Making and Baking

Been doing a bit of making and baking lately.  I am finding my groove a bit in the evenings.  For the past nine or some months (ok, lets be honest - 5 years and I've never been a huge night person) I have been heading to be between 8-9pm.  In the past few weeks I'm finding that I only actually start to get evening time at about 8pm, so it's been around 10ish by the time I'm tucked up and ready to snooze.

I am enjoying chatting to a dear friend on the other side of the world in the evenings - time differences mean chat happens around 8am or 8pm and 8am in our house doesn't work that well.  So that is some evenings.  Other evenings I have been trying out some sewing, and watching tutorials on U-tube.  I want to try shirring/smocking - so I am watching lots of tutorials on that before i give it a go.  I gave Miss M a look-see at my sewing material pile and said she could choose something for me to make a dress for her ... result 

Nice and cheerful for a summer's day!

 In the baking part of our home I have been cutting down on the very sweet things and trying to extend our family's grocery budget as much as possible.  In aid of this I have tried out Destitute Gourmet's English Muffins.  They worked really well.  I made some large mixed fruit/spice ones and I think they were even nicer. 

I have also trialled making our own muesli.  I have a few jars of applesauce in the cupboard and instead of having it with milk for breakfast the kids enjoy it on applesauce.  I haven't priced it out yet, but I'm thinking it will be similar in price to the bought stuff, but does have less sugar and more oats.  I used 250grams whole oats, 500grams quick cook rolled oats, 200grams sunflower seeds/pumpkin seeds, cup of thread coconut, 2 Tbsp honey, 2tbsp olive oil, 2bsp peanut butter, 2tbsp brown sugar ... that's all approximate measurements as I just used 1/2 of each bag of things I'd bought.  Oh, and I added a small bag of cashew nuts at the end (would bump up price, not essential, but nice).  I toasted it in the oven in sets of five minutes before stirring.  Next time i'll do every four minutes and for a bit less time in total, I got distracted by a baby, so use the oven timer!!  Ours is slightly on the crunchy side, but still nice.  It tastes different to our usual shop one, but the kids and I are happy.  I will tweak it over the next few months hopefully until we get it exactly to our liking.