Fathers Day

Aren't Father's Day presents from 2 year olds wonderful things!

Painting away

With the Carnival of Flowers just around the corner, I'm working on four pieces to hopefully be displayed in the Ergon Food and Wine tent. The theme is 'Food, Wine and Flowers' and I had to name them before I'd really decided what I wanted to paint, so this year I went with flowers. It's just safer. And things are going well so far, here's hoping things continue this way!

Teatowel Giveaway

Go to Shiny Happy Art and put your name on the list - and you could win this special teatowel (it's printed on 100% natural linen - a limited run but oh, so lovely to use!).

I promise you will not be overrun with emails, I'll just keep in touch from time to time.

Emergency Cookies

My boys needed to 'take a jar' to school today. It was a free dress day and the 'price' was a jar full of something, to be sold at the school fair in October (I can't believe that's next month already!). This is on top of the money that's been sent in for show bags and ride armbands, major raffle tickets, class stall donations, and soft drinks (another free dress day for the drinks van stock). But it is the major fundraiser for the year and it's a fantastic community day. This year they're even having fireworks!

So, inspired by the amazing Bakerella (her photos are SO much better than mine), I put together these jars of 'Emergency Cookies'. After spending some time researching (ie. blog surfing) this idea seems to be happily American, but I have to say, having now made 2 batches straight from the jar (testing my recipes), it's pretty catchy!

Bakerella's recipe fitted in a 1 quart jar (I have no idea how big a 1 quart jar is) but I wanted to use jars i already had, and minimise the cost of the ingredients wherever possible. I'd happily put heaps of M&M's in a jar for a friend, but at nearly $4 a bag I was trying to be sensible here. And I used the bag of orange flavoured M&Ms which really added to the taste. The pink ones that are in the shops in October will look really good too. I'll definitely make some jars up when they come out.

I made a couple of batches and ended up prefering the batch that included cocoa and included more butter so spread out while cooking. Now, I'm no Masterchef, but this is the combination I settled on.

EMERGENCY COOKIES
to fit in a 750g Paul Newman's Pasta Sauce bottle

1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb soda
pinch salt
1 cup oats
1/3 cup M&Ms (more would be better if you're feeling generous)
2 tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar

Pack it all down in layers (if there's space I'd add more nuts or M&M's if you have them).

When you're ready to cook, mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Then add combined wet ingredients:
1 egg (lightly beaten)
125g butter (almost melted)
1 tsp vanilla

Once it's all combined, roll into balls about 1 tbsp each, leaving room for spacing, and bake on baking paper covered trays at 180 degrees celcius for about 12-15 mins.

I needed 2 trays because one jar made about 30 cookies.

They were a big hit with the kids, and I enjoyed the alchemy of it all, and making up the labels.

I'm not sure how to offer you a link to download the labels I made, but if you're keen, just leave your email address with a comment and I'll send my pdf file to you. I printed it out on gloss photo paper and glued to the jar. The fabric was 15cm square and the cord was about 60cm in length for each jar.

If you've got some ideas on how to improve this recipe, I'd love to hear them too.

Now I'm off to bed, I need an early night for a change. Lots of painting to do tomorrow as it's the only day of the week I have a few hours of daycare for the lovely Sophia.

In the Works

Spent time the other night doing sketches for some Book Plates that are in my head right now. I've sent the artwork to the printer so I'll let you know when they're ready!
Another thing to cross off the list - terrific!

If you'd like to go in the draw to win this great tablerunner by Thea & Sami, just go to her blog and comment on what you DON'T like about online shopping. It's easy peasy and her screenprinting is lovely jubley. And good for the planet. Nice.

Love this

This came to my inbox via a twitter of a blog so sadly, I don't know who to attribute it to - but I love it!