Spring Time! - Carrot Cake

Question of the week:
What's your favorite thing about Spring?
A: How the whole World seams to be more colourful than normal!

Here in UK it is so amazing - I think all Europe - we can see every season turning beautifuly from one to another, totally differnt from Brazil. Brazil is a tropical country so we have lot of thunder tropical showers, weird summers and winters. Did you know that we can go to the beaches on winter time in Brazil? Yes, because the coolest temperature on winter is around 18C degrees minimum! :)

Here in England we have marvellous tullips and spring flowers - that really make the landscape a gorgeous view. Even though I'm not a 'flower person' I can enjoy plant some and watch them growing.

This week I will teach you all a very easy recipe that always remind me about Spring time.

(I know that this picture is still about Easter but as I made the Carrot Cake...lol)

Carrot's Cake 
Ingredients for the Cake:
1/2 cup (tea) of oil
3 middle grated carrots
4 eggs
2 cups (tea) of sugar
2 1/2 cups (tea) of plain flour
1 spoon (soup) of baking powder
Ingredients for the Covering:
1 spoon (soup) of butter
3 spoons (soup) of pownder chocolate
1 cup (tea) of sugar
(if you want a covering more liquid just put 5 spoons of milk)
How to Prepare:
Put the carrot into the blender with the eggs and the oil, add the sugar and leave it for approximately 5 minutes.
In a bowl or in the beater, put the remainder of the ingredients mixing everything - less the yeast! That one is mixed slowly with a spoon.
Roast in oven heated (l80ºC) for 40 minutes.
Preparing the Covering:
Mix all the ingredients and cook - doing a kind of syrup. Put over the cake.


It's done!

(Me, hubby and some friends: Mirko - Italian - and Sophia - Mirko's daughter, who is half Italian/ Brazilian)

(Sophia with her chocolate eggs and my Carrot Cake!)

Hugs,
Lara

Good Friday - Salt Cod with Potatoes (BACALHAU)

Question of the week: 

What's your favorite way to eat your Easter egg?

A: Scrambled with potato wafles!

As Vera's parents mine also hide the chocolate Easter eggs (those ones very very tiny!) everywhere in the house! It was always an amazing hunting for me and my young brother. Fun, fun, fun!

(My grandma - cooking some delicious recipes - and I, giving some mini chocolate eggs to my family members - I was 10 years old or so on that time!)

Hello Everyone!

This 'Good Friday'/'Holy Friday' I will teach you all a very easy (and taste!) fish dish - as the catholic traditions said that we are not allow to eat any type of meat but fish. I was born catholic but I'm not a religious type of person but as me and my husband are expecting some friends today I decided to make a proper traditional dish that most of Brazilians eat on that particular day: BACALHAU is the original name of this fish in Portuguese. There are numerous bacalhau recipe variations, depending on region and tradition. It is said there are more than 365 ways to cook bacalhau, one for every day of the year; others say there are 1001 ways. Bacalhau is often served with potatoes. Green (Vinho Verde) or mature wines (Alentejo Wine, Dão Wine, or Douro Wine) are served alongside.

Some facts about Good Friday:

- Christians remember the day when Jesus was crucified on a cross.

- The Anglo-Saxon name for Good Friday was Long Friday, due to the long fast imposed upon this day.

- Good Friday was not celebrated as the day Christ died until the 4th century A.D.

- The name may be derived from 'God's Friday' in the same way that good-bye is derived from 'God be with ye'. It is 'good' because the barrier of sin was broken.

Do you want to know more about EASTER?!

Salt Cod with Potatoes
(BACALHAU)

Ingredients:
2 big dry fish (in rudely pieces)
3 medium potatoes without skin (cut in slices)
1 onion (cut in slices)
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of white wine
1 teaspoon of parsley
1 mug of boiled water
some green olives
How to Prepare:
Wash the fish and withdraw the fins, the skin and the biggest bones. Start to unravelling in quite rudely pieces. Accommodate the fish in a roasting tin smeared with the oil. Cut the potatoes in rudely slices as well and annex to the fish. Add the onion and the olives. Sprinkle the parsley on top.
Spill the remainder of the oil mixed to the wine. Drop off the mug of boiled water on top of everything. Lead to the middle oven for 2 hours or until you see that the potatoes are nicely cooked.

It's done!

If your fish is Dried and Salted Cod:
Some dry fish came very salted (because normally they came from other Countries like Portugal, Brazil...) so you need to 'un-salted' the fish.
How to Prepare:
Put the fish in a bowl submerged in cold water and leave in the fridge for about 24 hours (yes, it will took you awhile). Change the bowl's water 2 or 3 times in this interval. You can use the fish after this process.

ps: If your fish is not salted, probably you have to put a pinch of salt and black pepper when you were preparing the dish otherwise be careful because the salted fish it is REALLY salted. ;)

Hugs,
Lara

Easter & DIY -flowers part 1-

Hi :) I can't believe that it's almost Easter already :) The question of the week is: What's your favorite way to eat your Easter egg? Quite boring ha ha just boiled or scrambled with some salt on a baked baguette hot from the oven, yummie! I love the Easter breakfast with my sweet husband or with my family. We ususally brunch together at my parents house. I also love love love eating chocolate eggs. My fav's are: cappucino, white or dark chocolate with some orange pieces in them :)

When we were little, my parents hid the easter eggs everywhere in the house & it was always so much fun finding them! I hope to do this in the future with my own kids ;)

As promised i would show you ways to make flowers with different materials! Easter, spring and flowers all belong together in my opinion. That's why i made a mixed post today that i hope you like :)

DIY -flowers part 1- Make your own flower t-shirt

You will need:

a t-shirt,

ribbon with flowers,

embroidery thread

and needle.

I bought my ribbon with flowers at the market. If you can't find any you can also use a pompom ribbon or any other cute ribbon that you might find! By hand you will be adding it to your t-shirt. Make sure that you work only through the ribbon part and not through the flowers! Just make sure that it's secure. I also made a little hairpiece with my leftover flower. I made two leaves from green felt and sewed them together with the flower. Then i used my hot glue gun to add it to my hairclip :)

ta da... your outfit is ready!

I found lovely photos on wehearit for just a little more flower and Easter inspiration :)

Wishing you a happy Easter!

Love,

Vera

easter typography and eggs

Get the full size, printable easter card at our flickr.

My favorite way to eat an Easter egg? To start with, I like my eggs organic or free range. I like them soft boiled on a slice of bread or filled, like here:

To make these eggs you need hard boiled eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, chives, curry, pepper and salt. Cut the boiled eggs in half and remove the yellow part, mix the egg yellow with the mayonnaise, mustard, chives, curry, pepper and salt till you get the taste you like. I like it with a good mustard and curry taste and a bit chunky. Fill the egg halves with the filling you just made. Serves with some freshly cut chives.

Do you like to serve colored eggs for easter? Go organic and try these
natural egg dyeing techniques.

Peeps, Photography, Principles, and Picnik

Happy 'Almost' Easter everyone!! My favorite way to eat an Easter egg? Well, I don't really indulge in the hard boiled eggs very often, but I do LOVE Cadbury candy coated chocolate eggs. They are probably my favorite candy in the world! Easter is the BEST holiday for candy. I am not really into peeps, but there is a lot of yummy candy on the shelves right now. What is your favorite??


For my birthday weekend in April, I am planning a big scrapbooking/crafting retreat April 16th, 17th, and 18th. I am planning on putting together some sort of a mini-book from my recent Las Vegas trip. For the next few weeks I will be sharing my progress with you on this big project.

Read more about my goals here.

Continued...

My goal for this week included editing my photos and getting them printed so that I can start putting them into a book form.

I love adding text to my photos. I even like to add the occasional 'sticker.' I am not a genius at photoshop or anything like that, so I do nearly all of my editing on Picnik. You can try the software for free if you are interested, you can upgrade to a premium account for one year. It is sooo worth it for me!

If and when you decide to add things like text or 'stickers' or fancy frames to your photos, there are a few do's and don'ts that just seem appropriate to me as someone who is familiar with the principles of art, I tend to implement them without realizing why or what I am doing.

Now, take them for what they are worth. You may completely disagree with me, but I just cringe on facebook when people picnik a photo and it is just ruined by the 'creative' editing that the person did. Granted, there is a learning curve...I am sure I ruined some of my first images by getting to liberal with my edits...But the more I work with the program, the more I learn about what looks good and appropriate.

1. Do create collages with photos that don't deserve a scrapbook page all alone. Similar themes that seem to go together will create lovely collages. With this 'architecture' collage below, I loved how all the photos had a 'worm's eye view' so I wanted to put them all together to add a bit of visual drama! By playing around with PROPORTION, your photos can become a work of art! You will see that nearly all of my collages below have some sort of a theme. By grouping them, I am able to tell a non-linear story from my trip.

By stacking the photos from shortest to tallest, I have created MOVEMENT across the composition.

(This collage was edited using the 'cross process' filter. I really liked the way that it UNIFIED the blues in the sky.)

2. Do create with photos that you might've normally thrown away or deleted. I love creating these collages because I probably wouldn't have printed all of the the photos below...but when I put them together, they look really neat. By using REPETITION, in the same-sized squares, the composition works even when the photos have completely contrasting elements.

3. Do group pictures of certain people or places. Sometimes it is easier to have all the photos in one place rather than have to think of how to journal for each one individually. I ran these collages through a series of photos through a couple of filters. I am not totally happy with the resolution on the first one...but I felt like the pictures needed something to create HARMONY between the photos...by changing the texture, as opposed to converting them to black and white, I am hoping they will look a little more unified without losing the great color! I love to modify the texture by using one of the picnik filters (or if you are Photoshop savvy, you probably know how to do this!). You have to be careful though, sometimes a little bit goes a long way and you can lose the essence, simplicity and beauty of your photos.




4. Don't do anything that you see below in the next photo. I edited it two ways to show you what makes me cringe about some of my Facebook picnikers. Things that are wrong with the first photo:

• The text is bad. Font is bad, placement and color are both bad. Don't be afraid to rotate your text to make it work for the layout of your photo. (See good version below!)
• The frame is horrible. Just because the frame is cute or it matches the season...that doesn't mean it is going to make my photo timeless...it might do the opposite...it might make my picture look dated.
• The sticker crown is just dorky and doesn't have anything to do with what was going on that day. Refrain from adding little 'stickers' just because they are cute. If I had a picture of a bulldog and his name was kingsley, the crown would be appropriate! Obviously this is an exaggerated example...I am ALL for adding hearts, mustaches and even little flowers to my photos....just be careful that what you are adding actually ADDs to the design and doesn't distract from what is important.

5. Do change photos to black and white with a pop of color for CONTRAST. Below is the exact same photo and here are the things that work:

• In this photo, my dress didn't match the coloring of the heart so I converted the photo to black and white, leaving the heart in color.
• I made sure that the font was playful and matched the mood of the photo. By keeping the font black, it mirrors the hand-drawn look of the heart! I also rotated the text to hug the edge of the photo rather than overlap the important parts of the photo: me and the heart. This creates a visual BALANCE.
  
• After converting the photo to black and white, I also used a 'cross processing' filter so that the white would have a yellowish tinge and I rounded the corners. I try not to get too corner-rounder happy. I love the look of rounded corners, but it isn't always appropriate.

6. Don't be afraid to use status updates, memorable quotes or tweets from that day as your journaling or title! Also, DO layer various fonts. I use graphic posters, magazine covers and even websites for inspiration. Sometimes I like to fade some of the 'subtitles' a little to really emphasize the main headline.



Well, those are the main tips that I have for you. I ordered my photos on Saturday from Snapfish and I can't wait to get them back (yay free shipping coupon)!! Here are a few more collages. I will share my journaling with you so that I can get a head start and have a little bit done whenever my prints arrive!

Food, food, food. Las Vegas is all about eating. The first photo in the collage shows our dinner at the Japanese steakhouse in Tulsa before we even left for Vegas! I didn't take a photo of every meal, but I certainly could have. The bread on the right is from our fancy steak dinner-yum! The bottom left picture is a meal prepared by my sister-in-law's mom, Frances. She was a fantastic cook. I am still craving those tamales and eggs!!

Airplane, airplane. I love to travel. I especially love airports and flying. I wish that I could travel in my career. I am already anxious to go on another flying adventure. I always try to have a carry on that is a backpack. I have found that shoulder bags can be very annoying an heavy when standing in line or walking through terminals. In my carry on, I always try to have something to read. I love to take magazines and then leave them behind for people in the airport to enjoy. The book that I chose for this trip is by Tom Robbins...wow, so visually stunning, I can't wait to finish it! I love to sit by the window. The flight from Vegas to Denver was absolutely beautiful, those are snow-covered Rocky mountains, not clouds! I love airline snacks and meals. I have been on flights that serve up to 3 courses and I always wake up long enough to lower my tray table so that I don't miss the snack and complimentary beverage. Isn't it funny how people order ginger ale and tomato juice on airline flights....I would never order either one anywhere else!

(photos taken on my iPhone)

Okay, I hope I didn't use to many art teacher terms for you...as I read back over my post, I noticed that I used a lot of principles of art, UNITY, EMPHASIS, CONTRAST, REPETITION, BALANCE, HARMONY, PROPORTION. These concepts come naturally to me...I don't have to force it...I really wanted to share with you what goes on in my head when I am editing my photos to create one-of-a-kind works of art for my albums and scrapbooks.

I hope you will check back on my progress next week. (and I hope my photos are here!) If my photos do not arrive in time for me to get anything done before my post, I have something special planned!

To be continued......

DIY make (fabric) butterflies

Hi :) I'm Vera and i'm the orange owl with the balloons. I 32 years, married with Harold and i work parttime as a teacher at a primary school. In my free time i paint, scrap and developing my skills on the sewingmachine, with knitting and crochet. I will make a post here every thursday. My posts are about inspiration, daily life, home and garden ideas, DIY projects and craft ideas for/with kids :D

For today i have a little spring/Easter DIY. It's really easy to make yourself and you can even make it together with your kids (they do have to use the siccors ;)) Spring has arrived and it's time to clean your house (ehhh i haven't done mine yet lol) and bring some spring inside.

DIY MAKE (FABRIC) BUTTERFLIES FOR YOUR

CURLY WILLOW EASTER BRANCH

You will need:

- (little) clothespins

- all sorts of fabrics

- fabric glue or double sticky tape

-(fabric) siccors

- paint is optional

-draw a butterfly on paper

If you don't have any fabrics lying around or

you don't want to use them,

you can also use some pretty

giftwrapping paper!

To make one butterfly you need to cut out the pattern two times.

I used fabric glue, but you can also use sided tape.

If the two fabrics are glued together and the sides aren't

completely matching, just cut a little on the sides.

I made three different ones for you to see :D

1. is the one that i made above

2. a butterfly made out of giftwrapping paper

3 made out of a single fabric and sewed together

in the middle

NOTE

If you are not planning of hanging them in your

Easter curly willow branches, you can also make

them and add them on top of a gift or giftcard!

I also made some flowers, wich i also added

with a clothespin. I used crepe paper and a

few other papers. Just make sure that the

paper is flexible.

Draw a flowershape and cut it out.

You can make a single flower, double or triple.

Fold them together in the middle

and you have a pretty flower.

If you like you can make

flowers by doing origami etc.

So here it is... my handmade

butterfly/flower branch!

I also made one with bows :D

This is the one i have in my livingroom!

I hope you have enjoyed this post and feel inspired by it. If you have any questions, just leave a comment! Next week i will make a post about making flowers with different materials :D Hope to see you then :) Wishing you a lovely day. XO.