography.  But I was pleased with the way this hearty winter stew turned out, so I thought I'd share how I did it.

1 medium onion, chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
4 carrots, peeled and chopped however you prefer them (we like rounds)
2 chicken breasts, chopped roughly
2 mini chorizos, chopped in rounds
1 tin butter beans
1 tin chick peas
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
1 portion of chicken stock made up with enough water to cover
also would have been nice with some chilli flakes thrown in, and/or fresh ground pepper - the chorizo and stock is salty enough

Serves 4, without extra veg, or stretches to 6 with extra greens on the side - possibly further if you do potatoes or chunky bread.  I think spicy wedges would go nicely with this.

Fry off your garlic and onion, and chuck in the carrots, along with the spices.  Then add the chicken and chorizo and give it a good fry - you can do this in a separate pan and drain off the excess fat, which is what I would have done if I wasn't in a hurry at 7am this morning.  Once the meat is sealed, the stock can go in, and lastly add your tinned veg.  If you like tinned tomatoes, you can have them in it, too, or some red wine would be nice and wintry too, but it is lovely just in the stock.  Give it about an hour to an hour and a half on 180 degrees C, or gas mark 4 or 5 ish.

Enjoy!

Front page!

So I curated another Etsy Europe front page.  I would be delighted to own any of these items, but I particular love the handmade notebook, the fake tattoos and the silver book.  Lovely!

I love the constellation leggings, too, but would also need someone to buy me the pins to go with them...

Upcycling hits the mainstream

A cardboard hopper of Johnson's baby wipes caught my eye as I rushed out of my local Asda the other day - the magic word 'upcycling' caught my eye! Find out more on packagingnews.co.uk (oh yes!) and find out how they are reusing their packets before they hit the rubbish bin.

Ella's Kitchen and Kenco coffee are also running similar schemes, which involve consumers returning the packaging to the manufacturer after use. Of course this involves expense and further resources, and that's before you get started on the remanufacturing process. I would love if these companies could look more closely into biodegradable or compostable packaging (like our preferred tea bag brand, it's great to throw the empty packaging onto the compost heap when we're finished with it). There are only so many wipe clean reusable shoppers that you can get through in a lifetime, and if the brand is plastered all over it, then it's not really for me. But it's a step in the right direction, and it just goes to show, there are so many more things out there that you can get an extra use out of before it hits the rubbish bin.

On your marks, get set, knit!

Wow, in just over 2 months' time it'll be the closing date for this years Big Knit! UK knitting magazine, Knit Today, has put its usual contributors to work on some fun new patterns for tiny bottle toppers. Including... Pss Beatrice's hat from the first of this year's Royal Weddings. Brilliant!

Time to get knitting - see Innocent's website for the closing date and where to send your completed hats.

Done and done

Just in time for the new arrival, the blanket is done and ready to pop in the post. Now all I hope is that the postman knocking doesn't interrupt any precious moments of sleep! My new nephew arrived last night, just as I'd opened the last bottle of champagne from our wedding, perfect timing!

Nearly there...

The blanket I'm working on for my new nephew (due any day) is almost there...

When life hands you lemons...

A new-ish treasury

A day in the life

It's that time again, Claire has called us to action to produce another Day in the Life post. I took part once before, last February. Catch up with other contributors, Catherine, Marceline and Laura (amongst many others, it's even happening over in Brooklyn) and take part if you like!

3.55am Wake up to hear the battery low alert in the baby monitor. Plug it back in and amble dangerously back to bed. I don't really do half asleep.

6.12am Wake up again, this time it's the baby asking me to nip upstairs and get her. In the universal language of pre-speech infants. Which is loud and irritating so I drag myself out of bed in a bid to make it stop. We settle in bed and I spend the next half an hour keeping her away from my glasses, my iPod, my book and everything else that is on my bedside table.

6.42am I am relieved from crawl-preventing duties by my husband and nip downstairs to make coffee and milk. We have our drinks in bed while we watch all the latest from the Island of Sodor, where the trains are slightly more efficient than Scotrail and make it to their final destination without the use of a bus replacement service. Which was yesterday's special adventure.

7.52am I am showered, breakfasted and dressed in the lovely giraffe t-shirt I bought in Portland, OR on honeymoon (it still fits! it still kind of fits!), by coincidence, Phil has dressed Amelia in her giraffe t-shirt, and we head off to the childminder's farm, where Amelia is spending the day in preparation for my return to work next month.

8.10am I get the weekly shop in at our local supermarket. Included is a big box of Lemsips as me and the husband continue to shake off bad colds. In the middle of summer. I also buy six packs of Stoats porridge bars as I really admire the guy who set the company up in Edinburgh around the time I was graduating and moving on to big retail, and they are reduced to 49p for five flapjacks, with a use by date of September. Result! Interesting fact: we were going to have Stoats bars as our wedding favours if we hadn't found The Other Mousie to make pirate kitties for us instead!

8.40am Unpack the shopping, and a few scooped up random items from the car - including a handknitted baby blanket, and a toy owl I made on Saturday night. Tidy the living room, including putting away random bits of owl for future owl making purposes.

9.05am Race upstairs to get some details on an eBay item I'm selling that finishes in ten minutes, for a last minute question-asker. Race back downstairs to post the details on the listing, just in the nick of time. It is a sample size Clinique lip gloss and it netted me £1.74, from a person with 'giraffe' in their user name. Today is too giraffey by far and it's only just gone 9am.

9.20am I package up 10 items I've sold over the course of the weekend and fill out a proof of posting form. So far my day is incredibly exciting, so I go for a cup of tea and a sit down. I'm knitting a baby blanket for my sister with Rowan Calmer yarn, the same kind of yarn used in the blanket I made for Amelia last year. My new nephew is due to arrive any day so I'm not entirely sure why I started this yesterday and not six months ago but hey ho. It's a big departure for me with bright bold boyish colours, and I enjoy working on the first few stripes as the pattern unfolds.

11am I realise the time and consider leaving the couch. I pick up my laptop and impulse buy two sets of vintage fabric remnants from Etsy seller Rope, that I was eyeing up on Sunday. I make a treasury based around zines and coffee, and wish I could afford to buy all the zines on this list.

11.45am I realise the time and run upstairs to my craft room to finish off the last zine in the Answers on a Postcard series. I format the pages into PDFs and zap them downstairs for my husband to print off on the supercomputer. My printer upstairs needs new ink and I keep forgetting to pick some up.

12.47pm Time to make lunch and maybe dose up on another Lemsip. We're having chicken pasties with mash and gravy. Yum! After we've eaten I tidy up the kitchen and wait for my New York friend Sabrina to phone for a catch up.

2pm I settle down for a bit more knitting and a watch of the newish HBO series Treme. I'm up to the last episode having watched the whole first season in the last four days. It's a great programme and I definitely recommend it. Don't wikipedia it to find out more (like I foolishly did, when trying to check whether the location filming for Davis' hotel job was in a hotel I'd stayed in on one of my few weekend trips to NOLA - later on in the series the same hotel is used again and the front door and signage is shown, and yes it was!), there's a terrible spoiler that kind of ruined part of the series for me. One of my favourite actors (Steve Zahn - one of the cast in my favourite film of all time) is in it, and what's more, he sings! There's a great ensemble cast and separate storylines which occasionally interlink. And there is so much wonderful music in it, you can watch it while you work on a craft project and still get loads of enjoyment from it. If you've been to New Orleans, keep your eyes peeled for great location filming, like Preservation Hall, Cafe du Monde, Pat O'Briens, all the usual places.

3.30pm I start to think about finishing up what I need to do, like collect in the recycling bin (today is collection day and our bin is halfway up the street where the council workers left it), check my email for any more orders to send out, quickly write a new home card (from Dude and Chick) for my sister and her family, who are moving house this week as well as anticipating a new arrival any minute!

5pm and I'm home with the baby. We play in the living room for a while before thinking about dinner. Amelia has already had something at her childminder's house, but me and Phil are having her favourite, asparagus, with our dinner, so she joins us at the highchair with a few pieces of asparagus while we have an early-ish dinner at 6.30pm.

9pm and a bit more knitting later, I catch twenty minutes of a TV documentary about Orthodox Jewish people in my home city, Salford. The accents make me feel a bit homesick and I think about going to bed. Just one more stripe of the blanket before I go up with a night-time bottle for Amelia and hope for everyone to have a full night in their own beds.

Disclaimer: I cheated and wrote about Monday because Tuesday my cold turned into the flu and I thought that 10am napped, 11am drank lemsip, 12noon napped through lunch, 2pm more lemsip and a scone because I couldn't face cooking 4pm napped etc was a bit dull

Card making

Can you believe my little girl is nearly a year old? I'm in the middle of making a TV birthday card for her in enough time to send in to Milkshake for her birthday. We're big fans of the sea side at the moment, and of course, Peppa Pig (thank you BT Vision for hour long back-to-back shows without ads, you are cheaper than employing a cleaner) and here she is making sandcastles with her little brother George.

The obligatory photo of the birthday girl will be hiding under the sunshine!

PIF of the week

This week you can get my TP in the park brooch for just the cost of shipping and my Etsy listing fee. My day job colleague Emily helped me come up with this idea to celebrate Music Festival Season (because you can never have too much loo roll at a festival), and as this year's season is in full flow, this is my gift to you!

Buy it now in the Girl Industries Etsy shop.

Handstitching on the TV

I was banned by my parents from watching TV channels with adverts when I was little and I'm rebelling by allowing Amelia to watch this show on Channel 5. It's called Hana's Helpline and it's about animals in Wales with problems, they phone a duck called Hana and she sorts them out, with help from Owen the Owl and Beti the bat. Like all the best kid's TV, it's stop motion but this time made with felt puppets, which are exceptionally cute and the attention to detail is fantastic - my favourites are Owen the Owl and Ernie the Eagle! It doesn't look like it, but these are photos I took directly of our TV during the programme - I'm pretty impressed and just a little smug that I didn't even have to pay for it - it was a free gift last summer in place of my usual mobile phone upgrade - the first time I've ever owned a TV larger than a portable and our first flat screen, too. Very swish for us!

Strange coincidences

So I was getting ready to send out the latest zines from the Answers on a Postcard project to one of my subscribers, as well as the winnings from my recent Haunt contest and I was looking for a postcard to write a little note on.

Would you believe that the first one that came to hand was one from the same area where Haunt is based? I visited the Catskills in 2000 on the most amazing rickety old Adirondack Trailways bus out of Port Authority with my room-mate Sophie for a fun weekend out in the wilds.

Photo by: http://www.seaoats.etsy.com/

Also, I was randomly browsing Etsy and this pencil case by seaoats leapt out at me from someone in my Circle's favourites list... The photo the designer has used to make the screen print for the fabric shows the skyline of Exchange Place, a swift glance to the left from where I used to live, and a very familiar sight from days when I would take the World Trade Center ferry in to work. I tried to find out if the ferry still runs (it doesn't) and this led me to the PATH website, and their photographic archives, which are available for sale. I love this shot from 1912, the railroad has only added a handful of stations in the last 99 years.

And now I feel all homesick for NJ, so I put together this treasury to help me wallow in it then feel better. Enjoy!

Next time, I may bore you with places I have lived in Edinburgh... or Paris maybe.

Quilting for beginners

I had a little go at making a quilt today! My niece received a baby doll for her 3rd birthday, along with cot, pram, all the good stuff, but I got a call to say that her dolly was getting cold at night because she only had a tea towel to use in her bed. Well that wouldn't do at all, would it?

I grabbed a couple of vintage pillowcases from my stash (the furry sort of deep-piled cotton ones, what's that stuff called again? Is it flannelette? That doesn't even look like a word, does it?) and set to work. Luckily my sewing machine had just been fixed by Jen at The Life Craft, so I was all ready to go. I had a little bit of a fleece blanket left over from making a blackout blind/wall hanging so that went in the middle of one of the pillowcases, which I trimmed to tea towel size and turned inside out to sew up all the edges, leaving a gap to turn it back right side out again and closed up by top stitching all around. I then did a few lines of top stitching to keep the fleece in place, giving a very amateurish (but just fine for dollies) quilt style look. I then made a pillow out of a bit of old sheet, stuffed it with toy stuffing, sewed it up and made a matching envelope-style pillow case. The whole thing took me about two hours and was the most fun I've had with my sewing machine in ages! Not a swear word was uttered, something of a miracle.

Here's A's toy elephant testing it out! I have a feeling there will be many more photos of this kind to come and that makes me very happy indeed.

Handmade is best

Oh sad face.

But wait, here's Monkey.

Do you like Monkey?

My Monkey.

Monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey!

Monkey monkey.

Monkey.

Yeah, definitely bedtime now.

Happy Birthday to me!

It was my birthday on Tuesday, and I got some great presents, which goes some way to making up for being the ripe old age of 34.

Here's a snapshot of a few of them, one of which was requested (the Kaffe Fassett book, for inspiration to go as offroad as possible with colour combinations!), but the rest were lovely surprises.

There's another big present in my craft room but I haven't done a photo yet because it's still depressingly untidy. I'll get there...

Back in Business

Wow, where did that month go? I've been busy getting my flat in Glasgow ready to go on the market, and of course, most days are taken up with counting blocks, supervising the jumperoo and ensuring that all the scissors are out of reach. Why does crafting have to involve so many pointy and/or sharp implements?

But I recently made my first sale on Etsy in ages, so that means I'm very much back on track to start making and participating in all things crafty once again. At the moment everything in the shop is in stock and ready to ship, because I've been working on a huge custom order for my good friend Julie, who is getting married in just a few weeks.

Next on the slate is to finally finish off the series of craft zines that I've been working on for ooh, nearly two years now. If I've asked you for answers and you haven't had time to get back to me yet, now is the time to do it! I'm hoping to pull all the remaining issues together between now and the end of May, so I would love your input. If you haven't taken part and want a questions list, hit me up at katy girlindustries.com right now and get involved. There's room for everyone!

Reindeer food

I read about this nifty little trick on a parenting website and thought it was worth sharing here. My niece is coming up for three years old and I thought she might appreciate it!

Don't tell the little ones, but it's just a box with some cat biscuits in the bottom! I've also heard of people doing this with oats mixed with glitter, but I thought my sister might have a bit of explaining to do once that didn't disappear from her tiny front garden overnight...

Not your typical snowy scene...

I had to grab my camera while we were snowed in last week to show you photos from our street, while it was unusually quiet in the middle of the day.

Look a little closer...

The rabbits usually live in the field next to the cooperage (those pointy-roofed sheds in the background, whiskey fans!), and that cat is the hardiest domestic animal I've ever known - at the time of taking this photo it was minus 11 degrees C. Plus it's tried to eat my ginger cat twice in the six months since we moved in!

Most Haunted

So here in detail are some of the products I've splurged on over the last couple of years at Haunt. I was introduced to Haunt when Erin was Etsy's featured seller for a weekend. Being a bit of a fan of seller interviews anyway (have I mentioned my Answers on a Postcard zine...?), I'm always a bit of a sucker for the products associated with the featured seller interview, especially when Etsy focuses on established rather than new sellers.

It seems as though Erin's friendly and down to earth interview chimed with many Etsy shoppers, not to mention her beautifully presented products with intriguing descriptions, and sales went through the roof. Literally. In the space of a weekend, Erin made something like 3000 sales. This is not an exaggeration. Enhancing the luxury problem at hand, I joined in and made my first purchase - it was a biggie! In late 2008, I decided to stock up the hunting lodge I had rented for my hen weekend with Haunt products. With 3 bathrooms and 12 guests, I splurged on 3 soaps (Raspberry Honey, Corsair and Pan), 3 sugar scrubs (Mintleaf & mocha, Spiceberry and Marzipan & Shortbread) and 3 glossing oil sprays (Bourbon Vanilla, Empire and Orange Blossom) - I also asked Erin for sample sizes of 12 different soaps for my friends' goodie bags - these included Bittersweet, Pumpkin Lavender and Turkish Cocoa.

I like to break down the three different types of scent that Haunt produces into three categories, Fruit-y, Cake-y and Haunt-y. The fruity scents, like Orange Blossom, The Old Cider Mill and Spiceberry are clean yet warm fragrances, with a zesty but warm feel. The cakey type ones you feel like you could eat then and there in the shower, especially the ones with a pumpkin flavour to them. I like to keep a tupperware with a bar of Pumpkin Lavender soap in my overnight bag for work trips, as it's such a warm, comforting and homely scent. I am also very impressed with the Coffee Fiend flavour haunt scrub I have on the go at the moment, it's the next best thing to having an actual coffee in there to help me wake up.

The fragrances that I'd describe as Haunty like Corsair, Pan and the newer Burying Tree and Witch-Wife are a really unusual blend of botanicals that are somewhat indescribeable - in a good way! They're so different to anything else I've used in the past, and can sometimes take a little getting used to. For ages I really wasn't sure about the sample of Sword and Lion as a fragrance, but now I'm tempted to buy some glossing oil in this scent if it's available in the next Haunt sale.

Now I realise I've spent a lot of time talking about fragrances and how good these products smell and make you feel, but I've said nothing about how well they treat your skin! The soaps are amazing, they are lovely and chunky and wash down nicely, holding their shape and never cracking or drying out. And of course they do the same to your skin, most of the time I don't need to moisturise after using them. The sugar scrubs are a revelation, I'd never tried one before and the mix of sugar with natural oils does wonders for any rough patches you might have - and with the weather we're having in Scotland at the moment (-19 C yesterday at my house!), they are sooo handy. I don't tend to use moisturiser as it just sits on my skin and takes up time I don't have in the mornings, but the dry oil sprays sink straight in, soften my skin without making it feel greasy (unlike moisturising lotions). I don't use lip balms but have bought Haunt Lust lip balms in the past for friends and my husband, who suffers from dry lips and has found it works better than reliable high street names. There are more new products in the latest Haunt line which I can't wait to try out, if they're anywhere near as good as my old favourites!

Speaking of which, the next Haunt sale starts this evening! Previews of new products in brand new packaging will be up on the new Big Cartel Haunt shop from 9pm UK time, and the shop will open at 2am our time. It's your perfect opportunity to pick up a little present for yourself, or to add to your Christmas gifts. If you're catching up with me later and you've missed out this time, hop over to Erin's blog to find out about future sales. They are few and far between, and I promise you, all the fuss is worth it!

Gift wrapping hints and tips - recycled!

Can you believe it's been a year since I was on TV showing how to decorate your parcels the upcycled way? Here's a timely reminder of my ten top tips, originally published on the Glasgow Craft Mafia blog last year, with my apologies for the dark photos:


1) Do your maths!

If you measure the longest side of your parcel, you need seven times this measurement in ribbon to create that wrapped finish – measuring before you start means you only cut off what you need each time.

2) Use your odds and ends

You can dress a plain box with that annoying last strip of paper from the roll that otherwise would go straight into the recycling. Or use your odds and ends, a couple of dabs of glue and some plain card to make a co-ordinating gift tag.

3) Think outside the box

Present too difficult/fiddly/awkward a shape to wrap? Stick it in a bag, pop a glittery bow on top, job done. Life’s too short to wrestle sticky tape.

4) Raid your tree

A teeny little bauble, felt stocking or even a handknit ornament look cute and pretty on top of your packages. And the recipient can pop them on their own tree, instead of in the bin, once the presents are all opened on Christmas morning. Or how about using mini tinsel instead of ribbon?




5) If you aren’t artistic – cheat!

There’s no shame in not being able to draw – I was kicked out of art classes at school and still managed to make a bit of a career of it! My top tip for Christmassy themed tags is to use Christmas cookie cutters as a template – just draw the outline onto a sheet of double-sided card (plain one side, patterned the other), cut out, punch a hole and you’re away.

6) You don’t need to buy fancy materials

See those cookie cutter tags I just mentioned – you don’t even need to buy the card. Use pretty packaging from toiletries or chocolates, pick up some vintage packaging from eBay, or do what we all did when we were little, use last years Christmas cards!

7) Shop from your sewing box

Great alternatives to ribbon can be found in your sewing box, or your local haberdashers. Lace trim, embroidery thread, bakers twine, even fancy yarn can make a cost-effective and visually interesting alternative to expensive glossy ribbon.

8) Use what you have

As well as re-purposing or upcycling other materials, don’t forget all those bits and pieces you have stashed away from last year. A fresh glance might inspire you to add a different type of ribbon, trim down your tags into another shape, or pop your gifts straight into the kids’ stockings, to cut down on the sheer amount of waste Christmas time can generate.

9) Do away with gift tags

You can pick up loads of letter stickers and other embellishments from shops which specialize in scrapbooking, card making or journaling. Think about adding the gift recipient name to the side of your package in stickers, or you can even cut letters out of the newspaper and stick them to the side of your gift, ransom note stylee. This is especially good for Secret Santa presents, where no-one needs to know who it’s from!

10) Have fun

Get together with friends for a gift wrapping party – a couple of glasses of something merry, a cheesy Christmas soundtrack, enough scissors and tape to go around and all your crafty ideas for making your presents stand out should make for a very festive evening. Pooling your resources will help your supplies (and your money) go a lot further!

Hop on over to my Flickr for more inspiration and lots of lovely brown parcel paper! It seems I've found a kindred spirit in a guest post over on Lupin's Bugs and Fishes blog - brown paper, check! Raid the Christmas tree, check! Use your crafting supplies, check! Good to know I'm still on trend this Christmas, too. I'll be wrapping and uploading some new photos of this year's gifts, both in their packaging, in the next few weeks, and out, once the 25th has passed.

Happy wrapping!