'Green A-pear-ition' Smoothie

Here it is, my next breakfast smoothie concoction - a 'Green A-pear-ition'!  As the name would suggest, the key ingredients are 'Greens' and 'Pears'.  To re-create 2 healthy glasses blend:

- 1 banana
- 1 cup of Soya milk
- Handful of frozen pear chunks
- Steamed Spinach (frozen if available)
- Handful of Kale (raw or steamed)
- Spoonful of yogurt to thicken
- 5-6 leaves of fresh mint, finely chopped (the blender may not mince them
- Spoonful of honey to taste

Enjoy!

'Carrot You See I'm Smiling?' Smoothie

Ive been getting into adding vegetables into my weekend smoothies and this one I have called the 'Carrot You See I'm Smiling?' smoothie because its main flavouring ingredient is carrots!  As I dont have a juicer, I boiled a batch of carrots first to soften them so that they wouldn't be too gritty before freezing them.

To re-create:

1 banana
Handful of pre-cooked (frozen) carrots
Handful of frozen strawberries
Spoonful of Honey
Spoonful of creme fraishe
Orange Juice
Soya Milk

Photos from the Toronto Ice Storm

Although there was much devastation on our street in Thornhill, with many fallen trees,  there was also much beauty as everything was encapsulated in a twinkling layer of ice...

Christmas Card Production

Above are a few images of my Christmas Card production... and below are the secrets of how they were made!

Well before the actual mass production day, I traced two images of pinecone in black ink which I downloaded from the internet, and after a little tweaking of the contrast in photoshop, sent it to The Rubber Stamp Factory to have a large and small stamp made of them. 

Dovecraft Pigment Ink makes loads of coloured ink pads, but I wanted a rich chocolate brown for my pine cones, and was able to order this one from Amazon, along with some 6mm wide white satin ribbon.

The grey card was purchased from the Cowling and Wilcox art store in Camberwell, along with some brown ink pens for writing my season's greetings. I cut out the luggage tag shape myself with a blade, and simply punched the hole with a single hole punch.

Then it was just a matter of stamping, and tying on the ribbons!

Christmas Cards Off!

 

 

This weekend was my annual Christmas Card fabrication and production weekend, so accompanied by my Christmas music playlist, hot chocolate, and mince pies the task was completed.

 

Off the cards go now!!

Oh Christmas Tree....

 

 

This weekend I bought my first own Christmas Tree!  In the past it has never really seemed worth the effort as I always go home for Christmas (as I am this year), but I figured if I was organised and it was purchased on December 1st, then I'd have a good few weeks to enjoy it. 

Decorating it are a few ornaments from the Budapest Christmas markets from my visit there a few weekends ago, and a few pound store bargains including the little silver bells.

Music CD Clear Out

Before

After

I gave up my CD plastic jewel cases back in 2003 when I was in Chicago.  I remember how brilliant it felt to be free of all that plastic clutter and have my CD's neatly arranged in portable leather books which I could slowly bring to the UK every time I went back for Christmas (travel allowance weight permitting).  

Today, after 2 weeks of regular burning and song labelling every morning and every evening for a hour or two each day,  I finally finished the monumental task of digitising all my music CDs. Not only has the music been ripped onto my computer, but I have also imported all the album artwork and song names in i tunes.

It feels great to be free of the weight and space the CDs took up. With movies on demand, I also got rid of all my DVDs earlier this year.   

Next task in the ever present clutter reduction task - burning all my data CDs!