Just a minute ... in December

Its months since I have joined in with Jenaveve's Just a minute meme, so I thought I ought to make amends before 2008 slips away.

So, this month I have been ...

Reading

KindaWorks. A manual from an organisation called Kindergarten Parents Victoria. I would say that I highly recommend reading it, but I suspect its appeal is limited.

I have volunteered to be the kindergarten treasurer in the coming year. Its not so much out of a deep seated desire to be an office bearer, as much as a sense of I guess if no-one else is volunteering I'd better do my bit. It involves invoicing and receipting fees, banking and other exciting tasks. I'm still new to this whole kindergarten caper, but I take it that no-one wants to be the treasurer. Anywhere. At all. Ever. Its not a great surprise. Who wants to be the one to chase non-payers; hassling other parents?

I hope that the manual suggests ways in which to avoid being the most reviled parent at kindergarten.

Watching

How I Met Your Mother. I don't have a choice. Mr HB has recorded loads of episodes and since taking holidays, has had them on high rotation on the telly. He does that around Christmas every year. Goes a bit funny and has a sitcom-a-thon. Last year we had to watch every known episode of The IT Crowd and Black Books.

Growing

Flowering in the garden at the moment are three varieties of roses, two colours of hydrangea, echinacea, cornflowers, pansies and lavender. The colours are predominantly blues, mauves and pinks, with a little bit of soft apricot thrown in for good measure.

The edible part of the garden includes tomatoes, lettuces, watermelons, potatoes, limes and lemons. Unfortunately the plums are doomed; none of the fruit set. The coriander has gone to seed and the oregano has died. Snails continue to eat the lettuces despite a tasty saucer of beer left to lure them away. I might as well drink the beer (though I draw the line at sipping it directly from the snails' saucer) and forget the salad.

Cooking

Strawberry cookies. I have made several batches of a slightly adapted recipe I found on the back of a packet of dried strawberries. The original is called Dried Strawberry Cream Melting Moments and can be found at the Fruit For Life website. (My adaptations are the use of a food processor and omission of the icing.)

Preheat the oven to 160ºC. Place ½ cup icing/confectioners' sugar, ½ cup cornflour and 1 ½ cups plain/all-purpose flour into the bowl of your food processor. Blitz for a couple of seconds. Add 250g cold chopped butter and blitz until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Place into a bowl and stir in 50g thinly sliced dried strawberries (Lion of Sahara brand, if you are in Australia). Press and roll mixture into about 36 small balls and place on a greased tray. Flatten each with the back of a fork and bake for about 20 minutes. Delicious!


Sewing

I have a good list of sewing projects to keep me going. Next month this will include an apron for the combined Sassy/Flirty Apron Swap. This swap is in time for Valentine's Day and is themed Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice.

My special holiday project, however, is to sew children's sun hats. I have made a start, using Nikki's fantastic Kids' Hat Pattern. Although the pattern difficulty is rated "advanced" the instructions are very easy to follow. Admittedly sewing a brim to a crown is not the easiest of tasks, but I have found a seam ripper a great friend!

I have three hats cut out at the moment. The one pictured above, just needs a bit of extra stitching, a bit of a press and then its lining. Of course, I have carefully arranged the hat at just the right angle so you can't see how unfinished it really is (let's say a lack of attachment between crown and brim at the back). Ah, the magic of photography. I wonder if its possible to recreate this angle on a child?

To see who else is playing along with Just a minute ... head over to Jenaveve's blog, August Street.