Roasted Tomato Relish

We love tomatoes in our house. So much so that poppet managed to consume an entire punnet of cherry tomatoes in the seat of the trolley whilst this Mumma Bear was otherwise occupied with the "joy" that is grocery shopping heavily pregnant....with a toddler...on pension day!

I house them happily on our kitchen bench smug in the knowledge that I'm squeezing every last drop of deliciousness out of them as their perfume seems to pulsate from their swollen, almost bursting skins.

This has a minor disadvantage however. Alas, whenever I heave mon petit poppet up onto the bench to help with some culinary task I only need turn my head for a whisker and her Go, Go Gadget arms have plucked a tomato from it's resting place and she's merrily chomping into it. Sprung in the act she quickly returns the attacked fruit to it's vintage plate bed and grins a tomato seedy grin at me. Seconds later though she's back at it...but with a new tomato!! It's nothing for me to reach for a tomato and find five or six with giant vampire style bites out of them.

So when faced with such a dilemma this very morn whilst concocting my favourite pregnancy brekkie du jour....avocado and tomato on toast with lime juice and sea salt... (Oh what a step up from the first trimester Kraft cheese spread AND butter piled high on a wafer thin slice of white toast brekkie!) some relish making was in order.

I had about half a kilo of tomatoes and they were cut into wedges, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper and roasted in a 160 degree oven for around an hour and a half. Their caramlised lusciousness was then plonked into a saucepan with 2 crushed garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and left to bubble away on a low heat until it started to thicken.

Into some jars and titivated with some loitering old doilies and some festive-ish fabric and ribbon and this little Santa's helper (so far from little with 5 weeks til le bébé I'd  be better off impersonating Santa himself!) is feeling a tad virtuous and dare I say it...organised

But being a greedy little elf one jar did manage to pop itself open and dollop generous mounds onto spiky vintage cheese for my lunch. Ho, ho, ho!

Grateful for....Lifeguards

Yesterday we saw a young fellow plucked from the water and resuscitated back to life.  How can something be so spine chillingly horrific yet so utterly amazing at the same time?

These men and women are magnificent! And for them I am so truly grateful.

Making Me Smile Today :)

After the bazillionth reading of this book, mon petit poppet decided she'd try her hand at "bower" making...

Pondering just the right spot.....such careful selection of blue things....such thoughtful placement....

Now sit very quietly... and watch...and wait...to see if he comes!

Imagination is simply magic!

 

Ah....Gorgeous Serendipity!!

I just adore when the crafty and thrifty fairies get together for a chai latte and a sliver of cake or two and have a chat about how they'd love to bestow a well meaning crafty Mumma out there in "giant" world with a project that is so serendipitous it makes one squeal with delight. Better yet, I love when they choose me!! Such was my op shoppy find this week and the resulting bags of loveliness that materialised after mere moments zipping away on Jan.

Mon petit poppet has rather a penchant for anything of the fauna variety (well...flora as well but that's another story) and hence her collection of play animals is that to rival Noah's wee ark party. Her menagerie has shacked up quite happily albeit a tad squished in a vintage basket with this play mat but it was coming quite apparent that the wild animals, the dinosaurs, the insects and the farm animals just were not getting along. Time to play zoo keeper and intervene.

Enter those gorgeous glittery gals intent on making my day and behold folded neatly in one little pile in one little op shop an insect pillowcase, a farm animal pillowcase and a dinosaur bed sheet. The clouds parted and sun shone down upon the little shelf and I swear I heard a tinkling of teensy bells!!

A little stamped piece of calico roughly zigzagged onto the front and a whisker of ribbon folded in half and attached in the middle at the back and my girl's creatures (of EVERY walk of life!) are suitably housed.

She delights in "reading" the bags using the piccies as clues as she chooses which friends will come out and play today. And me...well I'm wondering if I could pull off red heels and a jaunty black hat  (minus the antennae bien sur!) as my shape is remarkably similar to this petit ladybird lady!

Our Creative Space

There is a trés dapper fellow taking up residence in our little vegie patch! May I introduce Happy Happy (aptly named by mon petit poppet) in all his jovial glory.

With the help of our beloved Nana we set to work bringing a pile of op shopped kiddies clothes, a roughly sewn calico bag (curved at the top) and a giant bale of straw into our very own Werzel Gummidge.

Firstly we pulled his jeans over the wooden stake frame and secured the bottoms with string followed by a thorough stuffing with straw. Then a red ribbon belt to keep him from losing his trousers! Happy Happy is after all a gentleman.

Next, his prerequisite flannelette shirt and still more stuffing....

By this stage poppet could see him coming to life and her excitement was palpable!

A rather creepy looking head followed...that is...until my little Van Gogh adorned him with his handsome features. ( I must admit to adding a whisker of extra paint to his mouth when poppet wasn't looking as the "grimace" she'd painted on was reminiscent of a bad 80's horror movie and quite frankly...gave me the heebie jeebies!)

A jaunty red bandanna from a scrap of spotty fabric and he was ready to take on the world....or the possums and pesky turkeys in this instance.

And as my girl has taken to naming everything doubly....Happy Happy came about! He's rather a gentile fellow and rather than "scaring" away the sneaky vegie patch prowlers..he merely asks them politely to move on their way. So far so good Happy Happy!

I do declare that it is a veritable smorgasbord of crafty goodness over here this week.

Living the Good Life

Bunkering down inside feeling a wee bit like Dorothy in her sparkly red shoes as the wind outside shook the windows sending shivers down my spine......a spot of embroidery for a little kitchen-y project....

Baking this choccie cake with fresh cream and blueberries....

for this man as he braved the winds and worked all weekend demolishing a very shoddy retaining wall half the length of our yard....and then rebuilding it...

Admiring "old school" flowers...

Finally hanging some vintagey bunting made too long ago to remember... looking at it from time to time...smiling often...

Love, love, loving my little piece of heaven's crafty space which has been constantly overflowing with cut up bits of paper since Mumma bought her some poppet friendly scissors and she found her groove with cutting with them....

Injecting small pops of colour into our world....

Taming a cantankerous sciatic nerve by sitting Victorian lady straight whilst starting a little vest for mon petit poppet....for next Winter!....

Picking up, flicking through, curling up with one or all of these delicious new books (have had oodles of custom and wholesale orders for mon petit poppet so thought I might indulge myself a wee bit!) ....more often than not putting all the mentioned projects on hold to stare at my giant belly squirming and wriggling...so surreal.... and absolutely magic!