Crafters RSI

Do you think all us crafters will have severe RSI or arthritis when we're older? My finger joint is sore today but then I have spent a good few hours working on a cross stitch design. Big one brought out all her cross stitch stuff last night and asked me to do some with her. After trawling through all her books I found some designs that I thought would fit in with one of my swaps so gave it a whirl. Cross stitch isn't really my thing but 5 designs later...my finger is sore. I must be holding the aidia funny. I notice my fingers get sore after a spate of stencil cutting too. ah well such is life :)
So as I can't share the picture of my lovely cross stitching here's a shot of one of those WTF moments.

I took this photo when I was out walking with the mutts. We were just going along one of the back lanes and there was this cucumber innocently resting on top of the gate post. Did someone drop it walking their dogs after a spot of shopping? Is there a mysterious cucumber plot in the woods? Who know but it made me giggle and I had to photograph it for prosperity.

Buckeye Recipe for Karan

and anyone else who fancies giving them a go.

BUCKEYES
Printed from COOKS.COM
___________________ ___________________ __
1 1/2 lbs confectioners' sugar
1 16 oz jar crunchy peanut butter
1 cup butter, softened
1 12 oz pkg semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 tablespoon Crisco or vegetable oil

In the bowl of a food processor, add 1/2 the quantity of the butter, sugar, peanut butter. Process until well combined.
Shape into 1 inch balls. Refrigerate. Repeat this process with remaining ingredients.
In the top of a double boiler, combine Crisco or vegetable oil and chocolate, simmering and stirring until chocolate has melted. (If you don't have a double boiler, melt it in a small metal bowl over boiling water in a saucepan; alternatively, use a microwave). When melting chocolate, be careful not to allow any moisture to touch it (or steam), as this will cause the chocolate to seize and you'll have to start over!
Dip each ball in chocolate until partially coated. Place on wax paper or silicone sheets.
Store, refrigerated, in an airtight container.


I divided the whole recipe by half and was glad I did because it makes millions of the things (ok slight exaggeration)

Man I'm tired

I wasn't sure where the last week went until I just sat down and started to think about it.
The smalls and I went on the local beach clean up last weekend.

The most amusing things we found were one lone trainer, a tube of toothpaste, a huge black plastic plant pot and two big bits of yellow piping. Of course there was the usual plastic bottles, picnic rubbish and dog poo in bags. Honestly why bother picking your dog poo up and putting it in a plastic bag then just dropping it back on the ground! Apparently the beach warden was pleased with the turn out and it was in her words the biggest turn out yet. There was about 15 of us so I'm disappointed that obviously there have been so few people turn out before. The next one is planned for september when I'm sure we'll be picking up lots of lazy people's beach litter.
I've also been busy getting my hands dirty in my own back yard, planting up my lettuce plants and strawberry plants.



The strawberry plant that I put into my old veggie patch is attempting a full take over so I decided to slice off a few runners and pot them, so let's see if they like confinement and still grow. I've got plans on making me a wee fence to put up around my veggie patch to keep the mutts off it and then I can hopefully claim the land back and grow me some more lovely veg. Especially as the price of everything keeps shooting through the roof.

Indoors I finally washed my sprouter and chucked in a few seeds.

They are sprouting already so hopefully I'll be having some lovely sprouts for my lunch this week.

And while I've been on my mother earth trip this week I've also been putting my new bread machine to full use and not bought a single loaf all all long and been baking our own biscuits too!


Which reminds me I really need to post up the buckeye recipe for Karan.

More sunshine

and it turned out to be a good day in all ways.
Work wasn't so bad, I think the ongoing work is putting people off from coming in so I spent some time sat out on the back step with my friend who popped in for a juice. Him indoors popped in for his dinner and he met up with one of our friends who confirmed their arrangement to having a lads day out to a Motor Show this weekend. Then him indoors popped back this afternoon with wee one and her friend saying that a bbq sounded like a good idea, so I phoned my friend (mother of wee one's friend) at her work to invite her, invited my mate (and her fella) who had been sat outside with me, then one of my other mates appeared so we invited her and her son too. So all in all today turned out to be a very nice day. :D Tomorrow I hope to be fall asleep on the smalls trampoline in the sun but we all know what happens to fools who make plans so I guess I'll play it by ear. At least one thing I know I'll definately be doing tomorrow is working tomorrow night. :/

Please let this not be

all the sun we get this year.
Today was another glorious day. Having got our Kid Craft Swap stuff safely in the post yesterday I decided that today was a day off, well I have to work for money all day tomorrow. So I sat in the garden and happily read for a couple of hours. Sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
Tomorrow should be an 'interesting' day. The pub that I work at is having the front bar ripped out so we only have the small lounge bar at the back of the pub working. And it is small. So between trying to keep a constant stream of clean glasses, finding optics that there isn't enough room for on the wall, serving lunches and stocking up I'm hoping that the sun will still be out for me to savour for a wee while when I get home with aching feet.

Goodness gracious

Glorious sun on a bank holiday! Now let's just hope that that is not the end of our summer already :D
I've been busy with Mother here on a visit, working extra hours and partying too hard but someone has to do it I guess.
We sent out our Kids Craft Swap package today so hopefully that will find it's way down South nice and quickly.
As always I've signed up for (what big one considered far too many swaps at once Mum!) lots of swaps. The kid one was at the request of wee one, I'm also in on the Skull Swap (yep did one before and doing it again) the Nature Swap and the Dr Who Swap (again yes I've done one before and I'm doing it again)
They've all got decent send out dates so fingers crossed I'm not last minute panicing..how do you spell that word?