Ooh, bakey bakey!

Excuse me if I'm excited. I have just discovered Bittersweet, a Vegan baking blog. Since I'm living largely dairy-free these days for the health and happiness of my son these days, the sweet recipes over there are filling me with glee. Dairy-free fudge! Egg-free chocolate cupcakes! Nomnomnom!

Tile magnets

Seems like every real estate person and their plumber is posting "free" magnets into my mailbox, for their advertising to sit on my fridge door.
I had a huge backlog of these things taking up valuable display space - we're talking doubles and even triples, and ads for services I already use (Australia Post? I'm looking at you and your ridiculous "notepad" shaped THING) or am not likely to need for many years and really don't want reminders of (local Bevans office? Good luck ever getting my business again for anything!).

A sheet of tiles from the hardware store, some acrylic paint and a spray of trusty old clear enamel, and I have some gifts for a Wiccan friend.



The paint decided to separate a bit on the meat and it looks a bit mouldy. Maybe that's why it's merry?

Ooh, Crumbs!

I'm not the world's greatest cook, but I do enjoy baking. And after experiencing two amazingly iced first birthday cakes in the past two months I'm feeling like the bar has been set pretty high.
I'm currently googling fondant icing recipes, but I'm also taking great joy in the gorgeousness of the plain old buttercream iced cakes in this flickr stream and this craft blog, that my search threw up.
They look so good it would be a shame to eat them!

Habitual Kimono top

Before I started working on my latest I sewed up a little something for my own little boy, in the past fortnight. I've been wanting to try the Habitual Kimono top pattern for ages but couldn't seem to kick myself into gear. I was very afraid of the bias binding, and having to potentially make my own. Then I found some green bias-binding in an op-shop for 50 cents and remembered the froggy fabric I picked up on sale several moons ago. I'd bought it with no particular project in mind, under the influence of fabric lust.
This was because fabric is kind of like my crack, and Spotlight is my dealer. I mean this in that I casually run into Spotlight on the street and mean to "just say hi", thinking it would be rude to pretend we didn't know each other. But after spending longer in each others' company than I ever intended, I inevitably stumble home with a hit, feeling wretchedly guilty and strangely elated at the same time. The long-suffering Wicked Fairy.... is not so long-suffering actually. He's usually egging me on in my fabric lustiness, throwing money at me and cheering me to the registers.

ANYWAY

I'd seen this fabric, bought a swatch and put it in a corner until inspiration struck. It was super cute - here it is in close up, so you can see for yourself.

I stuffed up a little, and made the crossover parts as wide as the back, so the whole thing is a little big on my boy. This was due to the fact that I am very impatient and tend to skim-read instructions until I feel I have the jist of things, and then go to. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify my mistakes in version two! And in the meantime, version one is still EXTREMELY cute.
See what I mean?