Travel

If you follow me on Instagram, you will know I was away……….again, in July and August. This post is so late, like six months late. I'm hopeless at keeping a diary, not much better at posting on this blog either as you can see, but at least I will have some reference and photos here. 2015 will be my year of getting back into blogging (she says). Let's just see if I can do it. 

I am very blessed to have some really good friends. One in particular, happens to own a house in south west France. This friend was going over there and asked if I would like to go with her. I didn't even have to think about it, I jumped at the chance.  So I spent the last week of July and the first half of August swanning around France.  2014 has well and truly turned into the year of travel for me.

If you are bored seeing photos of France turn away now.

The bridge at Avignon (Pont d'Avignon)

Puissalicon

The view from my room

Beautiful old architectural details

Massive range of wine in the supermarkets

Seafood at the market in Pezenas

Squid and chorizo, yumm

YUM, what more can I say!

Breakfast on the terrace

Beziers

Flower markets at Beziers

Meze

Pezenas

Gorgeous quilting and embroidery shop in Toulouse

Coffee shop in Toulouse

A house in Homps along the Canal du Midi

Canal du Midi

Where we spent quite a few evenings with a glass of wine, and watching the world go by.

Surprise! It's me again and it's not three months later or 2015.

We have another finish at Chez Sunshine. 

Speaking of sunshine, we have had THE most amazing weather here. We have had days and days of beautiful sunshine, although some of the days and a lot of the nights have been freezing cold.  Down to 3 or 4 deg C at night. That's cold, really cold.  It has been good for my sewing productivity though. Cold enough for me to be quite happy to hand quilt with a quilt on my lap. None of that horrible humid, sweaty OMG I'm going to die from heat exhaustion stuff happening here at this time of year. Yay.

I digress, I was talking about a finish. I've finally finished the Red Letter Day quilt top. Unfortunately it's not exactly an award winning photo, but I've realised that if I wait for the perfect light etc to take a photo, the photo never happens. Then the blog post never happens either. So for the rest of this year, you get to see photos, good or bad, and I. will. be. blogging, even if it kills me!

 All 9 blocks completed. Like I said, not a great photo, but you get the idea.  If you follow me on Instagram you know I had a bit of a problem with the lack of grey background fabric. Fortunately with a bit of creative unpicking and re sewing, I had enough to finish the middle block. It is supposed to be the reverse of the rest of the blocks but as usual, I had to do my own thing, so I played around with the fabric in the middle block, and came up with something  a little different. I just noticed the middle block looks like it has measles or chicken pox. Great!  At least it doesn't (I hope) look like that in real life.  I used a variety of fabrics from lots of different lines. Not one piece of fabric was bought for this quilt, it all came from my stash. 

I'm pretty happy with this quilt top even though it hasn't exactly turned out how it was in my mind. Don't you hate that! I always have these visions of amazing quilts, but when I start putting it together, it's often not quite as awesome as I thought it would be.

Here's a close up of the centre block, with some AMH Innocent Crush.

Not my finest sewing skills, but I'm pretty happy with how it's come together.  Don't hold your breath for a complete finish on this one any time soon, as I have a lot of WIP's that I really want to finish first, including the one below.  Gee, hand quilting takes a looooong time, so I'm very slowly quilting Starflowers.

The hand quilting thread is a variegated perle 12 cotton. I love the subtle colours and they work really well with the colours in the blocks. I'm slowly perfecting, ha ha, or at least improving, my stitch length and the ability to quilt in a straight line. Who knew that could be so difficult on such a short distance.

A lot of socialising and enjoying the Noosa weather has been on the agenda too.

This steak was as good as it looks, from Little Humid, Noosaville

We spent a couple of hours at Hasting St in Noosa last week and had lunch in the Sheraton bar. I love the decor in this bar. Even though it was cold enough to be wearing boots, and a cardigan, it was nice to soak up the tropical ambience.

BP and I went to Lake Weyba in the late afternoon last week, just before sunset. How beautiful is this view?  I sometimes take this piece of paradise for granted, I need to get out and about more.

Lots of clues

The photos are not the best as I haven't been able to download all mine or any of BP's yet and also can't edit them at this stage.


















Hawaii. The closest state of the USA to Australia, and a mecca for Aussie shopaholics.

Not admitting to being a shopaholic at this stage.

We have just spent a relaxing week cruising around the islands. A well needed break. I didn't realize how "dishausted" I was until I got on that ship. It didn't help, flying overnight and managing to only sleep for approx 45 minutes on a ten hour flight, and that wasn't all in one 45 min block. I think this year had really taken its toll on me. Six months of decluttering 13 years of accumulated crap and finally ending a chapter in my life. Trying to find a new home to move to and also dealing with the move to the city for BP (Bitchypoo). We hit that ship and promptly slept at every available opportunity. Not quite what I was expecting to do. I had multiple nanna naps during the afternoons we weren't sightseeing, and slept for over 8 hours most nights. Brilliant, as at home I'd have been lucky to sleep 4 hours a night.

We survived hiring a car and driving on the other side of the road. Good news - no accidents and I didn't kill any one. It was a great way to "practice" driving. So now I'll be all set to drive on mainland USA as long as I don't have to tackle any freeways.

We are now in Waikiki for some more R and R and S (shopping), and I'm looking forward to eating all the stuff we can't get at home, and hoping I don't have a heart attack in the process. Yogurtland is high on my list. Followed by the Cheesecake Factory, I hope it lives up to expectations. Any other suggestions will be gratefully received.

BP is due to start a shopping frenzy, Victoria's Secret is on her list along with an awful lot of designer stuff, yikes! I'm hoping to find some pants to replace my favourite white linen pants that I bought with me and the ships laundry service tried its hardest to destroy them but still make them look like they were ok. I put them on only to find that there were multiple tears on the seams and the fabric looked like they had resorted to washing them the old fashioned way by using the rocks on the banks of a stream. They were clean and beautifully pressed. Unfortunately I only realized the morning we were disembarking. Fortunately I realized before I got off the ship to do an all day tour, and just had time to change out to another pair of pants, that by some miracle I had packed in my overnight bag and not packed in my suitcase, as our suitcases had to be packed and ready outside our cabin the night before. Imagine my horror, and everyone else's for that matter, if i had been walking around Pearl Harbor whilst my pants disintegrated around me. Situation averted, phew.

The fur babies are having fun at home and being spoilt rotten. I don't think they miss me at all. It's nice to know my house is being looked after while I'm away. I'll have to do this vacation thing more often!

Survivor: Kitchen

Pinterest is one of my biggest time suckers, that and my incredibly amazing ability to procrastinate. I've been pinning on Pinterest for ages now. There's so much inspiration and I have a squillion and one pins, BUT I pretty much never do anything with them. Occasionaly I have a look through them to see what I've pinned.  I mentioned this to Shay last week. We quite often pin each others pins, especially the food ones. More often than not, the "totally bad for you but god they look good" recipes. Shay came up with the brilliant somewhat insane idea that each week we are going to pick a recipe and both of us are going to cook it. Now I'm sure you know by now that cooking/baking is not really either of our strong points. This is going to be a very interesting exercise. I'm going to apologise in advance to the very nice people that have produced these recipes, for all the disasters etc that are going to arise from this experiment.

This inaugural recipe is from Simply Delicious and is Creamy Dijon Chicken.

The original

My version of Creamy Dijon Chicken

Rather than retype the recipe here, you can go over to the actual recipe by clicking on the link above. You'll notice that my attempt doesn't look much like that one. I think that will be a recurring theme over the coming weeks. I didn't let the sauce reduce enough, I was in a hurry and hungry!

My changes to the recipe, that's official changes as opposed to "stuffed it up" changes -
I halved it as I was making it for one, so one for now and one for later, or possibly a late night snack "a la Nigella" when I get the munchies before I go to bed!
I didn't have any leeks, I only had a Spanish onion, I forgot to buy them at the supermarket, because I was completely shocked when I walked into the supermarket which was in the middle of renovations and everything was not where it should be.

Despite the differences, it was ok, I had it with a crisp salad, using whatever I had in the fridge, which wasn't much as most of my salad vegetables had succumbed to my scientific experiment of how long they could survive in the fridge, and had finally died.  (Side note, they don't last as long as you hope they will.)  I concur with Shay that maybe American dijon mustard is not the same as the French dijon mustard we get here, it was very mild.  I stress, this may not necessarily be the fault of the original recipe but I found that the mustard did not shine through and the lemon took over.  As it is, it is an easy,  quick recipe, especially if you flatten the breasts or cut them into bite size pieces so that they cook quickly, great for a mid week meal.  In my mind that's always a winner. I'm forever looking for quick easy meals.  If you're not a huge fan of strong mustard flavour, and I'm one of those people, it's mild enough that the kids should like it.   I'd probably tweak it next time, and either reduce or leave out the lemon.

This one didn't make the cut.

Jeff Shay has spoken. Creamy Dijon Chicken it's time for you to go.

Pop on over to Shay's Kitchen Survivor post at Quilting In My Pyjamas and stay tuned for next week's  burnt exciting offering.

Tuesday tidbits

I survived THE birthday.

I made a cake for THE birthday, which was absolutely scrumptious,  but I didn't exactly go all out on the presentation and I forgot to buy candles or decorations for it, so had to make do with what was on hand. I don't think I scored many points for chef of the year yesterday. She asked for "the" coconut cake, which is an Australian Women's Weekly recipe, at least it tasted really really good. I love how this photo turned out, even though the icing looks really awful. I think a couple of younger people may have sampled some of it as I'm sure it didn't look quite that bad earlier.

Here's a photo of me trying to look fabulous in the kitchen and trying to make the cake without clearing a nice big space on the bench/countertop beforehand, like most sensible sane people would do. 

Bitchypoo thought it would be good to have some overhead shots, a la TV cooking shows, lol.  They also show my new hair colour.  Much lighter!!!!!!

In other culinary news, Kirsten from  Kirsten's Cooking recently posted a recipe, Grilled Veggie Sandwiches.  I had lots of lovely veggies in the fridge so roasted them and made this for lunch the other day.  It was wonderful, and it's so versatile, I used purple carrots, zucchini, carrots, capsicum, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes basil pesto and mozzarella. Next time I'm going to try it with feta. If you click on the link above it will take you to the recipe.

That's purple carrot hanging out of the left side, on top of the normal colour carrot.

Unfortunately it's full of vegies, and they have to be cut up, so I know someone who won't be making it, he he he.

I have been occasionally attempting quilting the Strawberries and Champagne quilt.  I haven't made much head way with this, the pebble quilting takes me forever, but I'm very happy with how it's coming along.  Don't hold your breath for a quick finish on this one. I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to quilt the rest of it, between the circles. Sorry about the crappy photo, but it's really not that exciting yet and not particularly worthy of a lovely photo at this stage.

I've also been making a few pinwheels using two charm packs, one of Martinique and one of Oasis.  They are quite pretty but most of the prints are of similar value so it may or may not look great once I've put it all together. Individually the pinwheel blocks are cute, so we will just have to wait and see.

Favourite Things Friday

It's Friday again and that means  it's time for FTF, hosted by the wonderful Shay of Quilting In My Pyjamas .  This week my favourite thing is going to the supermarket or local fruit and vegetable store and being able to buy the fruit and vegetables I have on my shopping list.

I didn't realise it was a favourite until today when I couldn't do it! It's something I have always taken for granted. When I do my grocery shopping I automatically assume that most things on my list will be sitting waiting for me to choose them and take them home.

Unfortunately the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables is going to be a little erratic and slow at the moment due to the floods.   Today when I went to the supermarket they had avocadoes, bananas (we live in Queensland they always have those, lol) pumpkin (squash), cucumbers, mushrooms, celery, some iceberg lettuce, oranges, lemons, a few grapes and that was about it.  No potatoes, onions, capsicum (red pepper), tomatoes, spinach, apples, or just about anything else you can think of. I was lucky they had some produce, apparently one of the larger supermarkets in the tourist area had no fruit and vegetables at all!

Fortunately we also have a couple of local fruit and vegetable shops in the area who are supplied by local producers,  and they had a much better range. A big thank you to the local fruit and vegetable growers who through a lot of hard work supply us with our produce. Oh and a thank you to the locals who didn't panic buy at the slightest rumour that we may have a shortage of supply for the next few weeks.

Hop on over to QIMP, follow the link at the beginning of the post and find out what everyone else has as a favourite this week.

Images taken from the internet. The last one from here and the third one from Helen's blog Helsie's Happenings

Assiduous

This is becoming difficult, it took me a little longer to find an interesting and appropriate adjective today.  The dictionary is my friend!

We have had very humid weather here, approx 90% humidity, temp. approx.  26 C (78F)  and I've been working slaving away on the wonky owl quilt, quilting in the ditch. About half way through I decided it would have been better to be a bit more daring. Rather than unpick it all, I finished quilting in the ditch on every block and I'm now trying to decide how I should be more daring.  

All the blocks are finished, and I spent the last two days arranging and re-arranging the 30 blocks.

The HST quilt is now quilted, bound, washed and dried. I am going to try very hard from now on to not make any more quilts using only the one line. I much prefer to use a whole range of fabrics, it feels much more exciting.

Lamb and Greek salad with marinated lamb, marinated feta, cucumber, capsicum, tomato, Cos lettuce,  (no olives as I didn't have any, much to my surprise), and tzatziki,  and yes that does look like the world's largest dollop of Tzatziki. It's an optical illusion, trust me!

I was hoping to go for a walk and take some photos to show you the views around here, but it has been so wet it will have to wait until the weather improves and the cloud lifts.