Castille soap Giveaway

It's spring, and with the sun still low in the sky you can see all the dust and dirt in your home, very clearly. Yuck! Roll on the summer when we can stay outside as much as possible, and ignore the messy inside stuff.


Instead of cleaning, I made a batch of Castille soap - main ingredient is Olive oil. It's lightly scented with orange oil, and lathers beautifully. Commercial soaps have the glycerin that is a natural by-product of soap making removed, so they may be quite drying. My soap leaves your skin feeling very soft. See Photo above - I could probably improve the unmolding and cutting part :-)

It's also great for felting with, as we discovered at last weeks felting workshop.

So I'm giving away a couple of bars of the soap, and will throw in a few packets of seeds I've saved myself, if you're interested. More about that kind of thing at my gardening blog.

Here’s what you need to do to win this package. Get one entry for each of these actions:

- Post about this giveaway in your blog.
- Follow me on twitter (greenannabrowne) and retweet this post. You can use the retweet button on the right side of this post to do it.
- If you're not on twitter or blogging, email your friends.

If you’ve done any or all of the above, please leave a comment on this post with a link to your post or your twitter name. Or just leave a comment with your email in the format "annambrowne at gmail dot com".

The giveaway will be closed on Monday, 15th February, around 10:00pm Irish Time (GMT), so please leave your comment here before that time.
The winner will be picked randomly and announced on Tuesday, 16th February. I will then contact the winner for a complete address and the package will be sent to wherever you are.

If you're not lucky this time, I'll be running soap making courses in Mullingar soon, and at the Organic Center later in the year.

Thank you!

Crafts for Boys

Here's one dear to my heart - things you can make for Boys!



Here's a blog which will be featuring lots of projects for the month of Feb - all about boys!

Felted slippers

 

So here is the result of a full felting day - one pair of beautiful slippers. Read Nicola's blog for a description of the day, and for more photos. I ended up making a piece of felt large enough to make slippers out of, and later that day, sewed the slippers up, and with Nicola's help, felted them more.

They are warm, comfy, durable, and extremely cute. I'm delighted! You gotta love the little red elf tails coming out of the fronts of them - the kitten has not spotted them yet, but there will be fun when she does!

See more photos at Nicola's Flickr stream, and working at getting some uploaded to mine.

Felting Workshop

You may remember that I headed down to Carlow in October to teach a cosmetics workshop at Nicola's studio.

Now she is returning the favour, and coming here at the end of January to teach a beginners felting workshop.

It's taking place on Sunday January 31st, at Educate Together NS. Cost is 75 euro per participant, and includes all materials. The day starts at 10:00am, and goes till around 4:30pm. Everyone will go home with at least one beautiful completed project ready to frame or stitch into a bag or book cover plus possibly some samples or felt flowers as well!


You can see some photos of previous workshops. Or check out her blog.


If you're interested in the course, please email me at annambrowne@gmail.com or call/text 087 2222562

Wheat free oatmeal cookie recipe

Here's the recipe for the cookies we made for gifts at Christmas. We are still making them on a weekly basis for one of our friends - she liked them so much. You can make this amount, but only bake what you need and freeze the rest - they cook well from frozen.

Wheat free oatmeal cookie recipe
6oz (170g) butter
1 cup (230g) brown sugar
.5 cup (95g) white sugar
2 eggs
dash vanilla
1.5 (200g) cups spelt flour
1tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
2.5 (200g) cups porridge oats
.5 (75g) cup millet
Milk to soak millet, and perhaps a bit more.

To flavour - chocolate chips, cinnamon & raisin, dried cranberries and white chocolate chips

Soak the millet in the milk. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C/340 degrees F

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and flour and mix well. Add everything except the flavourings. Add a little extra milk if necessary to make it slightly runny. If you are using multiple flavourings, divide into 2 or 3 parts, and flavour individually. You need 1 cup of raisin or chocolate chips for the whole mix, so divide this as appropriate.

Use a small teaspoon spoon to drop tiny amounts on a baking sheet - they will spread a little and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Once they are a little brown, place on a cooling rack, and try to stop eating them!

What we gave, part IV

I gave a lot of felt necklaces this year, but didn't find time to photograph any of them before I presented them. Here, however are a similar selection that I will be selling on etsy soon.

 

The first is an adjustable cuff - this has been made with someone in mind.

 

 

This is a long necklace - adjustable, and with a plastic bead at the end which gives it a bit of weight.

 

A shorter necklace, white and turquoise, a bit larger than a choker. These are all great for kids....

What we gave, part III

On Christmas eve, we baked these oatmeal, millet and spelt cookies. Some had choc chips, some had white chocolate chips and cranberries, and some had cinnamon and currants.

 

Dara and Leo did most of the work, and then we packaged them up in recycled margarine tubs, and delivered some to our neighbours and friends.

We also made truffles, which we labelled as reindeer poo - they were not so photogenic, but delicious nevertheless. We made dark chocolate, milk chocolate, rum and raisin, and pecan and almond. We put 4 into a handmade box, lined with greaseproof paper. All recipients declared themselves delighted.