New Soaps - Broken Camera

I'm finally ready to show off some of my soaps! I'm so pleased and thrilled.... I no doubt needed a change in my life, with new challenges to face, new magic to learn to weave.


On the down-side, my camera is no longer working as it should. Fair enough, I've had it for almost 5 years, and it has taken thousands and thousands of pictures. Still, I was hoping it would be a bit before I would have to purchase a new one.


In the meantime, I've borrowed my daughter's camera.... and I'm desprately trying to figure out how to use the macro function (which should be easy enough to figure out.... but isn't always). So not all the pictures are as great as I would like them to be.


First picture: Wild Flower Soap. This soap is made from the last of the wild flowers picked from my sea side cabin.... with wild rose petals placed on top.



Christmas Spice Soap: soap made with the spices of All Spice (Allehånde krydder på norsk), cinnamon and a bit of oatmeal. This is the soap that is stinking up my hallway.... and no one is complaining.

Mint Soap: White Castille Soap mixed with fresh mint leaves. Mmmmm......

Cucumber Soap: this is cucumber soap mixed with bits of diced Castille soap. A really cool pattern.

Coffee Soap: made from both coffee with coffee grounds added. According to all the experts, this soap is what is needed for those working with fish, onions and garlic. And it feels really great on the hands.

Man's Soap from Juniper Berries: my first 'male based' soap made from juniper berries (einebær på norsk). I've chosen these berries both for the smell, but also because juniper berries have had disinfecting qualities.

One of my first Heather Soaps (Lyng på norsk). I've given many of these away to great reviews. I'm looking forward to making more of this soon.

Below is a simple soap with some Cherry Juice swirled into it.

And below is some Rose Hip soap (Nype) that I took out of it's form tonight.

Here it is before the big moment....

Gorgeous colors of reds, oranges and dark pinks....

And here they are all cut up.... ready to be dried.

I can't wait to try these ones!

My First Soap

It's not a perfect picture (taken with my cell phone), but this is the result of my first attempt at making soap..... creamy, white bars of soap made almost entirely from olive oil.

I'm so impressed with myself that I'm giggling like a little girl.

Because I needed to don rubber gloves, and because my cell phone is still very new and cool and I did not want it to get wrecked by any traces of caustic substances, I didn't take any pictures after this.

But...... These two blocks have now been sliced into 19 bars of soap, and have been packed away in a dark place. I will have to wait 4 weeks before I can use them.... or give them to friends. They will need this time to finish their chemical reactions and have a soft enough ph-balance to use.

I'm looking forward to it....

Mother Daughter Bake Off

So last week I was quite sick, and was home for the week. And since my daughter attends the same day care that I work at, it was just easier to keep her home than get dressed and go out of the house twice a day to both deliver and collect her. (My husband was working a split shift that week, and was unable to help with either of these, which would have made all the difference).

Towards the end of the week, I was starting to feel better. And my daughter was going nuts. She'd watched a lot of tv. She'd played every computer girl-game known to man. She'd painted and drawn so many pictures that the kitchen and living room walls were covered. She had pearled and beaded, built sculptures with Lego, played with her dolls and gone outside to take pictures with her camera (we'll chat about that later) until she just could not do these things any more.

Finally, she was bored.

So I asked her if she wanted to make cup cakes from scratch. Not from a package.

I didn't need to ask her twice.

Before going further, do realize that this is NOT a food blog. You will NOT find professionally taken pictures here. If you want that, why not visit two of my favorite food blogs:

The Pioneerwoman Cooks: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/

and

Everybody Likes Sandwiches: http://everybodylikessandwiches.blogspot.com/

In the meantime, this is the story of my day with my daughter.


First, I don't normally use recipes when I cook food. I'm more of what you would call an intuitive chef. However, I do know where my boundaries lie.... usually anything that comes after dinner and involves dessert. This would include cupcakes.

My recipe came from a Norwegian recipe book pictured below. spis drikk lev, which translates as eat drink liv.



Oh yes, and before I get sued, I should say that this book was created and put together by Fran Ward, to whom I am eternally grateful for. Her hard, industrious work will be an inspiration to me for many years to come.


The recipe chose is called SPICED CUPCAKES, found on page 32, as seen below.



Unlike most North American recipes, the ingredients are measured out in weight.


First, 250 grams of flour are tossed into a bowl of your choice.



Next, 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

And then 175 grams of brown sugar. Mine was quite hard since I had not used it for quite some time (perhaps close to a year?) and I needed to spend a lot of time breaking it apart with a fork.

Next go the spices: .25 teaspon of cinnamon and .25 teaspoon of freshlly ground nutmeg. I ignored the instructions here. First, I added a lot more spices (Norwegians are NOT known for spicing up their foods) and added ginger as well. Secondly, I doubt I will ever in my life have a fresh nutmeg to ground, so dried powder had to suffice.

In the meantime, my daughter needed a job to do, so that she could rightfully say that she made the cupcakes with a little help from me. Thus I gave her the most important job: chopping up two bananas into tiny pieces.

We just won't tell anyone that after 4 minutes she thought that this was not fun any more and wanted me to finish the job she started.

I chopped up the apple needed.

As for the liquid ingredients, one needs to whip together: 1 deciliter (100 ml) of milk, one egg and 3 tablespoons of peanut oil (I only had raps oil).

Then you pour the mixture into your dry ingredients:

And mix it together until it is nice and thick like this:

Then you put in all the chopped up fruit:

And mix these until the batter looks like this:

Then you fill up the cup cake tins.....

And give the bowl to your daughter who is eternally grateful because she has NOT had ANY fun this week.

And ignore her when she's still working on it 15 minutes later.

Now, as the cup cakes were baking, the house filled with a wonderful smell that reminded me of autumn: apples, spices, thick breads.... Mmmmmm......

Now when the cup cakes came out of the oven, they certainly looked a lot different than what was in the book...

One cannot see it from the picture below, but they really did look a lot different.

But they tasted wonderfully. I would definitely make these again any time soon. Even if my daughter refuses to help me chop up bananas.

First Day of a New School Year

I've been at home the last little while, not feeling as frisky as I normally do, and this is why it continues to be quiet on my blog.


Having said this, it is important that I blog a little bit for my family back in The New Country, keeping them updated with what has been happening in my children's lives.


Yesterday was the first day of a new school year for my son. Yesterday he began second grade.... and couldn't wait to get going. I should have let him sleep in 15 minutes longer than I did. He was itching to get out of the door.


[First of all - a warning the the pictures are not as great as they usually are. My hands are not as steady as they normally are, and my brain is not as focussed as it usually is]


Here he is eating breakfast, yougurt and musli:


And suddenly he said to me: I need to have blue hair today. It's the first day of school!


Fair enough - we put some blue in his hair.


And then I forgot to turn off the flash:

And after I thought I had turned off the flash, it turned out I did not push the proper button hard enough:

But there's no time to take new pictures as my son has really important things to do today.

Like putting on shoes that won't cooperate.

Okay - he's ready to go and will stand still long enought to let me take a picture.

And I forget to turn off the flash.

Ahhh... I'm giving up on taking proper pictures now. Now I just want to sit on the couch and relax before my daughter wakes up.

My son checks his bag one more time.

Okay Mom, no more pictures. I'm ready to go.

And off he runs without a hug and kiss. (Which is okay because I definitely should not be kissing him too much right now).

And I run to the kitchen window before he disappears for the next 6 hours.

It's very quiet in the house right now....

Adding Surface Area to our Holidays....

So for those that have been have been following my blog, you'll know that my husband and I have been working on improving our sea side cabin for years. This year we're adding porches, replacing two windows and painting walls. For the work that we did last Easter, see this post:


http://plaskdesign.blogspot.com/2009/04/working-together-as-team.html


But now we're doing the fun stuff. The stuff that's easier to do, quicker to build. And looks impressive.


Everything started out well from the beginning. My husband purchased his materials when there was a sale at the lumber yard. I myself was stunned. I never even knew that lumber yards and building material stores had sales. The result was that we were able to get everything we needed instead of just half of it. And here it is:



You'll see that one piece of clear fiberglass/plastic on the top of the pile. We need that because last Easter my son did this:




While swinging way too high on this:

We haven't actually gotten to that part yet.... but we're working on it.

And so in addition to all the materials we bought we still have our previously purchased materials that will also be used:

Here's a reminder of where we last left you at Easter, having dug holes and made huge cement blocks, on which the vertical supporting beams will be placed.

And this is how far we came yesterday, just after lunch:

I was trying to get my husband to wave to me. His response was to become very irritated and told me to come down and help him (as opposed to vaccuuming the crumbs that kids had left all over the living room floor because they decided to take their breakfast down from the table so that they could play with all their little Bankugan toys).

I spent 45 minutes helping him put up the last vertical supporting post, as well as securing it to the cabin itself. I also got three big horsefly bites that I am still treating with aloe vera.

But all this was good - it would have taken him at least twice as long to complete the job himself. And soon after that he was able to complete the days work:

I am so looking forward eating dinner out here in a couple of days.

Premier of Else-Gunn Cowls... and a surprise from my favorite girl.

There's a woman who lives in my neighborhood, Else-Gunn. A totally cool woman. She's a very good friend to one of my neighbors and one of her children is in the same class as one of mine. Over the past two years I've had the oppurtunity to have many conversations with her. She's always smiling. She always has something funny to say. Even when she's really irritated at something, her humor bubbles over. So even if you really agree with her that the situation is down right awful, you're giggling.


She has to be one of the nicest people I know, and during the last couple of months I've had the oppurtunity to slowly get to know her better.


A week or so ago she decided to give me a big bag of gorgeous yarn that she had collected.... and had intended to knit cute things from. But sometimes the best of intentions don't work out. It was so nice of her to give it to me and I am very grateful for her thoughtfullness.


Right from the beginning, I had made it my first priority to make her a cowl as a thank you. She did let me know that her favorite color was pink.... and I am almost finished with her project. But first I had to think up a good idea, and practice a few times before setting to work.


I found a beautiful shell technique that looks stunning. I've made two cowls already, which I've taken pictures of:


This first one is made from a dark pink cotton (this one is not her's). It is 95% finished as I need to add some buttons to it. I was thinking mother-of-pearl. It's a little hard to see, but I hope the shell pattern comes forth a little bit.

Here is a second one that I have done witha combination of two types of white cotton. The plan is to naturally dye this one (and others I will make from cotton) using natural materials I can find from the nature surrounding my cabin.

It's my intention to make a lot of cowls of this style, in different colors. And all of them will be under the title Else-Gunn Cowl.

Fame is always fun to pass out to others.

And here is a man's cowl that I've almost finished knitting. This is 100% wool in a fantastic bright red color. Great for sports fanatics.

And then later today I got a bit of a surprise.

It was rather warm today, and after a few hours of swimming in the ocean, I decided to head back up to our cabin to start getting dinner ready. My daughter came with me and once inside she asked me if she could work. This is quite different from just painting or coloring, which she also does.

This was just perfect for me and left me free to make dinner.

About 20 minutes later she comes to me with this:

The light had already started setting.... but what she's made for me is a new diary/journal that I can use (having seen that I was coming to the end of one I am working on presently).

I was really stunned. I mean, I have always thought I have the greatest kids. I have always had the opinion that they are more thoughtful, considerate, and have more empathy that the average kid. But this rarely invovles me. It usually involves everyone else BUT me.

But maybe sometimes it can be my turn too.