Mug Cozy

So continuing with crafts and "pinteresting"...

Have you ever felt that you just want to curl up on a couch with your favourite book or in front of your favourite TV show, with a mug of hot coffee/tea/chocolate? Sure you have! But usually, you have to be careful with that mug! You can't just grab it with both hands... cause you'll burn yourself!

I found how to do this and thought to myself: why not?!.. it's a cozy for your favourite mug! You can make it in about 1 hour (depending on your crocheting speed) and you don't even need to know any fancy stitches :)

Below is how mine turned out. I'll be making another one, from better (thicker) yarn, but for this one I used what I had laying around :)

 Want to know how I did it? ASK ME HOW! :)))

Feeling Crafty

When I was a kid, I used to do my own greeting cards for every occasion. I don't even remember when or why I stopped.... But because I've been wasting a lot of time on Pinterest lately, looking at some amazing craft work, I got back in the mood to do something. I've made a few things already!!!

Here's the first one - a birthday card that I'll be sending to a friend's baby girl :)

Do you like it?

100 postcards

Thanks to Postcrossing Project I now have over 100 postcards from around the world! From 24 countries to be exact: Belarus, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK, Ukraine and USA.

Here are some of my favourites (there are lots! so I'm posting one per country):
(click on a card to enlarge)

~ from Belarus

~ from China

~ from Germany

~ from Finland

 ~ from Japan

~ from Netherlands

~ from Portugal

~ from Russia

~ from Taiwan

~ from UK

~ from USA

Yup, MORE jam!

If you thought that I done jammin' you were wrong! He-he... :)
Zucchinis keep growing, which means I have to keep doing something with them (other than eat them right away, like I said I don't want to eat zucchini-something every day!).

This time I made zucchini jam with................ KIWI! That's right, kiwi! Only this time I photographed a step by step procedure for you so I dare you to try making this jam.

Time for jam!

Okay, so you remember that zucchini. That's right that SAME zucchini!!! There was still some left after making soup and zucchini bread... So I was trying to figure out what else I could do with it, and my mom tipped me off that I could make jam. What she had in mind was zucchini+kiwi. I've never heard of jams being made out of zucchini, but when I started searching online, turns out that there are quite a few recipes out there. And after I made it, I wanted to make more! So I asked my mom for her strawberry jam recipe. And the reason this last one is my favourite is because you get whole berries swimming in jam (it's the second recipe in this post, so read on).

Strawberry and Zucchini & Pineapple jams

Yummy Zucchini Bread

So... Where were we?... Ah yes, I was telling you about our harvest. One of the veggies we picked last Friday was that giant zucchini (it was hiding from me!). Well, it's great - we got lots of veggies! But what the heck am I going to do with all of it. Of course, easy answer is pickling... Right, but it's tedious (though I AM going to do that). Salads? Sure, but again, how many salads are we going to eat every day (same salads that is). I already made a vegetable soup - there is no recipe for this one, I just threw what I had into the pot, added some cubed beef, cooked it all and called it soup, he-he. It was actually pretty good - and what's even better, my hubby liked it (he's SUCH a picky eater that if he likes something, I know that it must be good!).

So here is a recipe of a Zucchini bread I found online. There were lots of different recipes, but I found this one looked easier to make (which it was). And what's even better, hubby liked it too!

Harvest Update

This year's garden is as generous to us as it was last year. Just yesterday, I picked 20, that's right 20 cucumbers. Plus, another of hot peppers and tomatoes :) Zucchinis, as usual, have been overlooked... So they, naturally, overgrew! The biggest one was almost 5 lbs and 38 cm long.
Check out what we've enjoyed so far :)

Mmm... I love yellow cherry tomatoes!

Our overgrown zucchinis

One evening of picking

Our largest tomato so far :)