Kelly Casanova Weaving Lessons

Kelly

Super Marshmallow Banana Apple Fluff cake!

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My 9 year old daughter decided it was high time for her to write a new cake recipe. She has made her Apple choc cake so many times and wanted something a bit different. This is what she came up with – the Super Marshmallow Banana Apple Fluff Cake!

1 cup SR flour
120 grams butter, melted
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup whole milk
2 eggs, whisked
2 tablespoons rolled oats
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons desiccated coconut
1 tablespoon honey
1 banana, mashed
1 apple, chopped into smallish pieces
5 marshmallows, chopped in half
slivered almonds for topping

Preheat oven to 170 (C). Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add milk and eggs and whisk in. Combine melted butter and honey, whisk in. Add the mashed banana, apple and marshmallows and stir with a wooden spoon. Pour the cake batter into a lined and greased cake tin, scatter slivered almonds over the top. Bake for 40 – 50 minutes, checking the centre with a skewer for doneness.

Please let us know if you try this recipe, my daughter loves to receive feedback. Also, please post your questions and let us know if we’ve missed anything important!

Break the rules photography

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Photography is so much more artistic than I ever knew before. Once you have a reasonable amount of the technical knowledge, the rest is up to you. This is what I really love about photography – the artistic freedom coupled with technical skill. It’s so exciting and challenging!


What I wasn’t prepared for when delving into the art of photography is all the so called “rules” one must follow in order to achieve “good” photos. The rule of the thirds, posing rules, lighting rules. I have found something much more useful than rules. Experience. Passion. Experiments. 
Some will look at one of my landscapes and say “but you haven’t used the rule of thirds” or “your horizon line isn’t precise” and “it’s over/under exposed”. 

When I look at a photo I’m led by the feeling it gives me. Do I love the image? Was capturing the image a positive experience? Was it fun?
If I can say a definite YES to these questions, then my motto is:

Go ahead and break the rules!

Are they doing enough?

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It’s usually on days when I’m feeling discouraged that I get that panicky feeling about the children and their education. Are they learning? Are they doing enough? Am I doing enough with them? I know that they’re happy at home and that homeschooling is a perfect fit for us, but I do find myself gripped with doubt at times.


This morning I was feeling a bit this way. I decided to write a list for each child and write down what they did within a certain time frame. I started around 9am and finished around 1pm.


5 year old daughter:
*Spelling and writing
* Helped to make bread, figured out weighing flour on her own for the first time.
* Read books.
*Kinetic sand (hours later, she is still playing with it, making all sorts of “treats” for her “shop” and other imaginative games.

7 year old daughter:
* Online maths program, learning money.
* Worked on editing her latest stop motion on the computer.
* Read books on her own.
*Played with kinetic sand with her sister.

9 year old daughter:
*Worked on a puzzle of the world with her brother.
* Free drawing and colouring in.
* Animal feeding.
* Reading on her own.
*Online maths program – graphs and area measurement.
* Knitting practice.
*Joining in the kinetic sand game.

14 year old son:
*Working on a puzzle of the world with his sister.
* Helping his sisters with maths and other study tasks.
* Spanish program.
*Online maths program – decimals
* Film and media studies.
* Bible study.

In addition to these lists are all the other tasks that they do every day like meal preparation, cleaning their rooms and keeping the house tidy, prayer, outdoor play and exercise and so many other things that are a regular part of daily life for us.

Hmm, I think they’re doing pretty well! Maybe next time you’re feeling inadequate, you could try writing down what the children are doing and you will realise that it’s more than enough!

Simple photography backdrop

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Our garden is a great location for photography portraits, but, having just arrived at Autumn, it’s a little dry and not looking it’s best. Being a natural light photographer, I wanted to head outside but I was also wanting something a little different for a portrait session with my littlest sweetie pie and her fluffy friend.
I grabbed my favourite bed sheet, pegged it on the clothes line and we were in business! If it’s a breezy day you will have the challenge of the sheet moving (which you can see in the right corner here) in which case you could possibly weight it down with something at the bottom. I kind of like the feeling that the blowing sheet gives to this photo though.


Next, your editing program can be used to achieve a variety of looks still using the same backdrop and different poses.


A plain sheet would also work well if you were looking for a plain backdrop with natural light, but I think the pretty floral one suits my little sweetie just fine, don’t you?

African Red Butterfly

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I love the feeling of finishing a long term project – something challenging that has required a lot of time and care. I bought this Red African Butterfly kit from Trish Burr last year but other projects took over.

I made the commitment to finish and completed it last night. Phew! The technique used is thread painting and involved one piece embroidery floss at a time with a very fine needle. 
I’m pretty pleased with how it came out, though I can obviously use a lot more practice with thread painting as it’s far from perfect.

Now, what to do with it? I’d like to put it in a nice frame, I spent too long working on it to put it to practical use. 

Have you seen Trish Burr’s designs? There are a lot of beautiful pieces to choose from and the instructions are detailed. I would love to do more of her designs in the future.

Everyday Life Photo Challenge

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I’ve entered the I Heart Faces photo challenge for the first time. The theme is “Everyday Life”. Our every day life involves a lot of reading and this scene of a child lying on the floor, engrossed in a book is a very common one. If you’re interested in entering the challenge or just viewing all the wonderful entries, follow this link.

The Red Riding Hood project

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I’ve had this project in mind for a while now. I got the cape made (if you want to make your own, I found the instructions here very helpful. For free hand drawing the hood, I used one of my daughter’s hoodies and roughly traced the outline. Make it big!) got the rest of the costume together, then just had to wait for a suitable day to travel to the location.

The weather conditions weren’t the best but I managed to get a lot of shots I could use.


My little model was a trooper but did wear out fairly quickly (actually she just wanted to play and explore the forest, fair enough I guess!)

At least one of these photos will be used in the final 6 that I need for a portfolio building assignment. 
I feel that I’ve found my photography niche, now I just need to keep building my skills and hopefully getting some exposure (pun not intended!)

In case you’re wondering what my next creative photography project might be, don’t worry, I’ve been planning it for weeks and will start on the costume very soon 🙂

Home made peanut butter

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We go through plenty of peanut butter here and our youngest daughter in particular is mad about it on toast for breakfast. She is also a huge Nutella devotee.
I had heard that peanut butter is really easy to make and I don’t know why I’ve never tried, but yesterday I was gripped with the thought this was something I needed to do!

I’m glad I did! It is different to store bought peanut butter (it tastes more nutty, more natural, more REAL!) 

Why don’t you try it too? Here is how I made it:

* 500g roasted, salted peanuts 
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of honey
 ** 2 tablespoons of peanut oil

Place your nuts in a food processor. Blend until they are coarsely ground. At this point, if you want chunky peanut butter (like I did) take about 1/3 of the ground nuts out and set aside.
Add the salt and honey. Continue to blend until your mix is smooth or starts to look like a paste. Times really vary depending on your food processor, but it’s generally a couple of minutes to get to the paste stage. Now, drizzle your oil in and blend until it’s a smooth paste. Add your coarse nuts back in and mix through. Put your paste into a jar or sealed container. Drizzle a little more oil over the top as a seal.
I’ve been told that in needs to be kept in the fridge – I’m not sure if this is totally necessary, I think I will experiment by leaving some out to see how it goes.

* If you want to use peanuts from the shell or raw peanuts you can roast them yourself. Then just follow the steps from the beginning.
** If you find your paste is dry try adjusting the oil amount.

Isn’t that simple? Next up I want to try doing Nutella and almond butter would be fun too. Let me know if you give it a go!

Frugal February in the kitchen

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The months of December through to March are our most challenging financially. Christmas, followed by holidays, plus bills and insurance mean that we really have to pull in the reigns and make an extra effort to save money. I thought I would share with you a few of the thrifty things I’ve been doing in the kitchen. 


Last month I set myself a water challenge. It’s Summer here in Australia and we’re using a lot of water on the garden (we have a tank for the garden, but without rain there is no tank water). 


*Place a container in the sink and use the water from rinsing fruit, vegetables and eggs on the garden.
* Run water into a jug while waiting for hot water – I get heaps of water this way, which either goes into our purification jug or onto the garden.
*Halve the amount of water you normally wash up with. There is no need to fill the sink with hot water to do the dishes! I’ve been really surprised by how little I can use for this purpose. This goes for floor washing too – you don’t need that much (not that I wash my floors all that often, ahem..)
Next up is the use of appliances and utilities (gas, electricity) in the kitchen.

*If steaming vegetables, boil until steaming is underway, turn off the gas and keep the lid on. I find this is enough to steam the veggies without having to use another 5 – 10 minutes of gas.
*The oven can also be turned off early. When I make bread, I turn off the oven 5 minutes before the bread is done and let it sit with the door closed. It stays hot enough to cook and it saves 5 minutes of cooking time. Add that up over a year and it would be a lot of time!
*Bake your own bread. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it saves us a lot of money. The whole family prefers homemade loaves too. I bake 4 at a time to get the most out of the oven.
*Think about the appliance before you use it. Is it really necessary to plug into the electricity if you can do it by hand? For example, we sweep hard floors instead of vacuuming, our cooking ingredients are often mixed by hand and all our dishes are done in the sink with no dishwasher.

I’d love to hear your frugal tips for February too!