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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Happy Easter!!!!!

Happy Easter!!!!!

So I decided to finally try something I found on Pintrest, it sounded decadent, to die for.... absolutely yummy!!! And it's easy as pie (literally XD)

So here's what you need:
  • 8-12 Hollow Chocolate Easter eggs (you can use white for a more realistic effect)
  • 1 tub of cream cheese (at room temperature)
  • 1/4 cup of powdered sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (please use the good stuff!)
  • 1/2 cup thickened cream
  • 2 teaspoons of peach juice (or 1 whole passion fruit without seeds)
  • 1 tablespoon apricot jam
  • 1 tablespoon butter
And the Directions! (including pictures of my attempt at making them!)

  1. If your eggs are wrapped in foil uncover the top of them,  leave the wrapper on them to give some color pop and to help them stay cool longer (If you live down in Aus you will know its still hot enough to melt chocolate at Easter time!)
  2. Using a serrated knife you will need to cut the tops off the eggs. This can prove to be a bit difficult, if you would like a smooth hole then you can heat up the knife before cutting, if you would like a ragged hole like you had started peeling the egg then try and break some pieces off the top (this is what I did)
  3. Put the eggs in the fridge so they do not melt, and now its time to start making the cheesecake mix!!
  4. In a large bowl mix the cream cheese, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract together using an electric mixer beat on high for 3-4 minutes or until light and fluffy.
  5. In a smaller bowl mix the thickened cream with the electric mixer until it forms stiff peaks.
  6. Whisk the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture until it is smooth and velvety.
  7. Pipe or spoon the cream cheese mixture into the holes you made in the eggs. Fill them all the way to the top! But be careful not to spill much over the sides.
  8. Put the eggs in the fridge to set. The should take about an hour or so, I left mine over night to just make sure they were all the way set.
  9. After they have been set, remove them from the fridge, using a small spoon scoop out some of the cheese cake from the top, making a little hole. This is where the "yolk" will go.
  10. In a small pan, put the butter, jam, and passion fruit or peach juice, and whisk it over a low heat until the butter has melted and the mixture is smooth. It should look really yellow, but you can add some yellow food coloring if you like.
  11. Spoon the jam mixture into the cheese cake hols you made in the eggs. It will be s bit runny, but will set nicely.
  12. When you have filled up all the eggs put them in the fridge to set for at least half an hour, I left mine to set over night again....




I was so tempted to eat them straight away!
The good thing about these is that they aren't too sweet, the cheese cake mix does not need to be baked, but it is still light and fluffy while not being too cheesy. The jam and the chocolate add a nice sweetness to it but the cheesecake its self is understated. These were so much fun to make and took hardly any time at all to do, the only issue I had was that I had left over cheesecake!

But there you have it, you now have the recipe for Cheesecake Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs, easy peasy to do, super fun for kids, and a wonderful desert for after dinner! Hope everyone enjoys their Easter weekend as much as I will!!!

XxxX
Rah Rah <3






Thursday, March 14, 2013

Well then.....

So I've been a busy little bee lately!
Finished both my commissions ^_^ and now I'm a happy little girlie! Now until I get another one to do I'm making two of my very own little teds for my self (or future kids).
The blue and white stripey one is made with yarn that has no harsh dyes or chemicals in the yarn, and I have personally tried to rip him apart to make sure that no part of him could come lose by pulling (he's intended to go to a very special little boy soon!),and the face has been painted on as has the anchor on his chest, using nontoxic fabric paint so there is no risk of any buttons falling off and making their way into little tiny tummies.
Th black one has been made the same way and that one is going to my mom!

On a different note I have been awake since 5:30am ish today.... Lewy woke me up before he went to work, and I was bored out of my little mind waiting for the stores to open so I could go and do some shopping. I still got there early lolz and had to wait for almost half an hour for Aldi to open. Last night I had decided to make terriyaki chicken for dinner tonight, and I had to go out and get some white wine for the sauce... let me tell you, in my area NOTHING makes you feel more like a boozehound than waiting outside a liquor store for it to open at 9:30am. And because I'm all of 2 feet tall with a handbag thats almost as big as me, walking around said liquor store all wobbly while trying to knock things over with said huge bag does not help the drunk and disorderly stereotype..... Ah the joys of living here!
On the bright side I have gone out and done all my shopping, donated some clothes to a local charity shop, and made it home before 10:30am! Clever me!!!

Now for the rest of the week I plan on doing my housework and spending the rest of the days in bed watching movies while I knit my little heart out.... that is until Sunday when I have a bridesmaid dress fitting for my friend Rhiannon's wedding!!! It's less than a year away I'm so excited for them!! I'm looking forward to showing pictures of my own teds when they are done!

As always check out these awesome links:
Our Facebook Page!
My Ravelry Page!
My Deviant Art Page
and of course
A very special blog belonging to my cousin!!!

Friday, March 8, 2013

Shocking.....

This blog will have no tags.... it will not be advertised anywhere, its basically just a whole bunch of things I need to get off my chest...

I'm sick and tired of crying over this crap, so once its written down I'm really going to try and let it go... I feel it will make things so much easier for me not having to hold it all in...

I don't remember the very first place I lived, all I remember is one story my mom told me about me wanting to play hide and seek, but no one was around to play with me... so I played by myself and everyone was so freaked out because they couldnt find me...

I hated being an only child, it was so boring! Starting school made it easier, I made some friends and stuff, my kindergarten teacher Ms. Shultz was awesome, my best and first friend was named Kimberly Hornback. We were always together, up until fourth grade when our whole class got split into two and we started our class routine, I remember we had an inschool postal service and play money to pay for things... it was actually pretty fun, we got money for answering questions right in class or showing up for a whole month, and we had to save it and then at the end of the month we would get bonuses if we had turned in all our homework or done any extra credit. Then we would be able to buy things with the money we earned like stationary or paying for letters to be sent to people in other classes... One of the last letters I wrote to Kim was telling her that I was going to have to move to a new town and a new school, I remember i had scribbled it down in crayon because I was so angry that I even had to write it in the first place.
One of the last things I did at that school, Sonora Elementary, was learned to make tie-dye t-shirts, we all went outside with our little white shirts and bundled them up tightly with rubber bands and threw them into big tubs of blue dye. This was close to the very last day of school so my mom let me bring one of the old 35mm cameras with film so I could take pictures of everyone...
Right before I was supposed to go into the 5th grade I moved down to Nancy Kentucky. At least 2 hours away from any one I knew and I had to start in the middle of a new elementary school. It was hard, everyone had already made friends and this was the first time I actually had to make an effort to get people to like me... out of nerves I developed a chewing habit, on pens and lolly sticks, sometimes even pencils... and let me tell you the taste of gel pen ink is not something you easily forget when the pen bursts in your mouth...
People seemed to like me though and while I was still a bit awkward I managed to make a few friends, and I still kept in contact with a few of the guys from Sonora. But as always the phone calls stopped after a while, and then so did the letters... addresses got lost, phone numbers got changed, and we all grew apart.
Then we started middle school, I remember how nervous I was to go there, but at least all my friends from Nancy Elementary came along with me, I wasn't the new kid any more though and I started to slip into the background, I was happy there was no more spotlight, my novelty had worn off and I could just go about my day and hang out with my friends... I remember having English class with Mrs. Neely, a woman who towards the middle of the year had gotten pregnant and we as a class had tormented her so bad that one day she left the room in tears and didn't come back... I had my first real boyfriend, and for my birthday I had fall themed party. We did bobbing for apples and some other stuff and then we had gone to watch a movie.... I remember we had a big bowl of popcorn and we all had drinks, we were slipping ice cubes down the back of each others shirts, and he slipped one down the front of mine and then went in after it, I had beamed him over the head with the bowl of popcorn so hard my dad came in to see what the noise was. Then there was a school dance, and I had found out that he had invited several other girls before he had even asked me... my first rejection... I told my dad and he told me that if he was going to treat me like that then I didnt need him, he wasnt worth my time that I would find some one better one day I just had to be patient.
And then the most horrible thing to happen to a little girl happened to me... On January 5th 2001 my daddy collapsed. It was close to midnight, and a dog had been coming into our yard and causing our two to go nuts... they had started barking and my daddy had went outside to scare off this dog that had come. When he came back inside he was out of breath and looked a bit pale, my mom asked him if he was alright... he said he was and went into the bathroom. There was a thud... and my mom ran to check if he was alright.... I remember the scene vividly. My dad laying on the bathroom floor my mom bending over him checking for a pulse, she turned to me and told me to call 911... dad was making the most horrible sound, my mom was giving him cpr telling him not to leave.... I remember not knowing what to do... I couldnt cry, I remember I went outside and grabbed my cat, when the ambulance got to our house after about 5 minutes but it seemed like hours they came and put him on a stretcher, my uncle Terry had come over to drive us to the hospital with them, my mom stayed with me rather than going in the ambulance with my dad... now that I know what was happening I'm glad she stayed I dont think I could have held it together if it were just me in the car...
Halfway to the hospital the sudden urge to sing amazing grace came over me... and my mom just hugged me tight...
We get to the hospital, they knew my mom because she worked there.... they all look sad and no one wanted to look at me... my daddy didnt make it... it was after midnight now... they signed off on all the paperwork.... the nurses came to comfort my mom and my uncle... Uncle Terry came and hugged me and I remember thinking that it couldnt be happening.... he couldnt be gone, what was I going to do without my daddy? What was my mom going to do? And then it hit me... it was her birthday.... we had had a cake... we had gone shopping and gotten this jar of disgusting pickled vegetables for him and now who was going to eat them? They had worked on him until after midnight so that they could say he didnt pass away on my moms birthday, but the truth is he didnt make it our of our house... at least I can take comfort in that, its where he would have wanted to be....
I dont remember anything after that... I was on the bus to school but I dont know how long I had been off... the teachers were all nice to me, they danced around me like I was going to burst into tears at any moment... but I was pretty numb...
Just me and my mom now, and a whole bunch of memories....
High school started, and of course I was rebellious. I got into the goth culture, and fashion, people tended to leave me alone, I had my friends, but we weren't what you would call the popular bunch. I hated P.E like any other kid, but the teacher also picked on me for not being good at sports, he would make a big deal about whoever had me on their team, saying that the other kids needed to cut us some slack...I had a new boyfriend pretty much every week, and my self confidence was slowly falling. Every guy I was with wanted to move things way to fast, now I wonder what they were all saying about me behind my back, when I didnt want to do things then they would get angry and in a few hours time they would walk past me in the hallway with their arms around another girl... And then one day there were new kids on our bus to school, three boys and a girl.... The oldest boy looked at me and I knew something was there... Looking back on the situation I realize I should have felt disgusted... or something other than what I felt..... I ended up going out with him for 3 years, during which time he constantly put me down and made me feel like I was never good enough for him... but I stayed because I figured if I could get through it then something good would come out of it...
  and then in 2003 my mom took a trip down to Australia. She came back and  told me we were moving down there... in June she married my stepdad, and in October we hopped on a plane. Once again starting a new school, with all new people, in a whole new country... Last time was easy, I could go up and see my old friends on a weekend if I wanted to, but this was so much harder, I had no one but my mother, even the school didnt want me there.
My first day they had asked one of the popular people to show me around and introduce me to people...I was in the spotlight again, everyone wanted to talk to me, but when they noticed I wasnt tall or blonde or the cheerleader type like they saw in the movies they moved on to what they were doing before...After a few days I was alone again, the whole school knew who I was, and they all hated me. I would just be walking down the hallway to my next class and get several death threats from people walking past me, and when I want to the principal they told me I had to be doing something to bring it on myself that the students wouldnt say things like that without a reason. After that they picked on me a little, I couldnt wear my ear rings, or paint my nails, while other students could wear long sleeved shirts under their uniform instead of the itchy jumper I was forced to remove anything that wasnt part of the uniform that I didnt have a note for...I had made a few friends though, one or two of which I still keep in touch with now... During my first year I saw a guy in my year, and had one of those feelings again.... but after the last time and with the way people seemed to hate me I didnt want to put myself in that position again so I kept it to myself... In year 11 (junior year) I decided to take chemistry as a class, I struggled with it, and on days where we had to do experiments there was only one group of people who willingly asked me to join them, the teacher didnt want me in his class, and had told me he wouldnt sign for me, but my previous science teacher had recommended that I take it, and had talked him into it... after the classes started he would come around and stop me from helping out with experiments, he wouldnt call on me for questions during the lesson, he stopped grading my homework, and finally I decided I wanted to drop the class rather than fail it. He refused to let me go and made me stay for another month of torture before he signed the paper giving me permission to drop the class.
Our "Prom" came around, and I had let slip to my friends that I thought this guy was cute.... the cornered us both in front of the library and my friend Natalie told him he needed to invite me... he said no. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die... I didnt speak to any one for days. But the formal came and it was a horrible day, they didnt have any food that I liked so I didnt eat, my camera broke as well as my shoe, and the worse thing of all was that I didnt get invited to any after parties at all, but my friend Natalie stayed with me even though she had been invited to the city...
My 18th birthday was a few days later, and everyone was invited.... I was completely wasted before any one got there... I invited Lewy even though I knew he didnt feel the same way about me... I had decided that I would rather just be friends than to just let him go... that feeling didnt go away... no matter how hard I tried to push it back.
He ended up dating my friend Catherine... for a month, but we still talked almost every day, I always got excited and I knew it would end badly... but in the end they broke up, and he ended up asking me out on a date....We went to a movie which was good because I was too nervous to talk I didnt know what to say... we wernt in school any more but I couldnt understand (still dont really) why he would be interested in me at all.... I'm not pretty, I'm not smart, I didnt have a job... but he stuck with me....
Something makes me think that my dear old daddy had something to do with it... why else would I have moved all the way around the world and just so happen to go to the same school and be in the same year and even some of the same classes.... that kind of storybook stuff just doesnt happen right?



We were only together for 3 months before I was dragged back to the states again. I was sure that while I was gone he would find some one else... some one better. But every day he would email me or call me, the day I came back I was hoping he would be at our house, but he wasnt, he had however cleaned everything up in my room and left me little notes all over the place and wrote me some silly songs to cheer me up.
A few days later Natalie had to pick up an assignment that she had done at school and asked me to go with her to pick it up, I figured it would be nice to see if any one actually remembered me or not, and somehow all of the teachers already knew about me and Lewy, but when they said anything it was in such a mocking tone that I was sure they were making fun of me....
I didnt care, and now I talk to maybe 3 people from school, none of the teachers at all, and I am still with him.... we are still going strong against all odds.... On February 2nd 2011, we had moved into my mom and graham's house, Lewy had called me from work and told me to make dinner. I had it ready by the time he came home, and he said it needed to be more romantic.... he lit some candles and we started to eat.... by the end of the night we were engaged! I was so happy I jumped over the table and nearly broke a chair to hug him, and I was crying.
I couldnt wait to start telling everyone, and planning everything, but once again we hit a snag in the plan.... it's now 2013 and we have still made no plans, we have however bought a house and are currently doing renovations... and this is where the low self esteem comes into play.
See Lewy works 5 days a week, and even does overtime nearly every week, and for almost 7 years I was out of work, not that I wasnt looking for work, I was looking every single day but no one wanted to hire me at all. People would call me up excited about my resume but as soon as they met me in person the excitement died... I couldnt figure out what I was doing wrong, and I was starting to think there was something wrong with me... Everyone told me I just haddnt found the right thing yet and that it would come along eventually, but after 7 years of rejection I was loosing hope. And then my friend Rhi offered me a job at the place she worked, I had to scrape together $300 to get qualified, and I almost didnt make it through, but I got my certificate and on my birthday I was hired as a swimming instructor one day a week. It was all going really good until the company was bought out by another place, and they had decided to close the pool that I worked in, and apparently we were all going to be let go. I was lucky to find another job in the same field and closer to home, but still the hours are weird and it is still only 2 days a week... so we are struggling a little bit, we havent been out for a night on the town since we started saving up for our house, and I feel as though its all my fault... if I had gotten work it would have been so much easier, if I had better work we could fix up our house a lot faster, if I had more work we could save up for a wedding... and it makes it so much harder that both my family and friends are getting married and having babies, because I want that so much, but I know we cant afford to do any of it.... Everyone tells me its not my fault, that we are doing the best we can with what we have, but I still feel like there is something I could have done to have made it better....
It makes me sad to feel this way, because I feel as though people think I'm being greedy... I'm really not, I dont mind having to work for anything at all, but somehow I feel it should be easier than this, it seems so much easier for everyone else...

Who knows whats to come, there could possibly be something good in store for the both of us in the near future... and this thought is pretty much the only thing that keeps me going.... lets just hope for the best!

Friday, March 1, 2013

Stitches, Stuffyness, and Disney (lol)


As promised in the video here's the link to the turtle! It's actually pretty awesome since most of the amigurumi toys are all crochet patterns and when u turn them into knitting patterns they just dont look right... Google does not seem to see a difference in searching for "knitting" patterns vs "crochet" patterns, and 90% of the time I get so frustrated when I'm looking for things because I cant crochet for the life of me.... would be nice if some one could come and teach this uncoordinated lefty how to do it properly!

And as always please check out A blog Everyone should Read (shameless family blog flogging here!), Like and Love this facebook page!, Buy my knitting patterns here!, and last but not least Check out my other artworks here!

Hopefully my thumb heals soon and I can get back to knitting without sticking to things, and the rest of me better catch up soon because I'm sick of being sick!!!

Everyone please enjoy the turtle pattern, keep on getting down to the Knitty Gritty (love my word play!) and that you are all well. If you like what you're seeing please follow my blog! Lets get some comments going here constructive criticism never hurt any one and at least then I know people care about what I'm doing!!

<3<3 ~Rah-Rah