We drink tea with a yellow submarine...

A friend linked me this the other day and of course, I had to share. Hilarious. Can be pre-ordered from here.

Eye spy a burst of colour

Oopsies, a little late again. I guess it's just that time of year. Introducing my little robot tissue holder that my Japanese friend, Erika, and her family gave me. (Please excuse the dodgy, late at night, not-quite-adequate lighting in the photo, heehee). I love this little guy! He is one of my most favourite posessions. Unfortunately my robot tissue holder has been getting a bit of a work out lately as I have managed to catch a cold. But he definitely brightens up my drab computer area.


Thanks to Flossy-P for this week's theme, and to the lovely Cindy for organising Eye Spy... wanna join in?

Can't talk. Sewing.

I've got a few posts in the pipelines, but none finished. Have been literally flat out sewing! But to keep you amused in the mean time, here's some cute things I spotted over at Think Geek:

DIY bendable drinking straws...


Brownie pan: apart from all of the "even heat distribution blahblahblah" stuff, the feature I liked most about this pan was "Two delicious, chewy edges on every individual serving". Yum!!

I like the sound of this cook book. I'm intrigued by the possibility of cryogenic martinis (the concept itself, because I really hate martinis) and also edible origame... however I think I'll skip the DIY edible underwear, thanks.
Nerdy salt and pepper shakers. Neat! Here's the site's pepper explanation: "It would be awesome if we could put the entire makeup of peppers' flavoring agents on its container, however there isn't enough room for the more than 100 volatile compounds visible in ground black pepper"


Space invaders chopping board. What more needs to be said?!

Hold me back!

Apologies for the lack of posts this week. I have indeed been busy sewing and baking and whatnot, but I have been so busy doing them that I have had little computer time to upload and sort photos. You can look forward to seeing what I've made this week over the weekend! (Oh yes, and I did win a little money on the Melbourne Cup! Hooray!)

In the mean time, Tacolina linked a website that has me very excited. I nearly choked on my cup of tea when I saw just how much amazingly overly cute stuff there was for me to buy! I have to hide my credit card. Thankfully I lost my credit card recently and had to get a new number and I haven't memorised it yet.

I need a new calendar for next year. I have thoroughly enjoyed my Eric Carle calendar this year and wanted something in a similar style. I may have to make a purchase... too cute.

Then there are the dish cloths...

And don't even get me started on the fabric or stationary... oh my!

Orange vintage love in Launceston

I'll present my trip to Tasmania in themed installments. While I was there I took some photos of some pretty cool blog-related stuff: food, plants... (nothing sewing-related, but I did think up some cool new sewing projects while I was away).

I'll kick it off with the place we were staying at in Launceston. It was a holiday apartment: a residential house split into two. And it was decked out in the most totally awesome vintage gear, and a few granny square and shagpile rugs around too. Everywhere. And all of the accessories were orange. Have I ever mentioned that orange is my favourite colour? There were even orange printed pyrex dishes in the cupboard, however unfortunately the photos of those didn't turn out so well. The orange Corona toilet seat - with matching orange light shade - was what did it for me though.

That light shade is actually orange, not red, but the lighting was awkward

This is... my favourite kitchen tool

Ok ok, I've already blogged enough about my knives... so I'll post about my second favourite kitchen tool... but it's a tie between the mandolin and stab mixer.

The mandolin

Gib gave me this for my birthday and I was concerned that it would become one of those gadgets I never use, but boy was I wrong! After watching Iron Chef America, I always wondered how they made those "noodles" out of carrot or zucchini, and then we started to notice that every Iron Chef had a mandolin and how much it sped up their food preparation. The mandolin really comes into its own when chopping/slicing lots of vegetables say, for stir fries or stews, or for slicing lots of vegetables to go on the barbecue (onion, eggplant). It's most awesome for slicing up cabbage for okonomiyaki (recipe here), which needs the cabbage nice and thin for best results.

Tonight's meal: onion cooked on the bbq to go with our veggie burgers! (Hmm, I should really get onto cooking that after posting this...)

The stab mixer

With 800 watts of blending power, it's the ultimate tool for making soups, dips and sorbets. In winter making soups, it's just a tool I can't live without. Why fuss with transferring to/from the food processor then having to reheat when I can just blend it up in 2 minutes with this? My favourite thing to make in summer is canteloupe sorbet and without an ice cream machine, the stab mixer works great. It crushes all of those ice crystals and makes perfectly smooth sorbet.

Thanks to handmaiden for another great topic! To join in the "This is..." fun, head here.

Pot holder attempt = success!

For the apron swap, I have to make a pot holder. I have never made one of these before and thought I'd try making some in advance: don't want to be caught at the last minute and . For the insulation, I used one layer of Insul-Bright heat resistant batting and one layer of wool. I followed the directions in Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing book. It was very quick and simple to do! I think I'll attempt an oven mitt next.

Too easy!

Edit: Hoppo Bumpo asked about where to buy Insul-Bright insultated batting. This product was a pain to find, as was wool batting and any other non-flammable insulating products that would be suitable for making oven mitts, pot holders and the like. I have actually come to believe that such products do not exist in Melbourne - at all. What do all of the women in the CFA make their pot holders out of??! In the end I bought it online from Quilting Fabric Delights, but it looks like they no longer stock it either. Autumn threads was the only other place I looked for it as they were reasonably priced too.

Too much cute

I've been a little pressed for time of late. You know, busy but with nothing to show for it. No time to download photos from my camera even. So I'll present you with some things that I have been oggling over and drawing creative inspiration from when I should have been working.

There is one thing that makes me go weak at the knees: cute food accessories. And no one knows how to do that better than the Japanese. Oh, these make me melt!

Bento lunch box from sugar charms

Bento lunch box from sugar charms

Apple coasters that I purchased from Daiso

Monkey mayonnaise containers, with banana scoop! From sugar charms

Little animal sauce bottles available from ebay

Adorable mushroom bento lunch boxes

Animal clips by Denise Cortez

Decole animal face jugs by SmileOvni

Decole ketchup by cutesypoo

Decole mushroom tea pot by glumpire

Oh, cup of tea? Yes please!

It's been quite a long week this week, so I'm glad to be sitting at home sipping on a cosy cup of tea... from my new teapot! I think my tea consumption has gone up quite a bit since buying it just because I love it so much. As if I didn't drink enough tea already! I went op shopping last weekend with my mum and picked it up from one of my favourite local Salvos stores. After bringing it home and cleaning it up a little bit, I noticed that the lid was a little bit smaller than what it should be. I think the lid must have been from a matching sugar bowl at some stage. It still works fine. What I loved about it was its cute little spout and, of course, the colour.

The milk jug I picked up a few weeks ago at the Melbourne Design Market and I am totally in love with it. It makes me smile whenever I look at it for some reason. I just like the shape of it and the surface texture. It's so simple and neat.


I say it's been a long week, but it really has been quite fun and not a bad at all. It just feels like a long week (possibly because I have lots of ideas that I want to get started on over the weekend!). I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday and everything on the PhD front seems to be on track and so I kind of lost momentum to go into work today. It's funny that - I get told I'm doing ok and instead of it spurring me on it makes me slack of the next day! But the weather was just so nice outside: how could I possibly spend the entire day in a dull office with weather like this? So I spent the afternoon weeding the garden in the sunshine.

A cake tin and a half!

Gib's mum just arrived back home today, after being in America for almost a month. Apart from bringing home lots of crazy stories, she also brought home this...


...for me! I couldn't believe it! Not only because it is just a totally amazing cake tin (it's a Nordic tin, like the castle tin), but because, unknown to Gib's mum, I was planning to make Gib an octopus cake for his birthday next week! I am so excited, I can't wait to try it out.

Gib's mum is so lovely. She's so patient and tolerant and calm (I guess living in a house with three males will do that to you). She always takes things - and people - as they come. I have a lot to learn from her.

Tissue box cover

Yesterday I had a bit of spare time and decided to give Lara Cameron's tissue box cover tutorial a go. It was an easy to follow tutorial and a quick project to complete. And now I have something practical, bright and cute to go into my dull, stark white office at work.

Reversible journal cover

I found Lara Cameron's reversible journal cover tutorial and decided to give it a go. Amazingly I still had motivation to sew after finishing the apron. This tutorial was very easy to follow, and even though I couldn't visualise how it works in my head (have I mentioned I have terrible spatial skills?), I followed the instructions as they are and when I turned it the right way out, hey presto, I had a reversible journal cover! Nifty! The whole project, from measuring the journal and cutting out the pieces to stitching up the hole at the end, took about 40 mins. And the finished product looks good too.

Inside view of the notebook cover, without the notebook

A week in my kitchen: My big orange pot

I was a very lucky girl indeed when I received this as a 21st birthday present. I use this pot for everything, from boiling pasta to slow cooking ratatouille on for hours on cold Sunday afternoons. The reason why I love it so much (apart from it being orange, my all time favourite colour) is because not only does it look elegant, but it's entirely functional. The heavy base keeps the contents warm for ages, and it cooks your food evenly. It can go in the oven as well as on the stovetop. And, most importantly, the enamel coating makes it easy to clean. Its size lends itself well to cooking up large batch meals, which I like to do on the weekends. If I have friends coming over I know I can make a massive risotto or batch of soup and still have leftovers. You also know that you will never in your lifetime need to replace it, and most likely not in your childrens' lifetime either.

A week in my kitchen: Dragon pasta scoop

It feels so good to surround yourself with fun things in the kitchen, it makes the whole process of playing in the kitchen even more appealing. I bought this little guy when I first moved out of home and had my very own kitchen. He cost me all of $3 from Ikea and is on of my all time favourite bargain buys. I love his cute little face, the rubbery spines... even the shape of the prongs of the scoop are cool. He's both fun and functional - my favourite combination! I seemed to acquire a collection of blue kitchen utensils... blue crockery, blue cutlery, a blue popcorn machine, blue tupperware (of course I had a Tupperware party when I had my own place, and blue was in that year).

A week in my kitchen: My grandmother's cake cooler

I didn't know my grandmother as I was only three when she passed away. Apparently she was a bit of a feisty woman, and also a great cook. My mum tells me she made the best sponges and had a real knack for baking breads and buns. There's something so very homely about this cooling rack, it's seen so many things in its lifetime. It's a bit wobbly but there's no sign of it falling apart any time soon. Hopefully it will be cooling many more baked goods for many years to come!

A week in my kitchen: Green canisters

Each day this week I'm going to post about the things I love in my kitchen. They're things that keep me inspired, that keep me coming back to the kitchen to bake and cook and make the whole experience of experimenting with food that much more interesting. Some of the things in my kitchen have been passed on through the family, others are relatively new.

But I'm going to kick it all off with these green and brown canisters. I think they were given to my parents as a wedding present. There are four of them: two big ones, two little ones. They have always lived on a shelf next to the door leading to the laundry from the kitchen, they have always housed the flour and sugar, and have always been labelled with the same little blue labels made using one of those old, dodgy DIY label writers. It was only recently that I realised just how long we'd had them and how good the seals on them still are. The plastic hasn't cracked and the colours definitely haven't faded. Not only that, but it was only recently that I noticed that these canisters are the same colour green as all of the cupboard and pantry doors in our kitchen! I'd looked at them every day during breakfast and dinner time, I'd frequently pulled them down off the shelf for years to use for cooking, and I'd never noticed. It really is quite an outrageous green, but apparently it's an improvement because, before I was born, the cupboard doors were originally painted fuschia pink!

This is one labeled 'Soy grits' from when mum and dad used to follow a Pritikin Diet, but it has always been filled with caster sugar ever since I can remember (how ironic!).

No stolen lunches ever again!

My friend Sarah and I have both have problems with people in our workplace stealing our lunches. I don't just understand it! Cool pens get taken from my desk all the time and I can understand that... but food? I'm not even talking about treats, like chocolate... I'm talking sandwiches or tubs of yoghurt. Sure if you have a nectarine and someone else has a nectarine and you get confused and happen to eat the other person's, then sure, fine, that's not really stealing because a) it was unintentional and b) they still have a nectarine. But I'm talking about someone who sees a tub of yoghurt in the staff fridge (not their own) and goes "mmm that looks mighty fine, I think I might just eat that". Sarah is in a small workplace and it still happens to her! She can see in people's little office bins and precisely identify who took that yoghurt, yet they still do it regardless! How bizarre... anyway, to prevent all this hassle, she bought me these:

Now this photo doesn't do them justice. These are REALLY fluoro coloured: bright pink, orange and green. The coolest part is, on the lid there's a little dial with numbers from 1-31 so you can indicate when you put them in the fridge. There's also a little vent on top for microwaving and they're dishwasher safe. Working in scientific research, we have little 'nuclear' and 'biohazard' stickers over everything, so hopefully my colleagues get the hint. But maybe it might backfire and they like my awesome, nerdy tubs so much and will steal them? I think I'll leave the "Warning - experimental meal - consume at own risk" tub for Gib though.