More Dakota & Jojo

This is my little Dakota when I'm sitting behind my computer. She used to fit in the small basket, when she was 3 months old and still have some space to maneuver. Now she just about fits in the basket, so I got her a bigger basket and my mum even padded it to make it softer, and yet, she still prefers the smaller one. Guess it's cosier, although when Jojo is here, they'll both sleep in the big one.

So this is Jojo, posing for the photo, although she's always got her eyes closed, and I wasn't even using a flash. She turned 3 years old a month ago, and still very active. Basically anyone goes outside at the farm, and she's got to go with. The only time she doesn't like going outside is when it's pouring down with rain.

And here are the little darlings together sitting on an old bed that my mum has upstairs in her craft room, just for this purpose. This way Jojo can lie comfortably on the bed while my mum is working on her sewing machine. Yeah right, she's usually got her head on my mum's feet, and on occasion even gets the machine going by herself, because she lays her head down on the pedal. Dakota on the other hand prefers to fool around with the toys, on the bed, off the bed, wherever, as long as she can chew on something.

Dakota at 9.5 months

Here's some photos I took over the last couple of weeks of Dakota. She's now 9.5 months old, and quite well behaved. Especially seeing as I take her to the office with me every day, and she doesn't bother anyone. Actually she's the one that gets "bothered", there's two colleagues of mine who love to play with her, and regularly chase her around the office. They really like catching her down stairs where we have wooden floors, and she doesn't have that great a grip and slips and slides alot, as you can imagine she's not too fond of that, she prefers playing upstairs where there's carpet and she's got grip and can run without staying in the same location.

The photos above show her enjoying a brand new bone, I give her one about once every month, because otherwise all my money goes to her bones. Actually found a new type of bone made from plastic with a chocolate flavor which is guarantees to last months if not years so she's got that to chew on at the office. The remainder of the photos show her enjoying the sunshine by the balcony. While I'm not there to supervise her she's not allowed out by herself, am afraid she might jump up trying to catch one of the many birds that fly around here, and as we're on the 3rd floor, wouldn't want her to go over the side. So while I'm not with her, she's got to stay behind the windows, when I am around she gets to step outside. Off to my parents' farm tomorrow, so she has all the space to run around chasing birds and Jojo will see if I can't get some decent shots of the two together.

Life is Good Ewe by Bent Creek

This is Life is Good Ewe by Bent Creek, a small kit I'd bought some time ago online, and which this past weekend I couldn't resist picking up and making. It only took saturday and sunday afternoon to finish. Having hardly worked on Linen it was a bit of a challenge, but I quite liked it and it came out beautifully. The next time I have a bit of extra money I'm definitely going to be buying some more of these type of kits with linen and overdyed thread. It does require a bit of different stitching to what I'm normally used to, but I don't mind too much as the results are fantastic. The colours don't really come out too great on the photos, they're much lighter in real life, but it was slightly overcast on Sunday morning when I took the photos (above) and pouring down with rain by the time I finished the piece and took the photo below.

Haven't quite decided how I'm going to finish this piece, but was thinking of going through my mum's fabric stash to see if I can't find something cute to match it and then maybe make it into a small handbag, if anyone has any ideas, let me know, always up to new ideas. Thanks.

Quick-to-make Chocolate Cake

I first want to say that I was absolutely horrified with what happened on Koninginnedag (Queen's day - 30th April) in Holland last week. I really don't know what the guy was thinking to want to crash his car into the Queen's bus on such a joyous day (or any other day for that matter). Instead he killed 4 innocent bystanders and injured a lot more. I really wish every one of those families affected by the tragedy last week my sincerest condolences. Ok, no stitching updates, and I took no photos at all during my stay at the farm last week. We had a long weekend, because the 1st of May in Portugal is Labor Day, so of course we don't work. Well that's to say, I did work, quite a lot actually on my parents farm. You see they have a load of fields that are completely overgrown, and because we have about 4 or 5 natural springs in several locations on the land where the water flows freely, we have an overgrowth of plants. So last week Friday my dad wanted to clear one of these fields that gets plenty of water, so I went to help out. It was a great day, sunny and warm, but because we were mostly working in the shade, we didn't feel the heat of the day that much. We managed to clear more than half the field of all sorts of weeds, and mostly stinging nettles, which we had to be carefull of. My dad cleared and I collected everything on a pitchfork to put in piles that will later be used for a compost heap at another location on the farm. We also cleared a path for the excess water to run so as not to flood the field all the time. While my dad was doing that, I was chopping away at roots to remove them. Did you know that the stinging nettle roots also sting!! Well I didn't but I found out the hard way. I did have working gloves on, but I didn't want to get them wet, so I put my hand in the water to remove a chuck of the root I'd managed to work free and got stung for my effort. Well that won't happen again. I really actually enjoyed helping out, and next time I'm over if my dad needs help with something I'll go out and help again. So now over to the subject heading of this entry. On Sunday my aunt came over to celebrate Mother's day because my gran was also over at the farm. My mum took care of the main course which was fish, some salmon/trout type fish, and I'd promised to make the desert. Well I couldn't be too bothered to spend to long in making a cake, so I decided to try out this recipe a friend of mine gave me. And let me tell you it works, so for those people who are reading this and see that it only takes 5 minutes to cook in the Microwave, just trust me, you get a lovely cake. So before sitting down to lunch I made the cake. This is an excellent recipe to use if you suddenly get some unexpected guests show up. I should mention though that the cake is small, and maybe only good for 8 portions depending on the size of slice you cut. So if you get a really large group, you might have to make more than one cake. Anyway, so below the ingredients and how to make the cake.

INGREDIENTS:

4 eggs

200 grams sugar

150 grams cooking chocolate (at least 70% cacao)

100 grams flour

120 butter (or margarine)

PREPARATION:

1. get a pyrex/glass, microwave safe, dish which is a good 10cm high (you'll need it) and make sure to grease it up really well and then add some flower to cover all the "grease" (I use butter for this)

2. mix together the eggs, flour and sugar in a bowl

3. break the chocolate into small pieces as well as the butter and put them in a bowl and put in the microwave to melt for 1 minute and 30 seconds (no more)

4. Add the melted chocolate and butter to the rest of the ingredients and mix well together until you have a smooth mixture.

5. pour your mixture into the pre-greased dish and put in the microwave at the highest voltage/power for 5 minutes

This cake is supposed to be moist. Once the 5 minutes are up, remove the cake from the dish immediately onto a plate and let it cool down before serving. I usually serve it when it's still a little bit warm (about 30-40 minutes after I made it) with either some vanilla ice-cream or some whipped cream, whatever you prefer.

Like I said, I've made this cake on several occasions now and it really is only 5 minutes in the microwave, and everyone who's tried it has absolutely loved it. That's why I always have some cooking chocolate in my pantry as well as all the other ingredients, just in case. You never know when you're going to need to make a cake in a hurry. Let me know when you've tried it out if it's not easy to make and absolutely delicious.

LHN - Soft and Sweet

This is my first ever Little House Needleworks chart. I ordered it from Marilyns.com and it arrived within 2 weeks, which isn't too bad considering the major postal problems we have here in Portugal. The chart came with the threads to stitch the design, and recommended 28 Count Natural Pearl or Natual Raw Linen, however, I couldn't find any in my stash that was would fit the whole design and then I remembered this small piece of a dark beige Aida that I'd bought online some time ago. It was also the first time working with silks and having to stitch almost all of it one stitch at a time. It was a nice challenge and I thought it was going to take a long time, but surprisingly enough it only took me a day to complete. I did modify the design slightly as I didn't want to add any name. I made this design for my Mum for Mother's day which is this week sunday (May 3rd) here in Portugal. Of course she's not seen this yet, she'll only get to see it on Sunday, and I'll leave it up to her how she finishes off. I have no idea if she wants it as a small pillow or in a frame or a cover for a box. I'll just leave it up to her to decide.

I really liked the simplicity of this design, and next time I get a chance to buy a LHN design I certainly will. Here in Portugal they're very hard to find, so I'll have to go online to buy it. I've made myself a promise that before buying anything else, I have to finish all the projects on my to do list and make at least 3 of the kits I have lying around. We'll see how long I can keep that promise.

When I ordered this kit I also ordered a Bent Creek - Life is good for Ewe kit and a Dimension Christmas Banner kit, so I guess they'll count towards the above promise.

Quaker Smalls for Mothers Day

Here are Projects 110 (pink) and 111 (blue). They're from Milady's Needle Christmas Quaker Smalls. There are three charts in total, both in colour and monochromatic. I chose to do the monochromatic version for both due to time constraint.

The blue one is for my aunt as she, much like me, loves blue. The pink one is for my gran. My mum has been kind enough to help me out in making them into small pillows that can either be hung up or put down somewhere as I still don't have my own sewing machine.

Project 109 - Pillow for my Mum

So here are the pictures of the finished pillow I made for my mum's birthday. Here you see the front and the back, what you don't see is the sides, which are about 3-4 cm high and along each side it has a part of my mum's name and birthday as well as the country she was born in, Portugal of course. She really liked it and has put it on a chair in the bedroom to keep it safe from the dogs.

Marco de Canaveses

I spent some time at my parents farm over Easter weekend, and went for a walk with my dad, where we ended up picking a lot of wild flowers. I loved this blue one in the picture above, but have no idea what it is. So if anyone knows, please let me know. Our dogs, Jojo and Dakota also enjoyed the sunshine and went for a walk with us around the farm. Here they are sunning themselves on the drive. Jojo is more interested in something or other that was behind me, whereas Dakota looks like she was really tired.

Foz and Leça de Palmeira

The photo below is of me at one of my favourite places along the Foz which is basically a really long boulevard by the sea. I have photos of me when I was a baby with my family and my grandparents. I love the columns and come down here quite often just to walk along the sea.

The picture to the right (above) is one I took in Leça de Palmeira which is a bit further north of the Foz, but still along the sea. You can see the front of bad weather coming our way. We were on the beach when I took this photo, but we left shortly after, because the cloud further to right was very threatening. Seeing as it was still early to go home, we went to a new shopping mall next to the Ikea called Marshopping. It's smaller than the one closest to my house, but because it has Ikea right next door, you could literally spend the whole day inside looking at all sorts of things.

PORTO - Estação S. Bento

So this is the famous S. Bento station in downtown Porto. To tell you the truth I'd walked passed it plenty of times, but never gone inside. Having now been inside I see what a huge mistake I've made in the past. The station is gorgeous, the main hall is covered from floor to ceiling (almost) in white and blue tiles depicting several scenes. Because of their age, they have now been covered in a thin gauze like fabric to enable you to still see the tiles, while at the same time protecting them. So they aren't actually as dirty as they look. I'll definitely be visiting the station again next time I'm in downtown. We even caught a break when we were inside, because if we'd been outside another 2 minutes we'd have gotten completely drenched. A shower like we hadn't had that day yet, came down not minutes after we'd entered the station and so we walked around for a while to wait for it to pass.

PORTO - Francesinhas

So here I am again, this was during our lunch break. We stopped at one of the many restaurants on Cais de Gaia and I went for a local dish called a Francesinha, which is a sandwich of about three layers and contains all sorts of sausages and other meats. The secret of the dish is in the tomato sauce which is quite spicy. The whole sandwich is then hidden beneath a layer of cheese and I asked for the special which comes with an egg on top of it. I love this dish, and generally speaking it's eaten in the middle of the night after a night on the town, which I've done on several ocassions, but I also like eating it during the day. Although I must say that after eating this and the desert, I had a chocolate mousse and my friend had the biscuit cake, neither one of us felt like eating for the rest of the day. I recommend you try this should you ever come to Porto. But like I mentioned the sauce is spicy, so if you don't like "hot" food, better not eat it, because without the sauce, it's just a meat/sausage sandwich.

PORTO - Wine Tasting at Sandeman

This lady was our tour guide throughout the "caves" of Sandeman, one of the many producers of Port Wine. My friend and I wanted to do a wine tasting and this was one of the ones that had an English Tour starting within minutes of our arrival, we had tried going to Calem, but we'd have to wait for a while, and seeing as we still had a lot to see, we decided we'd try another one, and so Sandeman it was.

Throughout the tour you get to know the history of the place and you get to take photos of everything you see. the barrels you see in the picture are actually the small ones only containing about 3000 litres, they have really big ones that take up to 42000 litres. After the tour we got to taste the Tawny Port and the White Port. My preference went for the White Port, although I don't generally drink it at all.

I actually know one of the wine tasters that works at Sandeman, he's a family friend, and I'd told my friend about it and then when we were watching the movie, giving more of an in-depth view into Sandeman he actually appeared in it. After visiting Sandeman we made our way across the bridge again to continue our sight seeing experience.

PORTO - Majectic Cafe

Another one of Porto's tourist attractions is the Majestic Cafe, well worth the visit. Not only is the outside beautiful (usually there are less things covering up the facade of this building) but the inside is all very old and still in its original state. That's me in the picture to the right having some tea. I should mention that it's not the cheapest place to eat or drink, but for a midmorning or midafternoon snack/drink it's quite reasonable. I really love this place and always walk by it whenever I'm in downtown.

PORTO - Old Tram

This is one of the old trams that used to be a common site all over Porto. Unfortunately they stopped running for years, but now they've been brought back to the center of town and all along the river to the opening of the sea for tourists to enjoy a city tour without having to walk all of it. We didn't get a chance to go on one, but it is definitely something I'll do in the future. Here it is entering R. Sta Catarina, which is the old shopping street in downtown Porto.

PORTO - Ponte Luiz I

These photos show Ponte Luiz I, the most famous bridge in Porto. It's a fantastic metal structure. The lower part is where cars and people can cross and the top part is where trains and the metro cross.

I've heard several stories from my dad that when he was younger loads of people used to jump off the bridge into the river. This is of course highly dangerous because of the very strong currents of the river.

Both these photos were taken on the side of Porto, known as the Ribeira, and you can see Vila Nova de Gaia on the other side, and the area around closest to the water is called Cais de Gaia. This is also where you can find all the Port Wine Houses, such as Calem, Sandeman, Ferreira and many others.

PORTO - Bolhão

So here are the photos of my sightseeing trip with my friend from NL. We went to the old city center of Porto on Wednesday. We visited the old market " Bolhão" first. The pigeons you see in the photos have been chased away from the old square because they were damaging the buildings and I guess they've now taken up refuge in the old market.

This the card I made for my aunt's 50th birthday on the 5th of April. I also made her some necklaces as she loves to wear jewelry, but I forgot to take photos of them. I used EMS's freebie from the Animal baby book. The little butterflies I used a papercutter with that shape and just stuck them on the card and on the envelope.

We went out to dinner with her two boys and the eldest one brought along his girlfriend as well, and then after dinner we went to a Comedy Bar where we stayed until 4am before finally going home. My poor little Dakota stayed home all alone, but she behaved herself, having slept most of the time I'm sure and she didn't even want to wake up in the morning when I got up.

Well gotta run, need to get my stuff together and then get in the car and face this gloomy day on the way to the farm. It's been miserable all week, with rain showers, mostly mild rain showers, but we've had some pretty heavy rain showers as well, especially this morning at 4.45am, on my way to taking my friend to the airport, we could hardly see the road, good thing there wasn't anyone else on the road because I was doing about 50km/hr on the highway. Bye for now

Birthday Present - Green Hearts Pillow

It's my mum's birthday tomorrow, and I decided about two weeks ago to make a pillow with her name and birthdate on it after seeing this heart in my stash. I think I got it as a freebie from the web, but for the life of me I can't remember where I got it. I decided to leave the design on the inside without stitching and then on the back of the pillow use this design in the same way as I've placed the hearts. On the picture on the left you can see the colours I've decided to use, I really wanted to find 4 colours more identical to each other, but could only find two and then added the lighter colours which I though matched quite nicely. I've used Anchor threads as they are cheaper to buy in Portugal. I usually get them for about 60 Euro cents at the market by my house. The DMC threads I have I tend to save for larger projects. These photos were taken two weeks ago, and I just finished the whole project this morning, but I haven't yet downloaded the photos from my camera, I'll do that tomorrow as I'm actually already late in leaving for the farm to be there this weekend. I'll also have some nice photos of Porto to show next time as I had a friend over this week, and we went walking around the old city center, despite the rain, and then also went to the beach on Thursday where we managed to get some better weather.

Baby Boy

I made these gifts for my older "sister", that's to say she's not really a blood relation, she's the daughter of my godparents and we are 9 months apart in age, and were always together as babies until I moved to Holland with my parents at age 3. Anyway, she got married at the end of 2007 and in February this year she gave birth to a healthy baby boy called Miguel as you can see from the name I stitched on the bib. I stitched the same winnie the pooh onto the bib and the towel. I also knitted the little boottees. I'm currently working on something else for this darling baby boy, but I can't show photos yet, as I don't want to ruin the surprise for the parents/grandparents. The boottees only took about 2.5 hrs each to make from beginning to end and I'll be making several more pairs shortly as there are at least two other people in my surroundings having babies. I already know that one is having a girl and the other a boy, so I'll have to go through my stash of yarn, which is going to be hard as most of it still in packed up in the garage. I might just go through my mum's stash as that is more readily available.

Found this old school photo of me, as you can see it was taking at the beginning of the school year of 1995/1996, almost 14 years ago. Seriously where has the time gone. Through Facebook I've been able to get back in contact with most of the people in this picture, some of them I even met up with during a School Reunion 2 years ago and it was great talking to everyone again. The Rijnlands Lyceum is a Dutch School and the one I was in, there are at least two in Holland, was in Oegstgeest because this one had both a Dutch and International Section. I was in the international section having transferred there from the British School several years previously. I can't really remember much except that it wasn't too bad a school and I had plenty of friends, as far as I'm concerned the rest was unimportant.

Be Jolly

I was unable to resist buying this Pine Mountain Design entitled Be Jolly online when I visited 123stitch recently. Of course the moment it arrived in the mail I had to unpack the whole thing to take a look at it better. Seeing as I'd decided to stay at my desk during lunch anyway, I quickly ate and then started stitching imediately. The following day at lunch I finished it up, it's just such a simplistic design and so very easy to stitch, I probably could have finished it quicker if it hadn't been for the phone calls interrupting my lunch hours, but hey, it's my own fault I suppose for staying behind my desk at lunch time. The little pillow was already made, so all I had to do when I finished stitching it was carefully put the fabric inside and if I say so myself it came out really cute. I've already had several people asking me if I could make them an identical one, guess I'll have to start thinking of when I'll find the time for it.

Wedding Pillow

My dear friends in South Africa got married in January this year and I made this pillow for them to commemorate this very happy day for them. I was unable to attend the wedding, but from the photos I've seen it was a gorgeous sunny summer day and they had a great time with friends and family. Justine & Kevin, I know I've told you already, but all the very best for your future, and hopefully I'll be able to make a stop in South Africa some time soon.

Sad News

I was intending to make this an entry with some photos of things I've finished off the last couple of weeks and a progress on how I'm going on this baby blanket I've started. That was the plan this morning when I woke up. Now, however, I'm not going to do any of that. After getting up this morning I'd planned cleaning throughout the morning, going for a long walk with Dakota and then sitting down and updating this blog, but instead I've been thinking about my grandmother. You see I got a call from my dad this morning saying that his mother passed away during the night. She'd had surgery earlier this week on her liver and intestine, and she was doing ok until yesterday when they were having trouble stabalizing her, so they were going to move her to another hospital where they could monitor her heart better. She didn't make it through the night. Last year she'd had heart surgery and was recovering nicely from it after it being touch and go for several weeks after the surgery. She was also having problems with her blood having developed Diabetes after the heart surgery last year. I've now only got one living grandparent, being my maternal grandmother, having lost my paternal grandfather 12 years ago in July and my maternal grandfather 8 years ago in August. I know this is how life goes, but it's still very sad for everyone involved. I know my grandmother lived a full and happy life, she'd have turned 84 this year. Thanks for listening and I'll be back soon to give you those other updates I mentioned before.

Dakota Update

So here's my little girl, Dakota. I took her to the vet and she gave her a clean bill of health. Because she was only 4 months when I got her the vet warned me that she would undoubtedly start losing her milk teeth soon, and wouldn't you know it, the very next day I start finding little teeth all over the place. Of course what with her chewing her bone every second she could it helped. As you can see in the picture she loves her bone, and she hates it when you take it away from her.

Doesn't she look so sweet and innocent in the other picture, makes you wonder what she was up to before I took the photo. Well, I did come home to find my phone charger chewed to bits as well as a notepad I had on top of the coffee table, but hey, it really was my own fault for leaving them lying around with a 6 month old puppy who only wants to get into misschief. So I can't really blame her now can I.

She just spent the week at my parents farm to recover from her sterilization. She needed someone to keep an eye on her so that she didn't lick her wound open. Luckily there are no visible stitches, the vet used dissolvable thread and managed to put all the stitches safe for the last one on the inside. She's doing great and i'm going over to the farm this weekend to pick her up and bring her back home with me so that I can play with her again. But she's been having fun, having my mum fuss over her and of course my mum's dog, Jojo, has also been keeping her intertained. Jojo is a real riot, she growls and pretends to be really annoyed for having to share all her belongings, and space with Dakota, but the moment Dakota isn't around she mopes around for several days because she misses her friend. Dakota and Jojo thank you all for reading this blog and I'll keep you all updated on their progress.

Where did the time go???

Wow, where did the time go to? I thought that i'd posted in December, but obviously not. Well Dakota has been behaving herself more or less, she's only 6 months old, so I suppose she's just being a regular puppy. I had her sterilized on Friday because I'd rather adopt another dog, than run the risk of her becoming pregnant with a large litter. Here in Portugal there are just too many unwanted dogs for me to add to them.

Being the New Year and seeing as everyone received their Christmas presents before Christmas I can finally show some of them here. The ones in the pictures to the top and left are the little hanging ornaments I made for my new friends and colleagues in Portugal. I personalized them in their favorite colour and their initial. On the back of the ornament I added a little flower in the same colour as the front and then hand sewed the back and front together before stuffing it. I told them to spray it with their favourite perfume/scent and then add it to their closet or a drawer to make their closet/drawer smell nice (as well as what's in them).

My friends and (ex)work colleagues in Holland got potpourri bags, also personalized with their initials, and for them I added a bar of chocolate soap.

Dakota

As you may know, if you've been following my blog since I started, my little baby boy Max died in September, and ever since I've been searching for another little puppy to keep me company. No new puppy could ever replace Max or the other dogs I've had, but is always a welcome addition to the family. Ever since I was born I've always had a dog, I think the longest we went without a dog was when our first dog Duchessa died and then I think it was about 2 years before we got a little Yorkshire Terrier puppy in April of '88 we named Gigi (the picture to the left taken in 2000). She had a long and happy life and even gifted us with a little puppy of her own, which we kept and named Tessa. Gigi died in September of 2003 and only two weeks after her passing we got some really bad news to do with Tessa (picture below right). Turns out our little Tessa, at age 11 at the time, had a tumor growing in her liver, which unfortunately was inoperable becuase it was surrounded by blood vessels. The vet seemed to think she was lucky if she survived another 20 days after the diagnosis, well she proved them all wrong, because she managed to live pain free (she was on medication) for another 2 whole years, she only passed in November 2005.

It was almost another two years before we got JoJo from the pound. She was 14 months when we got her and was absolutely terrified having had a very rough start to life. However, with all the love we gave her, she was soon very much at home, and a shadow and companion for my mum who doesn't work. Now she did have some problems with going for walks, especially if my mum would take her, because any person who came too close would be seen as a threat and she'd want to attack. Let's not even get started on cats and dogs. I solved that problem by taking her for walks, and I'm a bit more firm in my commands and hold and managed to get her to walk nicely on her lead and refrain herself from attacking anyone or any dogs. Cats are just a different story, I think it just has to do with her breed. She's a Parson's Jack Russell Terrier and they're hunters.

Here she is lying on the back of the couch using this pumpkin I knitted as a head rest, completely at ease.

So after we got JoJo in August of 2007, there was still something missing and little 6 month old Max (picture in previous post, no. 2 I think) came into our lives, but he wasn't meant to stay for the 13+ years we had our other Yorkshires and he died at 15 months. So now we're up to date on all the dogs I've had in my lifetime till now.

So I was missing a companion after Max passed and have been looking for one ever since. Now every Monday in our local newspaper there's a page with a whole bunch of dogs that need adopting, and last week Monday my dad told me to have a look because there was a nest of 6 puppies up for adoption. I called up the lady who was housing them, becuase they'd been found abandoned on the streets, and she still had several available. I went to have a look that evening and told her to reserve me this cute little thing so that I could talk it over with my parents. Well after having talked it over, we all decided it was best if my mum came to have a look as well, and we could then decide, based on her personality if she would fit in with JoJo, because even though she doesn't attack other dogs anymore, she's still not too keen on them coming too close. My mum also fell in love with the puppy and we brought her home. We were prepared for the worst, but luckily things turned out ok, and the two little girls are best friends now. I've named the puppy Dakota. She still needs to be housebroken, but with the help of JoJo we're getting there. Seeing as Dakota is a street dog, we have no idea what breed she is, but I don't care, she's mine and she's cute, that's all that matters to me. Curious yet as to what Dakota looks like, well take a look at the photo below.

Santa Sampler Update

Here's an update on the Santa Sampler Freebie I've been making for my mum. Most of it was finished it over last weekend when I spent some time at my parents' farm as well as during my lunch hour on Monday and Tuesday, I haven't been able to pick it up during the evening hours the last two days, because I've been busy removing everything from the floor in my kitchen, I'll explain in my next post. So I've finally decided to finish it as a bag, and on the back instead of stitching the whole design again, I'll just find a nice alphabet and write Natal 2008 (Christmas 2008 in Portuguese) and maybe my mum's initials. when this one is done I've only got another 12 or so gifts to make one of which is rather large, but I made a similar one for someone else and it only took a week to complete.

The coming two weekends we have three day weekends here in Portugal, so this weekend I'll be at my parents' farm and my grandmother will also be coming. She'll turn 77 on Sunday so we're having a small celebration and my Aunt will also come along, my cousins already have plans so they won't be able to make it. Next weekend I'll be taking a trip to Ikea to have a look at some picture frames and some other stuff I need. Will see what I come home with, usually a lot more than I went looking for.

Christmas Presents

You might remember me mentioning that I've been making Christmas Presents for several of my friends, well about two weeks ago I finished about 9 of them that were destined for Holland, and seeing as I didn't want them to get lost in the mail or take forever to reach their destination I sent them in at the time, and it only took 3 days to get there, glad I paid that extra bit to send them via express.

So this is how I sent the package, all nicely wrapped up in snowman wrapping paper. And seeing as everyone has received, I thought to post the picture showing how the actual presents look like, but I know some of my friends are being good, and only opening them at Christmas, so I can't show any pictures yet, but come the New Year I'll be posting all the pictures of all the gifts I made.

Now three of my dear friends who received presents from me were so very kind in sending me a little something too, which I received today in the mail, and was completely unexpected. I'm going to be very good about it and not open them until Christmas, and to make it easier to resist temptation, I'm going to leave the presents at my parents' farm this weekend, that way I just don't have them in my house and I can't be tempted to take a little peak. They did a great job with the wrapping, it's all so Christmassy as you can see in the picture.

Santa Sampler Freebie

Hi there, this Santa Sampler by Kirsten Edwards was one of the many Freebies I've downloaded over the years, and I now decided to make it as a Christmas present for my mum (she doesn't read my blog, so I can show it). I only started this on Saturday (15-11-2008) and this was my progress as of Tuesday (18-11-2008) evening, I managed to get a lot more done yesterday, but I haven't had a chance to take a photo of it yet. I'm doing this on Linen (the first time ever) and I'm being extra brave by stitching this 1 over 1, which I thought was going to be a lot harder than it's turning out to be. And I'm actually quite enjoying working with the Linen too. Because I had this linen in my stash that I bought at a garage/yard sale while still living in Holland, I have no idea what kind it is, but it's really nice to work with. I have some more pieces of linen in my stash of all different colors, that I used to pick up at garage/yard sales, so I'll definitely try to do more with that. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this piece, and how I finish it off.

Completed Cross Stitch

Seeing as I can't show the cross stitch projects I'm working on at the moment I've decided to show some of the ones I've completed in the past. This White Tiger, a Ross Originals Pattern I bought at my local LNS at the time, was completed 7 years ago in just 3 weeks time. I did it the summer my grandfather died after a long illness, and every time I look at this tiger, it just reminds me of him. At the time the LNS in Portugal didn't carry any black fabric, so I made him on white Aida, but he probably would have stood out a lot more on the black Aida. I love the big cats, and this white tiger is amongst my favorites. I've also made a Puma on black aida fabric, but i've not had the time to take a photo of that one yet, and also it isn't framed, but I'll post it some time in the future.

Have a great weekend.

Chestnut picking

Above just some of the many pictures I took of all the chestnuts (and trees) we have around the farm. I really have no idea how many trees we have, but there's a lot of them, and they produce a lot of chestnuts, although some of them are so small it's actually pointless in eating them, because really there's nothing much to eat. So apart from spending my weekend taking lots of photos (digital and about 3 rolls of film on my other camera) I also spent it picking chestnuts off the ground and directly from the trees. My hands were punctured by the end of the weekend in several places despite using gloves. The "hedgehog" casing of the chestnut has really nasty spikes, especially if they're still a bit green. In one of the pictures above you see we used one of the blue Ikea bags we had lying around, they're really big and I managed to collect about 5 bag-fulls of them during the weekend, and that's not even to mention the wheelbarrow load my dad collected and the other bag-full my mum collected. The dog had to stay home while we were out collecting all these chestnuts, because we didn't want her to injure herself on the casings of the chestnuts, and she refuses to walk with her little shoes, so she sulked inside the house. On Sunday afternoon I spent about 2 hours removing the chestnuts from their casings, and we then used all the casings as fuel for the fire, they burn fantastically. We even threw in the little chestnuts and the ones that had huge holes in them from the caterpillars that eat the chestnuts (they're plenty of those around). My mum found an article in a magazine or a cookbook that showed a variety of things that can be done with the chestnuts, so we had chestnut soup, which was delicious; chestnut cake, really good, although a bit crumbly because it doesn't take any flour (she's just made some more, so I can enjoy it over the weekend); jam/jelly for on toast or bread or whatever else purpose there is for jam and jelly, this is actually quite sweet, despite not adding too much sugar to the chestnuts, and tastes lovely on some bread; and finally the candies chestnuts, these are really delicious although my mum said she refuses to make any more because it requires about 4 days worth of cooking and she prefers to get quicker results. By the way the stuff she made was just with the chestnuts my parents had picked the previous weekend and what my mum picked during the week. This weekend alone, the three of us managed to pick about 25-30 kgs more of chestnuts, so my mum is going to make a lot more jam/jelly and we're going to try freezing some so that we can have them over Christmas.

Plenty of Olives

Amongst the many trees we have growing on the farm, we have about 10 olive trees, unfortunately for me they're the black variety, and I'm not too keen on those, I prefer the green ones. I might just have to learn to like them. My mum has found out to prepare them, so she's got a little jar of them in the kitchen to see if they turn out ok, and then if that works out, we'll be picking the rest, although it still seems a little bit early, because the majority of them are still on the trees. The picture shows just one of the many olive trees, although this one is actually right on the drive by the house instead of by the rest of them, and seems to have bigger olives, becuase it catches more direct sunlight. We might try making olive oil next, we have that many olives, or else we'll go to the market and sell them.

A River of Mushrooms

Spent the weekend at my parents farm and grabbed the opportunity to take some photos as proof that Autumn has finally arrived here in Portugal. I spent the whole weekend taking photos of the plant life and the animal life (my dog), but mostly with my old camera, the kind that still requires a roll of film, so I'll have to get those developed first before I can post them. So here are two photos of the many types of mushrooms that seem to sprout up everywhere on the farm. the picture above looks like a river of mushrooms, while the photo below just shows a little group of different types of mushrooms. When I've had the other photos developed and put on CD I'll post some pictures of these other types of wild mushrooms that grow on the land that look like cow dung. I'd never seen anything like it, so I took a number of photos, becuase I just knew nobody would believe me. Apparently we also have a lot of truffles on the land, a neighbour of ours has a dog that sniffs them out, I might just have to teach my mum's dog to search them out as well. A guy down the road also found truffles, the white ones, on his land and sold them for over € 1000 per 100 grams to some restaurants in the next town over, I guess if we can find some, we might try selling them as well, especially if they make that much money!!! I'll have to see what other kind of mushrooms I can find next time I go down to the farm. I picked a couple of them so that my mum could use them in decorations around the house. We don't know if they're poisonous or not, so we don't dare eat them. We'll have to find a book about mushrooms to know which ones we can and which ones we can't eat.