Homemade

Have you seen the Homemade cookbook?


It's a wonderful collection of recipes from people who wanted to help out after the Victorian bushfires earlier this year. The contributers include well known chefs such as Margaret Fulton and Greg Malouf along with families, homecooks and craft bloggers that you probably know including Kate, Lara and me! It's pretty damn cool to have my name listed alongside Ms Fulton's and Mr Malouf's!

Half the copies of Homemade will be given as gifts to those affected by the bushfires, while the other half will be sold and the money raised donated to the Salvation Army. Currently I have the apple and sultana cake by Leonie in the oven and it smells divine! It should be perfect for morning tea tomorrow.

You can order your copy of Homemade here


Edit: My contributions to the book included my quick mix chocolate and coconut cake and my beans and rice. Thanks for the reminder Ann!

And I haven't forgotten about my Italy photos - they are coming soon!

Morges, Switzerland

Whenever we told someone that we were going to Morges, Switzerland the response was either "why?" or "you must be visiting someone". Well, truth be told, we were visiting friends, but the town of Morges is beautiful and somewhere I would definitely consider visiting, even without the lure of friends.

Located on Lake Geneva near Lausanne, Morges is a small and quiet town with the most tremendous scenery. A walk shortly after arriving in Switzerland deposited us here - with the awesome sight of the alps rising from beyond the lake. It was simply breathtaking.

We spent our 3 days in Morges with old friends. Friends we had only seen for the sum total of 4 hours in the past 5 years, so it was wonderful to catch up with them again. Our short time was spent lazing by Lake Geneva with picnics, hiking in the nearby mountains, playing with the children and trying lots of Swiss food each evening (mmm... cheese fondue).

The nearby mountains were every bit as stunning as the sight of the Alps and Lake Geneva. There were tiny wildflowers everywhere you looked and cows with large rectangular bells hanging from their necks, the sound of which could be heard from miles away.

Morges is definitely somewhere I can imagine living.

France

After looking through our holiday photos, I have decided that I am going to need to do this in 3 posts - we just have too many photos I want to share. I apologise now to anyone on a dial-up connection!

I thought I'd begin in Paris - where we started and ended our holiday. Full of excitement, nerves and adrenaline, we spent the first 4 days of our trip running madly about Paris trying to see as much as possible. Walking out of the train station that first morning was like a dream; the old buildings, window boxes full of red geraniums, the smell of fresh bread, the quiet of an early weekend morning, everything was so pretty.

We spent a long but wonderful day visiting the Musee du Louvre, where my Lonely Planet guide tells me there are more than 35,000 works of art on display. As you can imagine we only saw a small portion of these focussing on paintings and sculptures.

The room pictured above was my favourite. The sculptures were originally placed in a garden, so this room was designed to emulate that. It was quiet, filled with natural light and rather peaceful.

We also visited the Musee de l'Orangerie which houses a beautiful series of Monet's water lillies in two purpose built oval rooms.

Although Paris was filled to the brim with tourists, we discovered that there was always a quieter spot in which to enjoy the sights. Indeed, at the back of the Notre Dame Cathedral was a very pretty, quiet garden.

And just down the road from Notre Dame was Le Rouvray - a patchwork store! Unfortunately, we visited at the end of our trip and the store was already closed for the August summer holidays. I was so bummed!

There was a gorgeous tapestry store accross the street though which I did visit.

Of course, there was lots of eating to be done in Paris starting with delicate macarons from the famous Laduree.

and divine summer tarts from Pierre Herme

The last night of our 4 week jaunt was spent in Paris too - and we had a picnic under the Eiffel tower.

Another stop in France was Strasbourg in the Alsace region. Strasbourg has a most impressive cathedral - also called Notre Dame - which they light up during summer as part of a light show. It was a stunning sight.

The old town itself is surrounded by a canal and full of old half timber houses. These houses were originally built in this manner so that they could be transported - so you would literally 'move house' when you left one town for another.

It was easy to imagine I was in a fairytale, surrounded by gingerbread houses.

The wider Alsace region is also known for its wine and the surrounding hills are filled with vinyards.

This was a home in Obernai - a town near Strasbourg. Can you possibly imagine living in this? How fantastic!

Strasbourg was also home to the most glorious cheese store I have ever seen - La Cloche a Fromage. They boast the worlds largest cheese platter with 90 different cheeses! We bought just 4 to enjoy with our dinner.

Later in our trip we moved down south where we visited the medieval city of Carcassone. The old city of Carcassone is surrounded by two rampart walls interspersed with 52 stone towers, complete with witches hat roofs.

The city was full of kings and queens, knights and court jesters... ok, not really!

I am already compiling a list of places I would like to visit next time we are in France (fingers crossed - it might happen one day!).

Next stop - Switzerland!

I'm back!

After 4 action packed weeks of fun, frivolity and gelato, my husband and I arrived back in Sydney last weekend. How can 4 weeks pass by so quickly? Now that I am back at work, I really feel like I never left. I had hoped that 4 weeks filled with European pleasures would allow those cobwebs that blur my daily life to be completely swept away. However it seems I didn’t reach those stubborn bits in the very corners and it has taken them no time at all to re-populate my mind. At least they were held at bay while we were abroad and I was able to put daily life aside and simply enjoy myself.

I have been asked many times since we returned “what was the highlight”, and while I have answered ‘Rome’ (which I adored) each time, it really was the small parts of the trip that I loved; learning how to ask for a coffee and a croissant in French and then actually being understood in the local boulangerie; browsing through any of the vast number of fromageries and picking out a mystery piece of cheese to have with dinner; watching the world fly pass while travelling on a high speed train; eating 3 gelatos in 1 day….

Thankfully I am over the jet-lag now. Having never really had jet-lag, I wasn’t prepared for how spaced out I felt in those first few days after arriving home. When the months worth of mail was delivered on Monday, it was like a sign that read ‘the holiday is well and truly over, real-life starts here’. Thankfully among the pile of bills and junk-mail, there were also 3 of my favorite magazines to ease me back into day-to-day life.

I hope you all had a lovely month. I’ll be back soon with some photos of Europe and some stitching to share.

Did you see kangaruby in Homespun?

Look what arrived in the mail yesterday

And look who is on the mailbag page!!

I recieved an email a little while ago telling me that Kangaruby and my platypi would be appearing on the mailbag page of Australian Homespun magazine! It is so exciting to see my name and my homemade gifts in my favourite magazine! Today I went to the post office to pick up my prize. Seeing as though it was a Christmas in July issue of the magazine, my prize had a Christmas theme - 2 beautiful books full of Christmas patterns, a Christmas pattern from the Rivendale Collection and 2 packs of gorgeous glittery threads! Lucky I LOVE Christmas!

The book Comfort and Joy is exactly the type of book I love and has some gorgeous projects in it - I can't wait to start on some!

Arn't these angels cute!

Lately however, my sewing has been very very frustrating. It seems I have forgotten how to quilt! I have quilted ok before - never great, but always passable, but this is just awful. I am so frustrated and dissapointed -and it wasn't just this one that was bad. I think I will start looking for a quilting service in Inner Sydney (any suggestions?)... Or maybe I finally need to give in and do some classes to figure out what I am doing wrong.

Apart from my attrocious quilting, I have just finished a new bag to take on my holiday . I am so proud of myself - this is completely designed by ME! Even I can't believe it turned out ok! I even put a zip closure on the top - my first ever zip.

Speaking of our trip, our plane leaves in 24 hours and I haven't even started packing! I hope everyone has a wonderful month and I'll be back in August with lots of photos and stories to share.

Almost ready!

I got my 'holiday' blocks together yesterday (4 days to go!)

I just need to trace on my stitcheries and iron on my pellon and I am ready to go!

I got some other things finished also, but it was too dark to take pictures, so I will share those later this week. And I am hoping I will have something else exciting to show before I go away too!

Gosh work can be tough...

My workmate is a Masterchef fan, as am I. So have a look here to see what I had to deal with on Monday for morning tea...

It was sooo good - she did a fantastic job! Gosh work can be tough sometimes!