A Long Weekend

So today (Monday) is Labour Day here in New Zealand.

So it's a holiday! :D

I thought I would share with you how I spent my day

I started off my day with a nice sleep in,

followed by my usual muesli and banana for breakfast.

Red grapefruit with Natvia 

 I had some red grapefruit as a snack after tidying up some thing around the house and checking emails.

Who knew emails could be so tiring!

These photos were take while I was in my room, just trying a few different ideas :)


Later on, while on Twitter, I noticed that Hot Chelle Rae were still trending in New Zealand
after their show on Saturday.

I thought this was pretty cool :)
So I tweeted the Hot Chelle Rae crew about it and. . .
Jamie Follese (the drummer) Tweeted back!!

Okay, okay, so it was just one little word.
But I still found that to be pretty amazing! :D
The picture is below left :)

I had some fruit and yoghurt to celebrate :P

Jamie Follese!!

My celebratory treat ;)

By the time the afternoon rolled around I thought it was time for a walk :)
So off I went, camera in hand (like always) and Ipod playing out loud.

Here are some photos I took :)

I was playing around with the colour and saturation settings, trying to figure out my camera a bit more,
So the photos are a little random

My house :)

Teatree

Tui in the tree

Gorse flowers :)

I like how the green turned out in this one

So that was my Monday

Now I'm off  to watch Army Wives :)

I hope you had a nice Monday too
Although it wasn't a holiday for most, so it was probably like any other Monday

Still, I hope you had time to do something nice :)




:)  x

Sunday Things

Hey guys :)

Here's a few things for your Sunday

It's pretty miserable, stormy weather here today

So I've been spending a lot of the day on Youtube,

Which is something I don't get to do very often :)

Here are a couple you might like to check out . .

Do you love Ryan Gosling? Do you like Onsies? Then you'll probably love this video :D

Do you love Zac Efron? (Who doesn't??)  and do you love Taylor Swift? (I do!)  Then you might like 

this video of them singing together :D

Also, I would love if you could watch This video.
I'm unsure how I came across this, but it would be great if you could share it around :)




Those are my Youtube suggestions for the day.
I hope you enjoyed them

Do you have old pencils lying around? Do they still have erasers on the ends of them?
Then here's a cute little DIY idea from Odessa May Society :)
Cute huh?

Beautiful photo c/o Odessa May Society at odessamay.blogspot.com

I hope you are having a lovely Sunday :)

Lavender Shortbread

So ever since I read my first issue of Good Magazine

I've been wanting to make the lavender shortbread that was a featured recipe in that issue.

As you may have seen in this post, I recently bought a beautiful lavender plant

so I thought I would try out the recipe

So here it is . .

Lavender Shortbread

Ingredients

250g Butter (softened but not melted)

4 heaped tablespoons of Icing Sugar

2 tablespoons of finely chopped Fresh Lavender Flowers

 2 cups of Flour

A pinch of Salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius

Using a cake mixer (or electric beater), beat sugar and butter until pale and creamy.

Mix in lavender, flour and salt. 

(I used a wooden spoon at this point instead of the cake mixer, but it's up to you.)

Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and lightly knead to shape the dough into a ball.

Cover and chill in the fridge for at least an hour, until firm. (I wrapped the dough in cling wrap)

While you're waiting for the dough to cool,

Prepare baking trays by lining with baking paper.

I like to lightly spray the tray with oil first so the baking paper will stick to the tray and won't slide around

Once chilled, uncover and place onto a lightly floured surface.

Using a rolling pin, roll dough to about 6mm thick.

Using a cookie cutter of your choice, cut out your shapes.

Each time clumping the excess dough into a ball, re-rolling and cutting out until all the dough is used.

Place the cookies onto your prepared baking trays and put into the fridge for 15 minutes before baking.

Remove from the fridge and place into the oven .

Bake for 15 minutes. About 10 minutes in swap trays around.

You want the shortbread to change slightly in colour but not be golden.

Cool on a rack to set before eating.

Here are some (actually a lot) of photos of the process :)

250g butter

4 heaped Tbsp Icing Sugar

Beat until pale and creamy

Remove the stems from the lavender flowers

2 Tbsp of finely chopped Fresh Lavender Flowers

Add to the butter mixture

2 cups of Flour

I always sift my Flour

A pinch of Salt

Mix the Lavender, Flour and Salt into the Butter mixture

A lightly floured surface

Knead into a ball

Wrap in cling wrap

Line your baking trays with baking paper

Lightly spray the tray before lining with baking paper to help the paper to stick to the tray

 Now, the recipe in Good Magazine said to roll the dough into logs and then slice of your cookies into 6mm rounds. But I found that my dough was too crumbly so I decided to roll the dough out flat and use a cookie cutter. It's up to you what you choose, if your dough is moist enough you may be able to slice your cookies off a log of dough.

Since I had a bit of trouble getting my cookies into the desired shape, 

I didn't get any photos of my rolled out dough.

Cookies all cut out and chilled in the fridge, ready to go into the oven

Once baked, cool on a rack

TaDaa

I hope you enjoy making these delicious treats! :)

If you do, let me know how they go

I would love to hear how they turn out and what you think of them! :)

Happy Weekend

x

Racing

Racing

So for the last 14 years I've been riding dirtbikes.

I got my first bike when I was 3 and a half years old, raced my first race when I was three and I've been hooked ever since :)

Both my brothers also race. they each have New Zealand titles in enduro racing and have both raced overseas.

Our racing is a family thing and we go to events  most weekends. Either all together or separately .

It's what we do :)

A lot of my friends race dirtbikes and both my brother's girlfriends do too.

So in some of my posts you'll probably see pictures that include dirtbikes :)

My bike on the right :)

My Brothers

(I'll post some photos of myself riding soon)

:)

A Productive Weekend :)

So this weekend was pretty productive for me,

Even though I woke up extremely late both mornings,

I still got quite a lot done :)

So here's what I got done -

I defrosted all of our tomatoes from last season and put them into bottles.

I cut out the stems and got as much of the skin off as possible.
I then put them all into a big pot and brought to a simmer.

I also added garlic, chilli sauce (home-made), soy sauce, salt and pepper

I got four and a half jars out of them :)
I used the half jar for dinner (Chickpea and tomato curry, yum!).

I also made
Blueberry Muffins! 

They're low calorie and only use 1/3 of a cup of sugar. The recipe says to use fat-free milk but I didn't have any, instead I used 1/3 of a cup 1.5% milk and 2/3 of a cup of almond milk.
It was a great way to use up the blueberries we had left in the freezer.

They were delicious!

The chilli sauce Mum and I made with our home-grown chilli's
Again these were last season's crop out of the freezer,
we're trying to free up some space before Christmas

Last week I saw these lavender plants were two for $10 at Countdown Supermarket and I just had to get some.

I've been meaning to get a lavender plant for ages as I love the smell and look of them. 

I also had a lavender shortbread recipe I wanted to try out :)

I was going to get four plants 

(to put some by our fruit trees to attract the bees)
But there were only two left! Who would have only bought one?? Beats me

But anyway, 

This weekend I planted one of the plants into this lovely mauve pot that my Mum gave me, I thought the colour matched quite well :)

I'm quite proud of my little lavender plant 

in its cute little ceramic pot :)

On another note,

We had some visitors on our pond this weekend..

A pair of Paradise ducks and their nine little ducklings!

They were so cute!

Excuse the bad picture, 

It was horrible weather so I was in a rush to get back to the warmth of the fireplace.

Also I couldn't get too close or the would fly away.

Mummy duck with the 9 little ducklings!

 Here are some picture I took at the end of my walk I did last week :)

Also,

I had my first attempt at making marshmallows on Saturday,

They didn't turn out how I wanted but they still tasted pretty good!
The reason I don't have a photo of them is because they're all gone!


I hope everyone had a good weekend too!

:)


Ps.

If you'd like to keep up with my pictures you can follow me on Instagram @mylittleeden

x