Backyard Blitz

With the change in season and much awaited rainfall, we decided it would be a good time to begin the monumental task of landscaping our backyard.  The ground being a bit softer, we kicked off with some digging. A lot of digging.  With a slightly sloping rear section, our aim was to create a more level living space.  

We started at the highest point in the rear corner, and cleared down by about half a metre. This was where we would craft a raised garden bed out of some old bricks. I organised lunch while the boys finished off the digging...

For the foundation for our garden bed, we measured and dug a level trench. Into this we poured a few bags of ready-mix concrete, and laid our first layer of bricks lengthways into the wet cement.  The next day, when the concrete had cured a fair amount, we began to build our bed. We probably should have waited a bit longer for this, but only having two days a week to commit to DIY, we were a bit impatient.  Our mantra for the project was "it's not structural." 

With a wheelbarrow full of mortar, a level, and a trusty trowel we turned our hands to brick-laying. To construct our 'English garden wall', we began the first row by starting at each end, laying down wet mortar in a 'wave' like fashion, and gently tapping in the first bricks. Making sure the starters were straight and level, we set up a string line along the length of the wall as a guide. The wall was extended by buttering bricks and adding to either end until they met in the middle, and repeating this for five layers with an alternating pattern. We used the level to check each brick as it was added to ensure the wall remained square.

On completion, the bricks were 'pointed' before the mortar dried, by running the point of the trowel along first the vertical joints of the bricks, and then the horizontal. Some of the soil was moved back in, and our garden bed was ready for planting.








So.. after our weekend working bee, we are left with one raised vege patch, a partially levelled yard, a giant pile of dirt and a purple fence!
Then came the rain.... Lots of rain...

Hot Cross Yum!

Mr Crimmins loves his hot cross buns, so coming up to Good Friday I thought I'd try my hand at making my own this year.  I was quite proud of my efforts, just quietly, but decided I might need a bit more practice at kneading to get them perfect next year.

Hot Cross Buns

350g high grade white flour

100g wholemeal flour

50 g caster sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon mixed spice

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 x 8g sachet of instant yeast

50g butter, diced

125g mixed dried fruit 

1 tablespoon candied peel

200mL lukewarm milk

2 medium eggs, lightly beaten

 Sift together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. 'Rub in' the diced butter - I used a nifty wee 'pastry blender' that I was given for Christmas which worked wonders! Work it in until the mixture resembles fine crumbs, then stir in the dried fruit.
Bring the milk up to temperature, and to check if its lukewarm, dip your pinky finger in - you shouldn't be able to detect if its hot or cold.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, and pour in the milk and eggs. With your hand, or I used a large spoon, carefully draw the dry mixture into the wet ingredients to form a dough. You can also use an electric mixer with dough hooks.


Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead for 10 minutes until the dough is silky smooth and very elastic. Put the dough back in the bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place until it is doubled in size. This takes about an hour.





After an hour, punch down the dough, and split into 12 portions. Shape them into balls and place on a baking tray. If you want them to have soft sides, place them close together on the tray so they join together as they bake.  Cover the tray and place in warm spot, and leave the buns to rise again until they are double in size. This takes about 45 minutes.


Preheat the oven to 200°C. To make the cross on top, mix into paste, 4 Tbsp flour with 2 Tbsp water, and pipe across the top.  Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes. To check if ready, tap on the top - they should sound hollow.  While they're baking, make the glaze with 2 Tbsp milk and 1 Tbsp caster sugar - heat together in the microwave for a few seconds so the sugar dissolves.

Brush the glaze over as soon as the buns come out of the oven. Then cool on a wire rack, or even better - eat them hot, smothered in butter, with a well deserved cup of tea.

Wedding Charms

Last week marked one year since my husband and I were married!  It was quite the home-spun affair, held in the Bowling Club up the road from my where I grew up. I'd been thinking about all the efforts that went into our big day last year, so I thought I'd type a wee post about it.

Probably the most labour intensive task I attempted was making forty metres of bunting to string through the reception. I had a bit of an idea of how to go about it, but after a bit of internet trawling I found some decent instructions.
I was going with a purple theme, and so collected a few metres of different quilting fabrics in different shades. My best buy was forty metres of lilac bias binding for $15 from a craft emporium.  With a bit of help I made around 180 triangles, which filled out all forty metres of bias binding! A major sewing effort.


My favourite part of wedding preparation was putting together the invitations. I have a serious enthusiasm for fresh stationery.
After drawing up a design for the invitation, they were printed onto A5 size card. All of the details were typed up onto an A4 sheet, including a hand-drawn map of the wedding venues. This was then folded in quarters, coupled with the card, and fastened around with a piece of lace.

In the days before the wedding I had some much appreciated help from my lovely now-husband, and our Best Man and Maid of Honour.  A wee factory line was formed for the production of the favours, lavender shortbread.


For the table centrepieces, I used old Agee Jars, with scraps of fabric and lace tied around the middle. The flowers were various colours of pink and purple roses, along with bits and pieces from Mum's garden. My husband's Uncle is a florist, and kindly took care of all the arranging.


Finally, here is a picture of my bouquet!  I chose the flowers in the same rather 'twee' floral code as Duchess Kate...
Ocean Song rose "enchantment", lavender "pure of heart", white lisianthus "charisma and congeniality" and gypsophila "pure of heart".

Mastering the Art of Renovating

  Where was I? Plastering. Yes, plastering took a while. Then it took even longer to make sure every single patch of plaster was sufficiently smoothed to hide behind our next task : painting.

  First up went our undercoat, which did high-light the odd lumpy bit of plaster. However, we had decided to put up lining paper before we painted our top coat in an effort to hide our amateur plastering efforts.  This also doubled as practice for future wall-papering, and I discovered I really enjoyed it! Making the sheets match together, kind of like an odd vertical jigsaw puzzle.

  With the lining paper up, the room was really starting to take shape. We continued with the undercoat and soon the whole room was covered, including our new ceiling.

  Up until this point, we had taken a pretty relaxed approach to the project. But things were about to get intense. With our painting well under way, we didn't stop. For two weeks straight, we lived and breathed Resene Zylone Low Sheen.  The first week saw us complete the ceiling. No one will ever know how long it took us to paint up there! Completing one coat each night and buffing in between, we carefully glossed Pearl Lusta on to the rafters, and rolled a half-tint onto the panels.


We struggled to find a radio station that didn't interrupt our painting groove with long ad breaks, but finally found one that played some good time singalongs.

  That weekend, we finally busted down the last of the remaining wardrobe interior and painted it out. The most exciting part was hanging the beautiful wallpaper I had ordered from my favourite London designer...
Luckily I had ordered two rolls, so we cut each drop using alternate rolls for minimal waste.  I have a bit left which I thought might make lovely drawer liners, or mounting for photo frames.


 With the wardrobe looking fantastic, we were on the home stretch!  Monday night saw our most exciting task, putting colour up on the walls.
We had picked out a pistachio green called Deco, that would match our red mahogany bedroom furniture. The name also seemed quite fitting for our late 1920's bungalow.


  By Friday, our shoulders were knackered, hands barely able to grip, and eyes falling out from lack of sleep.  But we had completed the walls, skirting and windows, and even scrubbed the plaster and paint off the floorboards.

Our new bedroom looked like this!

Doing It Ourselves

  Sometime in late July, we decided it would be a great winter project to renovate our master bedroom.  It was quite a cold, damp room, with a bit of mould coming up in the corners and on the ceiling tiles. The wardrobe was in a need of a complete overhaul, and really, we just wanted to add a bit of colour.

  Being complete DIY novices, but ambitious young folk that had quite the knack for 4th Form Woodwork back in the day, we figured "how hard could it be?".

  So in a great deal of excite one Saturday afternoon, we set about destroying the room with a mallet hammer and crowbar to see what lay beyond those old wall boards...
By late evening, we were quietly surveying the chaos we had caused.


  After a bit of a clean-up (there's lots of that in renovating) and some direction from our seasoned renovater, we fixed a couple of leaking weatherboard cracks and set about lining the room. First, up went the building paper, to hold off the wet and damp getting in through those old weatherboards. Next, in went the batts, creating a cozy wee pink cave.
  Now that we had something decent between us and the outside elements, we set about putting the walls back up. Upon the discovery that there were no noggins between our studs, we decided to use Braceline GIB board, just to give us that extra sturdy factor.

  Not too happy with the state of the old ceiling panels, we decided to replace them with GIB too - which turned out to be no mean feat. It did give us an interesting look up into the ceiling though, and we couldn't help wondering if there would be enough room up there for another bedroom one day...

  Nothing had been too tricky up until this point, except maybe trying to get the most out of our cut GIB.  Now that we had the walls in place, the next step was plastering the joints and nail holes. Armed with a couple of metal spatulas, we used a plaster that had a working time of about an hour and a half, which was useful to us novices.
Our thoughts on plastering were simple; "smooth it on, sand it off". Piece of cake.

Plastering was definitely one of our more labour intensive tasks. It took a good few weeks of our spare time to complete the room, during which there were constant big white work-boot footprints throughout the house, and a thin white film of dust settled over everything.


Finally, one day in early September, the architraves and skirting were back on thanks to my husband's crafty carpentry, and we were ready for the finishing touches!
Details of which will be continued in my next post...

Lemon Scrummy

One of the best things about the winter months, is the copious amounts of lemons in season!  There are so many uses for the simple lemon in the kitchen. I use them in baking recipes like lemon curd cupcakes, lemon slice and lemon drizzle cake; they are a key ingredient in peri-peri sauce; lovely squeezed over pancakes sprinkled with sugar; and with hot water and honey make a soothing hot drink for those winter colds.
Making lemon honey is one of my favourite ways to cook lemons.

Lemon Honey

4 Lemons
125 g Butter
2 cups Sugar
4 Eggs, beaten




Firstly, you will need to clean the lemons with a vegetable brush, and then zest the rind. Be careful to avoid the white pith, as this adds a bitter taste. Then, juice the lemons and pass the juice through a sieve into a bowl to remove any pips and flesh.

In a double boiler, melt the butter. I made my double boiler with a metal bowl that fits snugly into the top of a pot. It is important that this is not cooked straight over heat as it needs to be heated gently. To the melted butter add the sugar and lemon juice and stir together until the sugar has dissolved. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs together with a whisk.

Remove the lemon mixture from the heat, and very slowly pour in the egg mixture, stirring constantly. It is important to mix the eggs in carefully - if it's all chucked in at once, the heat of the mixture will cook the eggs and you end up with little bits of egg white all through your lemon honey.

Finally add your lemon rind, and return to the double boiler. Keep stirring while the mixture heats and thickens, and you get a deliciously thick and beautifully bright lemon coloured honey!  While warm, pour into sterilised jars. It pays to warm the jars before you do this, so that the glass doesn't crack.

Store in the fridge and enjoy on your morning toast.

A sewing machine, a sewing machine, a girl's best friend!

  I re-visited my fourth form sewing skills last year, feeling inspired after returning from a two-year OE in London.  A dozen wedding reception table runners and 30-something metres of pretty pastel bunting later, I had caught the sewing bug. It is immensely satisfying creating something yourself, and actually ending up with a commodity you enjoy!


 A year on, I have finally acquired my very own sewing machine.  Not being overly informed  on such things, I struggled with where to start looking. The only machine I have ever really known is my Mum's very old Nelco. However, I found a couple of very informed shop assistants who guided me towards an entry level Elna.  I went for the Elna 1000 over the entry level Brother, as I found I had a preference for the metal features on the Elna and it just felt like a more solid machine. The Brother did have a few more stitches, but I figured being the novice that I am, I won't really need the extras.


  Trying out my new toy at home later, I was more than happy with the stitch options that it gives me. It also comes with cool wee bits and bobs - a zipper foot, a blind hem foot and a sliding button-hole foot. The only thing I'd have to say I wasn't too happy with were the plastic bobbin reels, so Mum gave me a couple of her own metal ones to use. The instruction manual is super easy to follow, and within the hour I had hemmed my brothers jeans! The machine carved through two layers of denim no problem, and you can remove the base so I could easily fit the trouser leg around the machine.


  In other sewing excitement, Mum pulled out her sewing boxes for me and I scored some groovy fabric, a couple of half finished garments and some ace retro sewing patterns! Just a few things to get me started with. As for the first sewing project... watch this space!