Feeling patchy!

I had an order from a friend the other day to make one of these pram patchwork quilts for a new baby due soon in their family.  I have made a few of these as orders as they seem to be a nice new baby present.

They do take a while to make and I am sure the patchwork police would look at them in horror! But I quite enjoy making them (so long as I don't have to make them too often, as then I think I would get bored!) and I hope the new mum will like it!

I enjoy sorting out all the different fabric to use and I especially love the fabric I used for the backing at the moment. It was a vintage sheet that I have ended up using on loads of projects recently.

Hair horrors!

Is it just in our house or does anyone else face such hair horrors in the morning?

This is our daugher D and what her hair normally looks like when she first wakes up!

And this is our son F's hair!

 I swear mornings are a nightmare in our house as we have to allow about half an hour just for hair taming....but we do eventually...This is D when her hair has been tamed some what!

She is modelling a beautiful cardigan made for her by a very clever lady who runs knitting workshops in Whitstable called Knitorama. She asked me to make a plain linen doll for her a few weeks ago and knitted this lovely cardy for D as a swap for the doll! I think I got the better deal!

This half-term we have been mainly filling the house with drawn pictures of Buzz lightyear..

My son is mad on Toy Story at the moment, we have quite a collection now.

But what do you call a group of Buzz Lightyears?

I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure we are going to have an army of them soon at the rate he is going!

Granny Boyd's Biscuits

Normally biscuit and cake making is a mid-morning or afternoon thing in our house. That was until I suddenly remembered at 6.45am this morning that there was a cake sale at F's school today, to raise money for the Haiti earthquake. 

I really wanted to contribute, which is how I was ended up baking at 7am, whilst also sorting out breakfast! (I was very annoyed with myself as school had been cancelled on Thursday because of the snow we had falling over Whitstable and some other parts of Kent on Wednesday night - so I'd  had a day at home with the kids when we could have baked in less of a rush if my brain had been in gear!)

I decided cakes were out of the question as they would take too long to cool and ice etc, so I decided to make some biscuits...Granny Boyd's Biscuits to be exact!  They are a Nigella recipe and the most delicious, chocolate biscuits I have ever tasted! I only discovered them when borrowing my neighbour Vicki's Nigella Christtmas book as I wanted to give some chocolates and biscuits as christmas pressies last year (which they are perfect for, wrapped in clear plastic and a ribbon).

I am sure I am about a hundred years behind and everyone already knows about these but just in case you hadn't seen the recipe and fancied baking this weekend, I would recommend giving these a try (they are incredibly easy!):

Granny Boyd's Biscuits
Ingredients
300g self-raising flour
30g cocoa
250g soft unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
2 baking sheets, greased

Preheat oven to 170c

Sieve together flour and cocoa and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and soft, then work in  flour and cocoa.
It might look as if it needs liquid, but keep working ingredients and they will form a dough.
Roll into walnut sized balls and arranged with decent size space as they will spread.

Press down with the back of a fork, leaving fork marks.
Put in the oven and cook for 5 minutes then turn oven down to 150c and bake for a further 10-15minutes.
Makes approx 35 biscuits

I think they are lovely with a cuppa, still warm from the oven but also good for a couple of days.
Or have, as Nigella suggests, with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream....

Yum!