Monday, 29 November 2010

What is your favorite flower?


My favorite flower is definitely the Sweet Pea !
I love the colours.
I Love the smell.
And I love the idea, the more you pick the more you get !

This year they grow in my vegtable garden I love it to have flowers in my vegtable garden as well to give it some extra colour. This evening i picked several bunches and put the all over the place.


On my window sill in my kitchen. Don't you love the little vases. I bought them last weekend in Greytown.





In my bathroom.


The last bunch is for my bedside table.
Now I'm off to the kitchen, I'm making Taai Taai for Sinterklaas on Sunday. Never made it before so I have no idea what to expect, But I can tell you the smell is great.
More about our Sinterklaas evening in a later post.




Monday, 15 November 2010

Love Hearts for the garden.


Before you all starts to think that I only bake and eat cake I want to show you some love hearts that I made for the garden.
Living on the coast is living with wind , so I made these table cloth weight to prevent my table cloth flying off the table. You can buy the plastic ones but I don't like them so I made some love hears and filth them with rice. They do a great job.









And they look pretty in my garden room when we not having a outdoor dinner.

Saturday, 13 November 2010

Are you a Chocolate fan ???


Are you a Chocolate fan ,than this is a great cake. I made it last week for my friend when we had a craft evening (it is always more talking than craft but we always have fun).


Here is the recipe, so easy and so good!
Add all these dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well,
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Add all the liquid ingredients and mix well,
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
1heaped tsp of instant coffee in 1 cup of warm water
1 cup milk
1 cup canola oil
The mixture looks thin but that's ok, bake for 40 min on 180 degrees Celsius.
For the icing you need:
200 gram Nestle cooking chocolate
25 Gram butter
1/2 cup cream
Melt the chocolate and mix with the butter and cream.
DELICIOUS!!!



Monday, 8 November 2010

My day at the spa.


Last Monday I booked myself a day at the Spa Horrobin and Hodge (klik, klik) in Manakau, It was GREAT.
Just have a look yourself and I don't think I have to say any more.









Thursday, 4 November 2010

Garden tour.


No words this time just a nice walk, enjoy!



































Monday, 1 November 2010

Corners of my home.


Having a peek in other houses is what i really like so here a little peek in my house.





The suit cases are my bed site table and the love heart wall is an other corner in my bedroom. The love heart on my wardrobe is made from an old sugar sac and I stamped a 5 on it, we are a family of 5, that's why.




Here a little corner in my kitchen and as you can see I like to display lots of the same items together.




The book case is part of the living room ,so are the love heart on the nice hanger. Most of the items in my house are from garage sales or second hand shops, love to buy second hand so much better than new.





I made the birds from calico and a branch from my garden, the jug is a second hand one.



And here my favorite spot of my living room, the daybed with lots of cushions. We have sun here for most of the day and the doors to the veranda are most of the time open. Next time I take you into my garden for a garden tour.

Introducing

This is the first time that I write in my blog.
I am Jacoline, me and my family emigrated to New Zealand from The Netherlands 3 years ago.
I can tell you, we went through some hard times in those 3 years, but we found our dream.

We bought a lovely home close to the beach. I spend a lot of time in our garden which has a lot of fruit trees, a nice vegetable garden and great flowers.

I love to shop in secondhand shops and garages sales are the best invention ever.
My days are filled with craft, cooking , baking and of course my 3 girls.
I try to have a beachwalk every day and on wednesday I join the quilt club.

We are still busy with rebuiling the house to make it a great home.
We like traveling and like to discover our new country.
I keep you updated with new stories, recipes, ideas and pictures every week.