Whoops

So, with a baby and a demanding job, I just didn't get around to posting. But I do like to share my makings here, so I'm gonna give it another go. Maybe posting pics mostly, maybe some words, but mainly pics! :)

So here are some of my mini-garden. Since we live in an appartment and only have a balcony (on which you can grow tons of stuff as well by the way), I also have a temporary small pallet-garden in a project with about 25 others. It's great! I added some buckets and stuff to grow pumpkins, zucchini and beans. I've already harvested radish, swiss chard, lettuce, and some (really small) beetroot!

First radish

Lettuce, swiss chard, beetroot, new radish

Extra tubs for pumpkin, zucchini and beans

First zucchini!

Preparing mini zucchini

Green exploding from the tubs

On the balcony:

Eggplant

Tomatoes

First homegrown meal this year! :) Yum!

It's been a while

Well, I guess that's kind of an understatement...

I had a hard time coping with some things. I had a miscarriage in the beginning of last year, two family members were terminally ill, we had to find a new home (it was our 4th temporary home within a little over 2 years) and W just couldn't finish his Masters thesis, costing us a lot of stress and money. It was just too much to deal with.

Now I'm in a much better place. I got pregnant a couple of months after the miscarriage and we now have a beautiful little girl, J, born on the 8th of february. We found a new home where we can stay as long as we want. W finished his thesis.
In between caring for a little baby, work, and housekeeping there's less time for crafting en me-time, but that's ok. I'm in a pretty good place right now! :D

I'm not sure whether I'll have the time to get back to blogging, but I do want to try. I've doing a lot of sewing lately, so there's lots and lots to show you. My family gave me a serger for my 30th birthday. BEST PRESENT EVER!! I love it! Baby clothes are mostly made of jersey and sweat fabric, so a serger was kind of a necessity. ;)

It's this one:

Nothing too fancy, but it works like a charm. I'll try to show some of the projects I've made on it so far.

It's great to be back!

For now I want to leave you with my Pinterest boards. I had a Cakes ' Crafts Pinterest account, but just didn't get around to pinning to my personal one and this one. So I decided to just stick with one account: this one.

Pinterest

Did you check me out on pinterest?

I love love love pinterest. It's awesome to have such an easy way to store all the wonderful finds of the internet. And also, you get a chance to (re)discover so many wonderful products, designs, ideas. It's the best thing ever! ;)

Some recent pins:

 

 

 

 Are you on Pinterest? Do you enjoy browsing the finds of others just as much as I do?

Rough spot

Hi there, It's been a while due to some rough spot I hit in life...
I want this blog to be a happy space, so I'm not going to go into it.

I've been trying to work on some crafty stuff, but haven't had a chance to take good enough pics, so I'll show that soon. The last couple of days have been about making invitations for our wedding.

Yes, we're getting married. Pretty soon as a matter of fact, just a couple of weeks left!

Last weekend I bought myself some lovely, tasty teas at Waar and settled down with a cup of tea and some wedding invitations:

Being a craftster and all, I had to make the invitation myself, which proved to be way more work than I had expected. But W and I did it. We just need to (spray)glue the two parts together and then they'll be ready!

How have you been? Are you longing for spring just as much as I have?

Update hexa blanket

The hexagon blanket I'm working on is coming together slowly. Do you remember all the centres I crocheted before?

I put it aside to knit two hats for a friends little girl (I'll show them soon!), and when I went back to crochet another row I made a terrible mistake...
The pattern I use is by Lucy at attic24. As you can see here:

after the third round you make 3 chains to keep the center a circular form. It isn't until the next round that you make 3dc clusters in the ch3 spaces.

As I had been working on something else, I didn't fully remember the pattern. If you crochet you'll know that a lot of patterns have 3dc's in the space between dc's in the previous round. Well, not this pattern... Worse of it all is that I didn't notice until an entire row was finished... :( My o my, stupid me...

I looked at it and contemplated what to do. Since it would take a lot of time to take them out and crochet that part again, I decided to just continue with the correct pattern. It's always possible to take that row out later, if it would really bother me.
Well, it does! Every time I accidentaly look at that row, it's just... I really have to take it out.

This photograph was taken at this angle to cover up that row, so I'm curious if you'll spot it.

What about you? What's your biggest crafts mistake?

More magimix

Last weekend I baked this wonderful almond cake. It's super duper easy and very very very delicious. What's even better: it stays nice and fresh and moisty for a couple of days!

I must say that the magimix makes it a lot more fun (and less of a mess I must admit). I just threw in some roughly chopped butter and some roughly chopped marzipan (which gives the cake the almond flavor and the moisty feel) and it was done in a sec. Well ok, I had to add some more ingredients, and beat the egg whites seperately. But still, it was done so much faster than when I had to do it by hand.

It looks delicious, doesn't it?

The recipe:
250 grams soft butter
250 gr marzipan (room temperature)
150 gr sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp almond essence
6 large eggs
150 gr selfraising flour

Use a foodprocessor to mix the butter and marzipan with the sugar. Add the vanilla and almond essence. Split the eggs and add the yolks. Whip the egg whites until they form firm peaks. Stir them into the batter. Mix in the flour gently, don't beat it!

Pour the mixture into a baking tray and bake at 170 degrees Celcius (around 340 F) for 40 to 50 minutes.

I hope you'll enjoy this recipe as much as I do!

Snug

Snug is a wonderful German company with some beautiful designs.
There's these fun cutting boards:

Candle holders:

Jewelry:

 

And lots more...

When I saw a promotion on their blog, I decided to buy a brooch for myself. It's so hard to choose, and even know when I came across the birds I wished I had bought that one as well! ;)

The package arrived very quickly and these gorgeous little boxes came out: