New Potatoes

Freshly dug potatoes, the first of many more to come by the looks of things in that ground.

They were so white, fresh and delicious. We'll be enjoying many more of them soon.

Amy Butler's Love for Mum

Happy Birthday Mum!She picked this gorgeous stuff out for me to make her a skirt, just the usual skirt!

We had a hard time choosing, Kelani have the whole range. Click here to see Amy Butler's website and the Love range, my favourite is the Soul group.
My BFF Kimmy ordered some today as well cause in her words "I just can't stand it any longer". I must admit that most of Amy Butler's fabrics don't grab me that much, but this is just so beautiful, up there with Farmers Market for me and that's saying something!
There was enough in the main skirt fabric leftover to squeeze a bag out, I have nearly put these things out for retirement (O.V.A.H. if you know what I mean), I've counted up at least 60 of these things I've made and am over it! But when I saw the exact amount needed for a bag leftover, it seemed a waste to fold it up for the shelf so I got the bag template out and did another. They are just the most useful bags and so lovely with gorgeous fabrics under shiny plastic! I am glad I did it now.

Happy Birthday to the best Mum

xxx

Yet Another Wrap Skirt

It's probably getting a bit boring, but here's another Versatile Wrap Skirt made with another old tablecloth.

Here's a few pictures from my garden, starting with my happy entry petunia's that are growing under the massive gums on our driveway.

My recent Hippeastrum purchases, love em!

A new miniature rose, so sweet.
My old wheelbarrow of Petunia's is coming along nicely too.

Cooking and Eating from the Patch

Lill picked this...
and together we made this...

...homemade canneloni (using fresh lasagne sheets) wrapped up with silverbeet, chicken breast mince, tomatoes, garlic, ricotta and then cooked in chicken stock, a little cream, ricotta and grated cheese.
This is how it turned out and was very yum!
With the leftover silverbeet, we wrapped up whole zuchini's and we also roasted some golden squash.

Vegie Garden Update

Sunflowers just sprouted.

These little things sprouted only 2 or 3 days after we put the seeds in.
Green Cucumber
Baby Golden Squash, these were really good.

Everything is growing strong and fast!
A night's harvest! 5 eggs, some beans, lettuce, squash and silverbeet...all eaten up for dinner!
And finally, another Versatile Wrap Skirt I finished off tonight. Made from an old tablecloth, not too sure about this one though.

Pretty Stuff from the Garden

Mum and I are into roses and hippeastrums at the moment and we have picked up a few miniature roses each from Big W surprisingly. I got a lovely mauve (above), cream and a tiny tiny hot pink one that Joey picked out and is now "Joey's Rose"! We bought cheap enough terracotta pots and now they look so beautiful in the sun at my front door, I think I might go back and get myself a few more...
This is my prized Hippeastrum which I have been waiting so patiently to flower to see what colour it is since I had forgotten.

Check out the before flowering pic! Tomorrow we are heading back to the Hippe Farm to get a couple more special ones.
And this is just something that is looking sweet at the moment, a couple of old tea pots with some holes drilled in the bottom filled with Heartsies. I am on the look out for some more old teapots.
And lastly, some fresh picked flowers from Mum's garden on my hall stand. You can just see some Blue Forget-me-not's amongst the bunch.




Next up I thought I would show you: an update in my vegie patch and progress on extending the chook yard, still to come: before and after pic's of our house

My Garden

Since I have spent so much time outside this week, gardening my little heart out and I've loved every minute- I am going to share some pictures of what's going on in the garden at the minute- my favourite stuff!
This is my new rose "Just Joey", its a standard and I've planted it out the front of the fence in this little rocked section between the 2 driveway gates. This was Nanny's favourite rose. It is an orangey peachy goldy yellowy colour! Petunias in front of it.
This is something special! A gorgeous Hippeastrum, not sure what name, but def a named one. I bought 3 last year from the Hippe Farm nearby and plonked in, I love how they just come up amongst the other stuff. There is another really special one just about to burst out the bud, stay tuned for that!
Here it is ready to bust open!

And lastly a happy wheelbarrow of petunias, I pulled out the pansies, they were well and truly finished in here. I have made a pact with myself to 'flourish' my seedlings 3 times a week to give them the best chance.

Next up I thought I would show you: what my little piece of acreage looked like before we got our hands on it!

Mango Macadamia and Caramel Cheesecake

This is really yummy, not sickly sweet at all and uses delicious fresh ingredients.

My best friend Kimmy makes this heaps, well she used to!

I have made 2 in the last couple of weeks since Mango's are good right now and we have a good supply of mac nuts too.

Mango Macadamia and Caramel Cheesecake

Base
1 pkt Marie biscuits crushed
125gm melted butter
Mix together and press into bottom of spring form tin (grease first). Refrigerate.

Filling
500gm phily cheese softened
1 cup cream
3/4 cup caster sugar
3 teaspns gelatine dissolved in 1/4 cup hot water
1 tin ready to serve caramel
1/2 cup crushed mac nuts
1 mango peeled and sliced up into wedges or you can use tinned mangoes
Beat phily cheese, add sugar and cream, beat together. Add gelatine mixture and mix well.

Assembly
Cover refrigerated biscuit base with a layer of caramel.
Sprinkle with 1/3 of the mac nuts and 1/3 of the mango wedges.
Pour over 1/2 of the filling mixture, add more caramel and swirl through
the filling with a knife lightly.
Sprinkle more mac nuts, add more mango wedges and then the remainder of the filling mixture.
Top with remainder of caramel and swirl through again, add remainder of mac nuts and mango. Set in fridge.

...and here is our lovely Mango tree, and again this year it flowered......look closer to see the flowers below...

...now look really closely (next picture) to see the baby Mangoes!

Yippee, last year the tree flowered but no fruit.

Lilly spotted the tiny green dots from my bedroom window, the tree is covered in them, lets see what happens!

This tree is also home to Mango Possum and Possum Cutie, our 2 resident Ringtail Possums. They have possum nests high in the top made of leaves and stuff, they look a bit like birds nests.

My Vegetable Paddock Part 1

Welcome to my Vegetable Garden segment here at Mummy Made It...

Above is yellow zucchini and baby golden squash, which I'd say will be ready for harvesting next week.

It's taken us a while, but finally we did it, thanks to Dad! Before we went to New Zealand we had our dam wall dug out (still alot more work to do in that area) and while we had the big digger in, we got him to churn up the soil where our vegie garden was to go. Then while we were in NZ, Dad rotary hoed the area and formed up these beds, 4 in all .

It is awesome and this is how it is looking at 4 1/2 weeks after planting.

The vegetables were all seedlings when planted and fed with dynamic lifter and mulched with mushroom compost. We have hand watered daily. In the pic above, Stephen is watering the watermelon, which will grow down the gentle slope towards the River.
Above picture also has sweet potatoes and potatoes.

The garden gets just about full sun and the soil is absolutely perfect. We have a bore close by as well which has never looked like running dry, so this vegie garden should continue to thrive. Above is tomatoes (we have 2 types plus cherry tomatoes in the front garden) fancy lettuce, silverbeet and behind Lilly is garlic chives, 2 more types of lettuce, bok choy, beans and capsicums. Oh and cucumbers!

On the other side of the yard we have an area of pumpkins planted, I think there is 6 plants! I might need a stall out the front.

I need to put in a good patch of parsley, I use so much of the stuff, the original type, not the flat leaf, I think it gets too tough. Also need some basil and coriander.

Cherry tomatoes growing amongst the garden out the front, these came up on their own and we transplanted them to this sunny spot. We have been picking cherry toms for weeks, again thanks Dad!

Here is tonights harvest. I turned the cherry toms into Fresh tomato, prawn and bacon pasta: I can give you the recipe if you want ;)

And the silverbeet went into the lasagne for tomorrow night! I am on a bit of a gardening, cooking fresh food roll at the moment, so I hope you enjoy it!


Stay tuned for my next update: Mango Macadamia and Caramel Cheesecake including pics of my Mango tree.

Shirred Summer Top

Cute little girl wearing her new Summer top, hopefully one of many more to come...

This fabric comes from an old pillowcase that was amongst my 'score' yesterday.

I used my rotary cutter to open up the pillowcase to form one big rectangle, trimmed off about 8 inches from one end to use as the straps then hemmed the top and bottom, sewed up the one and only side seam and shirred 4 rows at the top, made up the straps and sewed them on! I use my iron to steam up the shirring and make it shrink up nicely rather than pull up the elastic and risk breaking it. I also individually tie off each line of shirring in knots, both the cotton threads on the front and the elastic threads on the back, then trim the ends and stitch down over these knots and through the side seam so its not that visible but still secure.

One standard size pillowcase seems to make the perfect size top for Lilly who is 6 years old but wears size 8 to 10 clothes.

Sickeningly Gorgeous Wrap Skirt

Yep, this is sickeningly gorgeous and all for the small cost of $1
A perfect condition tablecloth which I nearly didn't cut, but you can only have so many of these things.



I turned it into a Make It Perfect Versatile Wrap which you can get from Kelani, which I've done a few times before and love it as does Kimmy. I dropped off a car load of gear to the Op Shop yesterday and had a quick browse of the 'Vintage' linens, cause you just never know, sometimes you score big time. I scored yesterday, there is another 3 tablecloths downstairs, one is almost finished into another wrap the other intact.
If you are clever you can get away with the original hem on the tablecloth for your skirt and I decided this skirt didn't need the contrast band around the bottom so left that off. I used up every last bit of the tablecloth(almost, the scraps left were not even worth the scrap pile) making the ties, and I make my ties longer than the pattern says, the longer the better.