SIPIDI! ~ January Round Up

I've tried lots of new recipes this month. A few of them have included one of my favourite things. Chickpeas.

These are the ingredients for Spanish Chickpea and Potato Bake.

It looked so good when it came out of the oven that we dived right in and I forgot to take a photo. The filling smells wonderful as it cooks. The Mechanic actually commented on it when he walked in the door that evening. This almost never happens. It's topped with sliced potatoes, which crisp up in the oven and spread with sun dried tomato pesto. Delicious.

Hummus is regular fare around here and often on the lunch menu. There are some unusual variations in Anna Jones' book, A Modern Way to Eat, using different pulses. The Happy Pear has a trio of hummus recipes too. The beetroot variety is a fantastic colour. I've not tried that one yet, but the roasted carrot version is lovely.

A quick mention for avocados,  which Deb talked about earlier in the week. Another favourite lunch staple of mine and something I've been having on toast for the last twenty years. Lots of great variations on the theme, if you're stuck for inspiration.

Links to everything on my Meat Free Pinterest board. If you've joined in with SIPIDI! this month leave a comment so that I can find your post and I'll pin you to the board. Have a great weekend.

SIPIDI! ~ November Pins

This month it's all about getting ready to document December. I've got my Project Life cards in the pages, leaving some empty pockets. They won't necessarily stay where I have put them, once I start adding photos and stories. I think having them out of the box will make it much easier to see which ones I want to use each day.

I bought a plain kraft album and my pages are 6" x 8" with a variety of different sized pockets. The cards above show the main colours: Lost Lagoon, Mint Macaron, Real Red and Very Vanilla. I suspect kraft will make an appearance in there too.

I've picked out some matching card stock and a selection of stamps that will come in handy to make extra cards. I don't tend to buy a lot of embellishments, preferring to make my own, but I couldn't resist these reindeer paperclips. The stars are punched from Gold Glimmer Paper.

I started a December Daily/JYC board, with a few ideas for page layouts, inspiration for hand made cards/embellishments and some free printables in my colour scheme. I'll be adding to that throughout the month.

Image from And So I Don't Forget.....

I particularly like the vellum banners in the pocket above, which have been made with a cut file. I don't have any sort of electronic machine, but they've inspired me to make some stamped vellum banners that I can add over photos with dark/blank areas. I also like the inclusion of an event that was in the news, and on my mind, with my niece arriving in Sydney the day before the siege.

It was great to see some of you joining in last month. Thanks to Amanda and Karen for sharing your October project inspiration with us. If I've missed anyone please let me know and I'll add you to the SIPIDI! board.

PS More information about SIPIDI! can be found in this post.

See it, Pin it, Do it! ~ May Edition

Only six days left in May, which means it’s time to share the pins that have inspired us all to action this month. Not a finished project from me, but one I’ve just started.

I met Mary at the South West Stitchers group I belong to and was inspired by the beautiful star quilt on her blog. I started looking out for vintage sheets to make something myself. It would seem they are few and far between around here, so I took the easy option and ordered some Fat Quarters from Mary’s Etsy shop instead.

I pinned Jeni Baker’s amazing Giant Star Quilt, made with vintage sheets, a while ago. There is a clear tutorial and suggestions for alternate numbers of different colours and patterned fabrics to make up the star. Mine will be made up of pink and yellow fabrics, in the various designs I have.

I had a lucky break when I found the blue and lilac sheet, for the bargain price of £2, in a local charity shop. That will be my backing. I just needed something for the background. I realised I would have enough of the sheet left over, once I’d cut the backing, to make the background too. Which means I can get started at last.

I’m going to scale the pattern back a bit, to end up with a quilt measuring 60” square. I think that’s quite big enough for my first attempt at machine quilting!

Over to you now. Have you made anything inspired by your Pinterest boards? We’d love to see. All the info on SIPIDI! can be found here.

The Pinterest board is filling up nicely. Just leave me a comment if you take part and I’ll add your project too.

See it, Pin it, Do it!

Only a week to go until the end of the month and Half Term is almost over. Already?! Welcome to the very first edition of See it, Pin, Do it!

One day last week I was making the dinner, which only involved cooking some rice and heating up the batch cooked chilli I’d defrosted. I had some leftover cream in the fridge and time on my hands. A dangerous combination it seems. I wanted something quick that I could make with what I had in the cupboard.

I had a vague memory of once seeing a TV chef make a chocolate pudding mixture and then pour boiling water over it, before putting in the oven. I turned to Google and came up with this recipe. It took about 10 minutes to throw together and the only thing I did differently was to put it in one large dish and bake for a bit longer.

It was delicious with cream poured over and would be even nicer with some vanilla ice cream. It’s best eaten straight from the oven, slightly cooled. I think it might have been a bit stodgy once it had gone cold. I didn’t have the chance to find out!

My Mum went gluten free a little while ago and has felt all the better for it, so I pinned another version to try next time. There will definitely be a next time.

Over to you now. Have you made something, from an idea you’ve pinned, this month? Just comment here to let me know and if you’ve blogged it (and the post includes an image) I’ll pin you to the SIPIDI board.* It could be something you pinned ages ago or just yesterday and you can join in any time.

I’ve seen one post already, thank you Gemma, and I’m hoping there will be more to come, over the next couple of weeks.  Looking forward to seeing what you’ve created this month.

*That sounds like some form of cruel and unusual punishment.

A New Monthly Meme

A monthly meme you say? That’s something new around here. It is and I really hope that some of you will join me. So what do you need for a meme? An idea is a good place to start. Perhaps a snappy acronym to go with it?

I give you SIPIDI! ~ See It, Pin it, Do it!

How often do you see something, while visiting your favourite blogs or just browsing Pinterest, think it’s a great idea and pin it? If you’re anything like me, then that’s probably quite often. How often do you actually go back and use that idea as inspiration for a project of your own, or cook that delicious recipe? Not quite so often? Well, lets do it then.

Towards the end of each month, I’ll link to at least one thing that I’ve pinned to my boards on Pinterest and show you what I’ve made. It could be a card, a sewing project, a recipe, or anything else that takes my fancy. Are you with me?

Here is where I’m really hoping that somebody out there is saying, “Yes!”

This month I’ve been trying out quite a few new recipes. Being a great lover of chickpeas, this was a favourite with me. Jardaloo Ma Murghi or Curry with Apricots.

As you can see, mine doesn’t look quite like the picture, although I did follow the recipe fairly closely. I think the original looks almost like sweet and sour. My apricots were in juice and I have a feeling that Jack’s may have been in syrup, to get that shiny quality to the sauce.

I’ve made it twice now and I did change a few things. I used dried chickpeas the first time, as specified, but you have to be organised a day ahead for that. I’ve always got the tinned variety in the cupboard and it worked equally well, when I substituted those, along with some peaches, when I couldn’t get apricots.

I prefer cumin seeds to the ground stuff, I think they have a nicer aroma when you fry them. I now use Very Lazy Chillis from the jar, because I developed a particularly nasty burning sensation, all over the palms of my hands, after chopping a fresh chilli a few months ago. The recipe says 5 apricots, which was much more than a third of my tin. There were 14 halves so I used 10 of them. When I switched to peaches I used 5 halves. Otherwise I stuck to the recipe.

As suggested, the leftovers were indeed delicious the next day in a wholemeal pitta.

Have you been inspired enough, by something on your boards this month, to have a go? If you have then point me in the right direction in your comment. If you’re interested in joining in, then let me know that too and I’ll have a go at setting up a proper linky at the end of February.

PS If you like the look of the recipe and I can heartily recommend it, then don’t forget to pin from the source, rather than the picture on my blog.

Five Things I’m Loving This Friday ~ Spring

After a little break from the Friday lists, I’m back with some Spring themed projects.

Bunny finger puppets from The Purl Bee.

Chicken juggling bags from pom pom emporium.

Linen bunnies from EAB designs.

Subway art painted Easter eggs from Lil’ Luna.

A bunny fold napkin.

I found the last one on Pinterest and sadly the link leads nowhere. However, with a bit of googling, I found some instructions here and have since discovered the photo is from Martha Stewart.

I decided to go back to using photos in my Friday Five, but I’m hoping that anyone wanting to pin any of these ideas will click through the links first. Thankyou.

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday? #142

Thankyou for all the well wishes for my poorly boy last week. He is all better now and back to school, along with his sister. The house always seems so quiet, the first few days after a holiday, without them. I’m left at home with the mess!

You can see the remains of my second breakfast, eaten at my desk while I had another look at how the quilt blocks go together.

The book is by Pam and Nicky Lintott and there are some wonderful quilts in it. I decided to start with this fairly straightforward design, which I think will work just as well with the bright colours I have. All the strips have been cut now. I just need to sort the remainder into pairs for the four patch blocks, so there is a good contrast.

I’m off to tackle some of that mess, before I settle down with a coffee and visit some interesting and inspirational desks.

PS If any of you WOYWWers are interested in finding out whether your work has been ‘pinned’ to the boards on Pinterest, there are simple instructions in Friday’s post on how to do it.

Pinspiration ~ Chicken and Lemons

I have found Pinterest to be a brilliant tool for storing ideas from around the net, that I want to come back to at a later date. However it is only recently that I have started using as a resource in itself. I wanted to try my hand at a Lemon Drizzle Cake. Simply Googling brings up a seemingly endless list of recipes, but which to choose? By searching on Pinterest, the list is much shorter and you know that somebody else has thought that particular recipe worth noting.

I chose this one from Mostly Yummy Mummy and yummy it surely was. It’s a good thing I took this photo as soon as it had cooled, because there’s not much left now.

On Wednesday I was looking for inspiration to use up a couple of chicken breasts I had languishing in the fridge. I happened to visit Kirsti’s blog and she mentioned a recipe she’d found on Pinterest. Sweet and Spicy Bacon Wrapped Chicken sounded pretty good to me. As luck would have it I also had a couple of rashers of back bacon, so I gave it go. I changed the recipe a bit and used smoked paprika instead of the garlic powder and chilli powder and probably a lot less sugar.

As you can see I didn’t really have enough bacon. The children liked the look of it, so I cooked it again last night for all of us and used streaky bacon this time. They were much better wrapped than these, but I had no chance of a photo opportunity, before they were wolfed down. I served with creamy mash and sweetcorn. A definite success.

This post was brought to you as part of Beverly’s Pinterest Inspired Tuesdays.