j'aime le macaron

J'aime les macaron. I really, really do. The perfect pastel palette, the sugar high (I never ever eat just one, restraint is for boring things like sandwiches), and for a girl raised on stodgy puddings, the daintiness. Not that I'm giving up the sticky toffee pudding forever, just until next winter. For now it's pink-blossom macaron spring. J'aime les macaron. Also the name of the gorgeous Christhcurch macaron shop, where I no longer need to shop. Hee!

                       I wish to announce that have succeded in making the most perfect macarons

                                                                          Ta da!

                                                                    *cue applause*

Ahhh.

                                    I would like to thanks the following things that made it all possible:-

1. the most perfect, and in no way difficult, macaron instruction guide (and I tried a few) on this blog
http://foodnouveau.com/2010/03/29/paris-france/how-to-make-macarons-a-detailed-illustrated-step-by-step-recipe/comment-page-2/#comments


2. What is now christened my 'lucky' eiffel tower apron (a handmade, secret post gift from Keri)

Thank you so much, I love it!

3. Persistance. This was attempt #4. 

Attempt #1 Recipe said it made about 36 shells, my version made 6. Hmm. Not a good sign. Rock hard. Literally like a rock, weighty, would break a window rock hard. Even hubby wouldn't couldn't eat them.
Attempt #2 Soggy, cracked and stuck to baking paper and had to be scraped off into the bin
Attempt #3 Soggy, stuck to baking paper having to be scraped off into bin
Attempt #4 Aimed to burn them in an attempt to get them sufficiently cooked...bingo (for me and my cooker with a broken seal)
                                                    
                       

I tucked their pert wee pink bums into bed the fridge overnight as is necessary

for macaron perfection (that was the restraint part)

Then the next afternoon me and the girl had a tea party

Sugar and spice and all things nice, Claud with her mini-macaron

Light, with a whisker of chewy-ness. Raspberry flavoured, with a creamy marscapone and raspberry jam filling.

Kids look cute using china do they not?

Cuteness factor intensified when she says "nac-ron"

Ahhh.

Thats when I remembered I had that dainty side plate, perfect for finally finishing the tiered cake stand that went so wrong at the last attempt

                                                             Another success, hurray!
                                        With all the success, sugar and spring warmth I'm on a high!

                         Can you take any more cuteness? I have another macaron related project in mind...

These doll house macarons, from here.

Ahhhh.

,

op-shop find of the week

We went to the local antique collectors club exhibition yesterday, the geeky,  old-fogey,

knowledgeable-about-old-stuff organisation my hubby's thinking of joining

(I think he thinks he might get more than a grunt and a sigh from these folks when he waxes lyrical about brown pottery!)

It was great, apart from the wailing, annoying toddler. Gosh, how are you supposed to relax?!

It was great once Claud was placated with a giant biccie and an ancient doll courtesy of an ear-sore stall holder.

I liked the teeny-tiny sewing machines

and

the TV cars

especially this one!

The best thing though was that the selling-stalls were really quite cheap. I brought home a pile of GREAT foreign maps ($2 each)

This gorgeous bottle ($10)

and

powder box ($2)

So girly!

So not strictly op-shopping, but still cheap, old and good!

Look here for more cheap, old and good stuff!

A box of butterflies

I've been meaning to show you the boxes of butterflies I've made, finished.

I'm really quite partial to maps.

I've loved them for as long as I remember. Making myself travel sick, every trip, my nose in the road atlas as we drove each summer to Skegness, Scarborough, or Blackpool. No "are we nearly there yet mum" for me, and the excitement was heightened as I thought I knew before anyone else just how close we were to getting there.

Butterflies. They wouldn't ordinarily have been my thing. But I love these. Not just because I'm so pleased with how well they have turned out, I think it's something to do with having a little girl, despite my best defenses some of the cute fluff seeps in to your taste mechanism!

The frame was op-shopped and 'up-cycled' with some old housepaint. 

I traced some butterflyshapes from a library book on butterfly classification.

Some outlines looked better than others.

I made a carboard template for each and then traced and cut out shapes from my map, 4 for each butterfly.

Sewn down the middle, stuck on with double sided sticky tape.

Pinned only because I had some blunt pins with pretty coloured bobbles on the end.

I got a white mount cut by a picture framer, only $5. Makes it look neater, finished.

It doesn't have to be maps. The second down on the right is a Claud painting.

Or even butterflies. Anything with a bit of body to show off the print would work.

An apple, a heart, a hand.

Japanese washi paper, in an op-shopped Japanese frame.

In Claudine's bedroom now.

The map of Paris from my honeymoon, with holes at the corners, biro scribblings and all.

Backed with some cool wallpaper I op-shopped.

 Also a keeper though I'm not too keen on this frame.

Yes, I've made three.

I'm a bit obsessed. Addicted!

I think it's because they look so good for so little effort and everyone loves them.

Which is good because at this rate this is what everyone is going to get for Christmas/Birthdays for some time to come.

I op-shopped another box frame on the weekend and then the hubby came home with a beautiful rimu one yesterday.

I can't wait to get stuck in!

This is me, doing the creative space thingy!

Op shop find of the week

Thursday I went to a Christchurch bloggers-meet-in-person-thing for the first time.  I was warmly taken into the fold, and felt quite at home with all the crafting/mothering/fashion/op-shopping talk. The group's tip-off, for the excellent op-shop just over the road from where we met, led me to welcome these trinkets into my life this week...

                                 

An obi belt.

 Way better looking than sucks-in-your-tummy big pants!

Large colourful cot blanket.

Destined for remodelling into cushion covers.

At some stage. For now it joins the cushion fabric pile.

A 1964 map of Manhattan; Greater New York on the reverse.

Destined to be made into cool map coasters ala Miriam

Hankies.

The one in the middle reminds me of my nan-nan.

She loved Lily of the Valley.

Sniff.

A pretty emboidered bit of something silky.

It's so lovely and delicate it puts me in mind of a 1920's wedding veil.

Destined to be thrown over cakes at Claud's midsummer birthday party, to keep the bugs off.

Joining in at Sophie Isobel's

Crafting...Pom Pom Project

Pom poms. Two doughnuts of cardboard and a remnant of wool=cute and fluffy with ease. We all learnt to make them when we were small, so they have great nostalgia value. A hat wasn't a hat without a pom pom (remember The Flumps?), nor for that matter was a pair of ankle socks, and was there anybody alive in the 80's who didn't have a souvenir gonk stuck to their pencil case/desk/school bag?
Once again inspired by some long forgotten blogpost, and in my infant-school school of craft style I've combined the two top (in my day anyway!) kiddie-crafts-with-wool, pom poms and french knitting, to make pom pom bunting to decorate the nurseries of two soon to be born babies...

                                             Easy, fluffy and cute, especially when made with mohair.

Erm, well not so easy actually.

Typically, despite the lower order craftiness required, I had difficulty with both the pom poms and the french knitting. Sigh!  My initial pom poms were too big, and to get them small enough to look right proportionally with the french knitted string demanded digital dexterity I just don't posses in my fat fingers. And I developed a severe patch of sore dermatitis on my finger from incessant wool winding (there are 40 pom poms on each one fyi!). The mother-in-law (craft guru) came to the rescue with the suggestion I buy a pom pom maker (a what?) which solved both problems easily.

Brilliant, easy, quick, get one.

Then there was the french knitting. Or rather the french knitter. I bought one of these mass produced in china for kids french knitters. So far, so pretty.

But the wretched thing had a rough, splintered inner which meant it took me about 10 frustrating minutes even to get the wool from top to bottom to begin to cast on, and when I started to knit proper it snagged the wool horribly. Arghh! Totally unfit for purpose.

(the ones with what look like staples on the top are totally useless too, the wool just slips off constantly, infuriatingly, ask the 81 year old struggling with it at my library craft circle, bless her!)

So anyway I turned blue peter and went back to ye olde worlde way of french knitting, a wooden cotton reel with four small nails knocked in.

Looks beautiful, works beautifully.

(The nails are 16 x 20 mm, flat head diamond point with a plain shank. Go impress your local hardware merchant with that request, heh!)

If you want to know how to cast on, knit, and cast off it's easy to follow here

I trialled two ways of arranging the pom poms

And I like both.

The only issue remaining is how to package them so the look pwetty but don't tangle...ideas anyone?

Op shop find of the week

Lots of op-ing down the oppy but not much op-taining this week. A bit op-ed out, but op-ful for next week.

Hmm. In the meantime here are some tins I've recently acquired and what I'm using them for...

Ahhh, cute!

Brooch making bits and bobs

Native kiwi plants (my fave)

Containing seeds, of course!

Japanese tea tin

What else in a tin this shape, duh!

Battered and beautiful

Doily project

Another 'kiwi'-ana beaut.

Empty, for now...

                   And, for all the brown pottery lovers who came out of the woodwork last week, this!
                                                    Full of husband gubbins. Not pretty!


                                              'Appy op-ing' to you all this week x

French Friday; Guimard, Paris

The Guimard Art Nouveau signs for the Parisian underground. Sublime.

Me, just to the left, very unFrench, eating on the street. Hungry.

That was the flute, that contained mayo, that gave me food poisoning, that rendered me bed

bathroom-ridden, for the remainder of that stay.

What memories!!!

Gimard also designed lots of other Parisian street furniture apparently.

Thats me again (hubby doesn't like photos without us in them). I love that hat.

More Guimard, in the Musee d'Orsay. Taken shortly before my-brand-new-for-the-trip-camera packed in, hence the terrbile colour.

Photos taken by hubby for me to look at, as I was still ill in bed, sigh.

It's France Friday over at Selina's, come and join in Francophiles!