Graffiti....

Graffiti anyone? Of course not I hear you exclaim! I would never do that...... but look I did .....gasp

OK not in real life, well yes in real life, but not on public property. I did graffiti on a card, such a rebel I know lol. A plethora of these cards  are on pinterest. I saw one on Julie's fabulous  blog, Julie's Japes. Click on her name to see Julie's cool card. I saved this idea in my brain, I know amazing that I even remembered lol. And tada here is one I whipped up this morning. All stamps, inks and paper are from Stampin'  Up  as well as the embossing folder. It's a little hard to see in the photo but it's a brick wall pattern, which just lends itself so well to this style of card.

My gorgeous girl has a teenage birthday party to attend today for a friend of hers. I made two cards as I wasn't sure which one my girl would like for her friend. Here is the second card, which is my personal fave and the one my girl chose in the end. Initially  she was going with the graffiti style one as I had not completed the second card when she wandered into the study.

 Isn't it cute? I love it, I did say it was my fave. I love how the little owls face is peeking through the hole in the tree.  Again all stamps, ink, card stock, punches and ribbon are from Stampin' Up, the patterned paper is a scrap of something very old from my stash. The joggly eyes are from a craft store. I saw this gorgeous card again on pinterest and basically copied it with a couple of variations. It was too cute not to do my own one. Thanks to Krista for the card she made. If you click on Krista's name it will take you to her blog to see her original card.
Here are a couple more photos for you to see of the owl card.

As you can see from the last photo I just popped the wood paneled piece up on foam tape to give it a bit of dimension. It also made it easier to insert the owl after I attached the wood paneled piece to the card first.By putting the owl in last she (yes it's a girly owl) is always perfectly placed.

So which is your fave?
Have a superb day.
Cheers Donna :)

Our Bumper Crop....Not!

Finally, finally, finally, we have  picked something form our vegie patch! It's only the first of February and we planted our seedlings way back in October. I know it's ages ago and we are at a loss as to why it's taken so long for anything to grow. We have had plenty of sunshine, we've watered them regularly from our water tank, we've weeded, we prepared our beds before we planted the seedlings....so why so long? Who knows. The corn well it grew ears of corn, I was excited but as it's been so hot they have not fared well. Here is what was harvested today.

                                           Two  cucumbers and two  zucchinis!

Here are some more things still growing and almost ready to pick.

                                                                      A cucumber......

                                                                     A zucchini......

A pumpkin.......

No we did not plant a bread tree in our garden nor did we find this growing wildly in our garden!

I made this beauty today instead of buying bread from the bakery. It's just a good old white loaf of bread.  I'm sure it will be delicious with  some  lovely plum jam I made yesterday. 

Hoping your day is marvellous.
Cheers Donna

Plum, Plums, Plums....plum jam, plum crumble & oh yeah banana cake!

A plethora of plums or maybe a glut of plums found themselves marooned in my kitchen on the bench yesterday. My father in law picked these beauties from his tree and kindly delivered four bags to our house.

What to do, what to do....? Plum jam anyone? Yes please was the resounding reply from the family. I hunted down a recipe from taste.com.au  I read all the reviews and decided that this was the easiest recipe for me to make. You see I've never made jam before ever. I have pickled beetroot and made lemon butter but never made jam. How hard can it be? I've always been put off thinking it was hard.  Well I'm here to inform you it's not hard at all. I found the recipe easy to follow. I used only one kg of sugar instead of the amount in the recipe after reading the reviews.

Here are some of the plums washed and waiting to be chopped.

Cooking on the stove!

All bottled up.......yes twelve and half jars. After I made one batch and it worked out so well I made another batch, well I had all these jars to fill you see....

That was two bags of plums down two more to go. I needed culinary inspiration. Off to the computer and a visit to Lorraine from a fabulous blog I like   Not Quite Nigella  .   What do you know a recipe, plum and pear crumble. Click on the highlighted writing and it will take you to the the recipe and Lorraine's delicious blog. Well mine is minus the pear but I decided that I could live with that. I mean we didn't have  pears anyway.

How delicious does that look? I absolutely love apple crumble so I thought why not plum crumble.

Now when you eat apple crumble you just have to have it with vanilla ice cream. This is just my opinion! So it makes sense that plum crumble and ice cream would be equally delicious. Minor disaster, no disaster  of epic proportions, we were out of ice cream! Luckily I discovered this before the plum crumble went into the oven. I promptly dispatched hubby and my beautiful girl to purchase said ice cream....crisis averted. A bit hard to see vanilla ice cream in a white bowl, but trust me it's there. Oh My Goodness this was so yummy. My mouth is watering just looking at the pictures. What a shame there is half left, we'll just have to have it again tomorrow night, such a hard ship, how will we ever cope? lol

So that's three bags of plums gone, one left. Well that one bag can wait until tomorrow.  I think I'll make up some more of the stewed plums for plum crumble and freeze it in portions.....that way we get to enjoy a few more plum crumbles.......lucky us!!!!! My hubby wants me to make up more jam, um no I will not. Plum crumble is a winner.

And just because I can, well more to the point because we had  six bananas that were looking "a bit thanks for coming" two banana cakes were whipped up. Not to mention we needed some snacks for lunch boxes and to have with a cuppa for morning tea.

So what did you get up to this fine day?
Have a tremendous day.
Cheers Donna