his/hers

  

I made these cross stitch his/her name tags back in 2012 when we first bought these red lockers for our bathroom and when I liked the idea of ironic cross stitch. And, actually, I still like these tags. 

Four years later I've gotten around to sharing  - chart and instructions here.

Reading: Plastic free: how I kicked the plastic habit and how you can too by Beth Terry.

notebooks

I confess I am a great maker of lists - lists of words, of places, of things for the garden etc. And that is why I love the notebook - it keeps all my lists in one place. I have been collecting (recycling?) paper to make my own notebooks for a few years now and finally I've done it following this tutorial. You don't need to buy any special equipment to bind a notebook. I substituted some of the suggested tools/materials with what I had. I used embroidery thread instead of linen thread, a darning needle that doubled as an awl and as a bookbinding needle, and a plastic ruler instead of a bone folder. I also used old magazine covers for my book covers. I followed the tutorial as written. The notebooks are quite small; only ten leaves/twenty pages each but you can easily put in more pages. I'm feeling very smug about these notebooks. They were a quick and straight forward make and turned out well. Very satisfying. I think they would make nice gifts as a set of three especially if you illustrated or printed your own covers. But, be quick, only eleven weeks till Christmas.

Reading: I'm back to A manual for cleaning women by Lucia Berlin.
Watching: Two unexpectedly similar (kind of) films - Michael Moore's Where to invade next and Captain Fantastic

four more

- the cherry trees are in blossom
- Little Garden - one of local supermarket chains has a promotion giving customers tiny peat pots complete with dehydrated growing medium and seeds for herbs and vegetables. It's aimed at children but we're giving it a go.
- homemade almond butter - recipe here
- lemon cake with a sugar topping

Lemon Cake
125g butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp finely grated lemon rind

Preheat oven to 170ºC.
Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
Cream butter and sugar.
Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in the rind.
Fold in sifted flour alternately with milk to form a smooth batter.
Spread into tin and bake for about 45 minutes until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Rest in the tin for about 3-4 minutes and then turn out onto a cooling rack set over a tray. Spoon over lemon syrup.

Syrup:
1/2 cup sugar
juice of one lemon
thin strips of lemon rind (use a zester, if you have one)
Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl and spoon over the warm cake. Allow to set.

Nice served with thick Greek yoghurt.

Watching: Veep season 4
Reading: Spaces: where creative people live, work and play by frankie magazine (2015). It's tempting to just look at the great photos in this book - I love looking at other people's stuff - but it's so worth reading the text to hear their stories too. One of my favourites is about a couple and their two small children who live in a lighthouse keeper's cottage on Moreton Island, Queensland. "Sometimes it's so quiet you can hear the sound of whales exhaling as they surface on the sea below the house." Imagine that!

Have a good week.