No longer Blogtober

Yay I made it.  Yep, I managed to post every day in October. It was fun, thanks so much for participating – I promise to stop clogging up your blog reader so much this month. I really appreciated all of the comments that you left, seeing some new commenters pop up, and I appreciated your participation in my giveaways.

Now, speaking of giveaways, I promised to draw the Kiwiana Giveaway this evening. So, drumroll, the winner of this package is…

Jo!

I’ll pop you an email 🙂

Speaking of winners, my IRL, knitting and blogging friend Hannah has nominated me for a new blogging award: the Gorgeous Blogger award.

Sweet, eh!  Now, in order to accept this wee award, I have to tell you some little known facts about me, and to pass the award onto some others.

So, here we go…

1. My DH is a vegetarian and the rest of us aren’t, so I am increasingly having to balance out the different needs/tastes/demands of him versus the rest of the family. Just call me the resident dietician.

2.  I am officially a SAHM now. Yep, I handed in my resignation from my job in September. Before that I was on maternity leave.  Eeek, you lot are stuck with me now!

3. I have a huge exam on Thursday, and when I am finished, my study will be over for the year – in fact I will have finished my (current) qualification – a Post Graduate Dipolma of Arts (English)

4. I am trying to decide whether I should start my Masters next year. Eep. 

5. Nearly nine years ago I moved to a city that I had only visited once (about 12 years before) where I knew not one single person, for a job. The same job I resigned from recently. Yep, it worked out fine.

6. Dh and I met at work 😉

There, some not-so-widely known Shortly-trivia.

Now, to nominate some gorgeous friends 🙂

I’d love to pass this award on to Gemma, who has been on the Blogtoberquest too – she’s another crafty knitter, but I really want to nominate her for the spirit with which she has been blogging through her job hunt and all the emotions this has brought up.

To Virginia, who is one busy New Yorker: worker, mother, knitter, I love seeing the architecture that catches her eye as she goes about her days. (Yes, I am jealous, okay!)

To Mazzy, I always enjoy reading about her girls’ exploits – the good and the bad 🙂

My lovely friend Lisa, who blogs with such feeling and honesty about her life, her gorgeous girls and lovely hubby, and life over the ditch.

To Katrina who always seems to have a million projects on the go, despite the calls of job and family.

And finally to Kate, read about her adopted kitty and you’ll know what a huge heart she has.

Lucky Girl

I’ve been a lucky girl recently. Not only with my awesome birthday gifts, or my fab family.  No, I’ve been given some cool stuff too…

My friend Anthea has about 35 feijoa trees on her wee lifestyle block. She has been valiantly stewing, baking, and preserving them (jam, chutney, sauce), as well as taking some on her jaunts around the country.  When we moved in here nearly 5 years ago, one of the first trees I planted was a (supposedly) self-fertile feijoa. 5 years on and not one fruit. It’s nicely bushy and thriving, but I think I should plant a mate for it if I want any produce. So, the lovely Anthea has been providing us with feijoas every time I see her. Mmmm, feijoa crumble! Fresh feijoas! Delicious. I feel very lucky 🙂

Yesterday I tried something a bit different, which I thought I’d share with you:
Feijoa, Passionfruit and White Chocolate Muffins

2 C flour

2T Baking Powder

3/4c caster sugar

1/2 c oil

1 c milk

2 eggs

4 fejoas, peeled and chopped roughly

1 passionfruit, scooped out

1/4 c white chocolate buttons, broken up

Mix all ingredients except fruit and white chocolate well.  Add fruit and chocolate, stir.  Put in muffin tins and bake until cooked (15-18 min) in 200 degree oven.  Enjoy!

I say 4 feijoas because I used more, and it was too many. I don’t think they would keep very well with so much feijoa in them. Although I might never find out, as there were only 3 left at the end of the day. Thankfully I can blame that on having guests around!

I will definitely be making these again, but without the passionfruit as that was the last of ours until summer again.

In addition to this bounty, I have been nominated for not one, but two blog awards. Now, being new to blogging, these are the first ones I’ve been nominated for. So I hope I’m doing this right.

The first one is the Imagination Award, which I was nominated for by the lovely Tink’n’Frog.

 

Here is how her friend Darcy described it:

This Award was created by Bella and Ces in honour of their friend Renee, an incredible lady who in the face of a frightening life battle is tackling each day with great spirit and courage.

Here is what Bella says of this award: “this is a brand new award and I have the pleasure and honor of spreading the seed, watching it grow. I hope it finds it’s way to those who are like Renee: the acorn, becoming a tall and sturdy oak, giving acorns…”

Now, I was chosen as she was rather taken with one of my  Thirteen Things “I’m a cloth-nappy-using, tandem-extended-breastfeeding, vegetable-gardening, recycling, non-hippy freak.”

Now, at the moment I’m raising more of a crop of weeds than vegetables – hazard of the fallow season combined with two-essays-due-in-two-weeks neglect I’m afraid. But the rest remains true…

So, in the spirit of the award, I really have to nominate the lovely Leanne . This incredible woman has her own chooks, an amazing vege patch, and more fruit trees than you can shake a stick at. And her crafting (!) She makes the  most incredible clothes for her children, and has generously made available a number of awesome free patterns for modern cloth nappies. You rock Leanne!

The second award I was nominated for is the Imagination award, thanks to the lovely Amybel.

The Rules:

Tell 5 things about your crafts you like the most…what inspires you to make home made gifts.

Send this award to 5 bloggers.

So, 5 things 🙂

1. Value for money! You can afford to be more generous when you add your time to the raw materials.

2. Thoughtfulness.  When someone crafts a gift, you know it is the result of lots of thought about them.

3. Satisfaction. There is something emminently satisfying about making things for others.

4. Challenge. Time pressure, the pressure to create something beautiful and worthy of gifting is a good thing.

5. Creativity. I love putting thought and time into chosing patterns, yarns, colours and themes together.

And the easy part… 5 creative bloggers to nominate. Well, you are an amazing bunch of women and such talented crafters, so this is easy!

So, I nominate:

Gabes at SweetP

Kelly at Knit.so.quaint

Neak at Neak’s Craft Corner

Sharon at Sharonnz

Christine at Purdy Peas

Told you I was lucky!