Saturday bake day

From 11:30am till 6pm today, Simon and I hung out in the kitchen to bake cookies for our team's bake sale tomorrow. We made melting moments in 3 different flavors: lemon, berries and lavender, using the lavender sugar I made 2 days ago. The smell was at least twice stronger than when I packed them. The powder is still green, but I end up using colouring to make look violet-ish. I also tried to make lavender muffin- they failed completely and went straight in the bin... must be something to do with me with not following the recipe again.

This is Simon in the kitchen. He said he can't cook, but it's great that he's willing to have a go at it anyway. He's come a long way in 1 day. This photo proves it! 

lavender, lemon and berry icing. 

and... voila! 

Quest for the Perfect Lavender Sugar

If you're reading this blog to look for the perfect lavender sugar recipe: stop reading now, you're going to get disappointed: I am still in the middle of my quest and I'm not sure if I've found it yet. 

Lavender had just recently caught my attention when I saw that sparkleskitchen is making lavender flavored macaroon, then a series of events began to happen that fed my interest. My friend Rohan from Bible study mentioned that he tried making lavender ice cream saying that it taste different in a 'posh' sort of way. A couple of days later, Greg and I went to Mick and Suzanne's house. They have lavender at their front yard, so I took some home determined to cook them. Mick pretty much cut me a whole bush to take home!

In risking my food to smell and taste like soap, I started cooking with lavender last Friday. My plan was to make lavender icing to put inside my melting moments cookies. Making melting moments are kind of my baking specialty. I skimmed through a couple of recipes online for lavender icing but then decided to get all courageous and just make one up. I mixed some lavender flowers and leaves with milk, sugar, water... and (an idea that came to me from hell): corn flour- which I believe is the culprit behind making this mix into one really disgusting gooey mess that smell bitter and nothing like lavender. So yea... they end up in the bin.

Refusing to take this defeat, on Monday I went to Suzanne's house, and we baked lavender muffins together. It was basically lavender fed in the food processor then mixed in a normal muffin mix. It tastes nice- but I couldn't really smell the lavender that emerges from the oven that I imagined in my mind.

Nigella's recipe

To raise money after the marathon we did over the weekend, we're having a BBQ and a bake sale- lavenders are definitely going to be involved in this! I found Nigella Lawson's lavender cupcake recipe that is going to rock this bake sale! Noticing that this recipe involves lavender sugar, I tried making it just tonight. I know that mixing lavender and sugar in a food processor is meant to be easy... but for some reason I don't see it that way.

I've got more fresh lavenders from Suzanne the generous, and today I managed to blend lavender and sugar in 3 different ways. I blended 2 cups of caster sugar and 5 sprigs of lavender together. Instead of getting a nice purple sugar as I saw in this recipe, the powder looks more green-ish. Maybe it's because I use fresh lavender instead of dried ones. But anyway, it is in an air tight jar now, and we shall see if it will live up to its expectation when I open it in 2 days time.

Sure enough I got curious and started blending more lavender but this time in icing sugar. I'm hoping that I can use this sugar to make more lavender icing hence redeeming myself from the last one that ended up in the bin.

As you can see, I just put all of the flowers and icing sugar and blend it just as that. When I taste it, it tasted bitter and only smell faintly of lavender. Thinking that this is probably because there's too much stalk and not enough flowers,  I decided to take the buds off the stalk, and do it again:

After doing this, it still tasted a bit bitter. I decided that maybe using fresh lavender isn't the way to go. So I picked some dried lavender that my friend had given me months ago. This is sort of my last resort because I'm not even sure if it's safe to eat after it's been drying for so long. But it still smells nice, and after I blend it, it does look more purple than the other mix- but it still taste bitter.

5 different jars of sugar later and a bench that is covered in white and purple- and nothing to eat in the end, my kitchen felt more like a lab than a kitchen. If I ever reach the end of this quest, maybe I can write a book about 'how many different ways can you butcher a lavender'. When I worked in a florist, I used to treat flowers like kings. I felt so evil when I found myself putting a perfectly well bloomed flower into a food processor- and eating them.

So, lavenders aside, we'll leave the kitchen and move to the studio for a sneak peak of what I've been doing this week: spiral bracelets!

I've made a yellow spiral bracelet to match the existing choker that I listed on Etsy last week. Looking by the variety of coloured pearls I have, I can't resist making them in several different colours. This means that there's a lot less designing and sketching involved in my job this week. But I would like to see them in different colours and if I don't do it now, I might never will unless someone asks for it- I'm not waiting around for that to happen.

These spiral bracelet consist of  13 small spirals, 52 or more tiny swarovski pearls and it takes around 4 hours to make- depending on how many mistakes I make and how distracted I am that day. I've been listening to Esperanza Spalding new CD over and over in the background and watching kitchen nightmares at lunch time. Life's good this way. =)

A Fun Run Experience

I thought this weekend is going to be horrible, but as it turns out, I got to the end of it feeling refreshed and happy! I haven't felt like this in awhile and it feels like I've been saved by someone.

This weekend is our church camp. I couldn't go because of the initial commitment I had to do a 10km fun run as part of the Australian Running Festival with a group of people that I hardly knew. If I knew that it was going to clash with the church camp, I would have given it a miss. It's a no-brainer decision really. Would I rather be running 10km with some random people or having fun at the beach with 20 of my close friends? It was definitely an obvious decision for Greg, he went ahead for camp without me.

But things seem to work out in the end. Greg's parents decided to stay over for 1 night on their way back home from New Zealand. My friend Liz is also staying over for a night on her way back to Sydney from her parents house in Tathra. Turns out that I was anything but lonely while Greg is away. My guest arrived on Friday night, and the next day at 3pm, it was time for me to meet up with the rest of my team mates to stretch our muscles and pull our minds towards a positive direction.

We have been slowly training for this event. My training had been a bit choppy because of my health and my stupid weak ankle. I never trained up to 10km, but I've been training regardless up to 7km. I find a lot of people are skeptical with the term "fun run" for this event, including me. But after experiencing the event first hand... it is actually kindda fun. The second they fired the gun, you're in the middle of hundreds of people running together, you have crowds on either side of you cheering like there's no tomorrow. Of course, we got sifted pretty quickly. The serious runners went way ahead and all the slower runners fell behind, but it doesn't mean that people stop cheering for you.

We had to run 3 and a half lap of this route. The moment I finished my first lap, some crazy dude had finished the whole run! That means this guy had run passed me 3 times and I didn't notice it. He did 10km in 30:52 minutes, which means he ran in the speed of 20km/hr... and now I'm just speechless....

I thought I was going to stop and start in this run, but I didn't! I ran the whole way through! As a very slow runner I thought my speed was going to be 1km for every 10 minutes, but I finished the run in 1 hour and 10 minutes, so in average I jogged 7km/hr. For a relatively long run, I'm quite happy with that number. I have definitely underestimated myself in this run, I really didn't know I had that in me!

100 meters to go, and I think it's time for me to pick up the pace a little. Having my in laws there at the end is priceless! They were so excited! Simon and Estelle had reached the end cheering as well. Crossing that finish line was definitely very satisfying! I immediately joined Simon and Estelle as we wait to cheer for Emilia. It was all smiles from then on. We all went to a pub together for a toast and a much needed team bonding session, then for dinner mum and dad took me out for dinner in my favorite restaurant near our house.

Emilia, me, Simon and Estle, jumping for joy jumping for joy with our medals!

The next day I woke up from a well deserved sleep in a lovely rainy Sunday morning- just the way I like it. Mum and dad left at 11am and I'm finally alone. Now it's time for me to do some work....

In my last post I mentioned a certain tip that I'm trying to apply in my Etsy shop that forced me to rearrange my plans. I was basically challenged to make my shop stand out among others by creating something that is unique. I realize that when I first opened up my Etsy shop in Oct 2008, I tend to view other people's product and get a feel of what sells and what doesn't- then based my design from there. It's not quite the opposite but now I have to look for what's unavailable in Etsy and make that. I assumed finding a gap in jewelry making is not so easy because most handmade artist in Etsy are jewelers. But on the contrary, I immediately knew what I had to make: wire wrap chokers.

Thus, I went to town with this idea in the past 2 weeks. Today I listed 4 chokers and 1 necklace on Etsy. It seems small, but it was very time consuming. Armed with a tripod, SLR camera, a mirror, and Sara Bareilles grooving on the background, I got trigger friendly experimenting pose after pose. I felt like I've nearly exhausted my wardrobe with all the different jewelry. Not surprisingly, after hundreds of photos I took today, only 28 lucky shots made it to Etsy today.

I decided to put photos of my face as the main photo of my chokers on purpose. I felt that photos of necklace or earrings can easily make sense without an actual model, but chokers are different. I need to see it being worn to know what it is otherwise it just look like a very small necklace- hence the sudden explosion of my face all over the shop.

Alright, it's almost 2am now and I'm falling asleep. It's time for me to do just that... somewhere else... a bed maybe.

Good night!

1st April

Happy April Fool's day everyone! Anybody receiving a good prank today?

I've had several blog ideas this week, but I must admit that I found it really hard keeping up this blog in sync with the events in my life.

This Monday night, I played piano for a choir the first time, ever, ever, EVER, in my whole life.  I was sooo terrified, but I took the job anyway. I had to learn 12 songs in a week for this choir session and even though I've put in many hours of practicing the songs, I didn't finish learning them all by the time Monday comes. I walked in the choir room literally shaking. But God is good to me. The choir members that I played for are the nicest, supportive group of people, EVER! In the middle of playing "autumn Leaves" I got lost in the page turning and someone from the choir had to come up to the piano and helped me. I spontaneously sang the piano fills on the parts that were too fast for me to play. With that being said, I had SO much fun in the end. The choir sounds great and Greg caught me smiling in the bits where I can actually play. They were very encouraging, gave me an applaud for learning all those songs in 7 days, and what's more, I'm singing alto next week when they have their original pianist back. 


So many little things are happening, and I feel like I'm finding it hard to keep up. Maybe it's because I'm a really slow person and it takes a really long time for me to do anything. 


Things that occupied my mind a lot is of course my jewelry business. I couldn't stop criticizing about the way my shop looks. I am, truly my own worst critique. Also, I've picked up a certain tip that caused me to set aside  my previous ideas/ sketches and take the shop into a major detour...in which I will reveal to you when I finish making and taking photos of them! =) 


After a month of focusing my time on making jewelry and developing my Etsy shop (with a bit of a break in between) I've started applying for casual jobs again this week. I've learnt my lesson not to put all of my hope in one job, or updating everyone about my interviews and trials news because I've been told I will fail a lot before I can succeed in one. I really, really hope I can get a proper extra income soon before it gets extremely freezing here. >.<


Right now, I'm lounging on the couch with the news on tv waiting for Emilia to come over for a small meeting. My friend Estle had managed to gather a few people up to do the Canberra marathon fun run. We're running 10km to raise fund for "Lifeline" a suicide prevention call service in Australia. Estle had been pretty diligent in training. She tries to go running everyday even. I need to be more like her, having been sick didn't exactly help either. I'm gonna die next week. I really should be running instead of blogging. Hopefully by the end of the meeting tonight we'd be able to find a way to raise funds.


That's all from me now...