Feather your Nest Friday, 4 May, 2018.

This has been a busy and good week and we have had lots of rain!  Both the city and the farm had it.  So everyone is happy!

I will start at the beginning.  It was Andy's birthday on Saturday.  Usually I make him a fruit cake.  But this year we literally have fruit cakes stacked and on the go so I don't need to make another one.
I completely cheated and used an idea I saw on Facebook.   There are whole groups dedicated to things to do with the Coles/Woolworths/Aldi chocolate mud cakes.
These cakes come in chocolate mud, white chocolate and in some places caramel and I think strawberry.   Anyway they taste good.  You simply stack them on top of each other and decorate.  So you can do two or three stacked and you can do one or several colours and have a kind of Neapolitan cake or a graduated light to dark cake.  You use frosting to cover them.   Google  Woolworth's Chocolate Mud cake Hacks.   It is mind blowing.   People use them for the fanciest cakes including wedding cakes!  They adorn them with flowers,  chocolates and any theme.  Amazing!  So you end up with a professional looking cake for about $10.

I simply stacked two mud cakes and frosting.   In less than five minutes I was done.

Andy thought it was amazing!  Every time I make him a birthday cake he is touched.   

Everyone loves a birthday cake.  It is the fact that you made them one I think (or in this case assembled one!)   Kids especially do not care if your cake is not professional,  wonky and structurally unsound.  They just think  MUM MADE IT FOR ME.   I think adults feel much the same way...

This is a good time to say also I made Harper a tray of cakes with hundreds and thousands on top.  She is very impressed with hundreds and thousands!

We went train spotting and a cake came too.  

I used up eggs and lemons and made a batch of Lemon Butter.

I gave Mum and Chloe lemons and still have a couple dozen of Hilde's Lemons left.

I made Quiches as when I went to Coles they had cartons of cream for 30c.

Also I used up chicken from the freezer and made Butter Chicken which lasted two nights and used Mums mint and my yoghurt to make raita.

I made myself some scrub... it is the one I like to use on my face.  Just pure honey and soft dark brown sugar in a jar.  It is the best scrub and beautiful but it is messy so I do it in the bath.  Miracle worker though!

I made baked egg custards in the slow cooker.  I just sit my cups with water that comes three quarters of the way up.  I put a t towel under the lid.  I check now and then to see if they are ready.  

This week I went to two op shops.  I had good luck with books.   I have been adding medical books to my medical cupboard.  I decided everyone depends on the internet and phone apps for first aid advice.  No one seems to keep first aid manuals etc anymore.  So if the power is out they don't have first aid information.   As I speak the main phone carrier in Australia (Telstra) has a "glitch" and you can't even call 000  (that is our 911) so that is going well (not).   I decided I want hard copies of vital information.

As I am studying essential oils, herbs and homeopathy I am buying these kinds of books too.  These were all $2 each.

Then the next op shop had rose books!   I buy these for card making.   They have images like this...

And this...

So I am starting card making on the weekend. I have well over 100 images because I have three big books (for $6 all up).    Now and then I look at cards in the store.  This week I got a surprise.  The first card I thought was lovely I picked up and it was $13!  The second card was $10.   So they have gone up!  Last time I took noticed $8 seemed the average.  So card making is a huge saver,  good fun and cards make a beautiful gift too i.e. a pack of five or six is a beautiful present.  And useful!  The little images left over I make into gift tags.  Even gift tags are $4.  So card making is a great hobby!   You need no artistic skills to make cards if you just use lovely images.  If you want to go further and fancy them up this is easy too!  For men you could buy a motorcycle book and cut that up or trains or whatever they are into... for babies I get Beatrix Potter books or Winnie the Pooh and for children kids books are full of images to make cards, bunting, anything!   

Andy proudly told me he saved around $400 this week with his side lines and DIY.  

I will also count $100 from sending all coffees and lunches with him each day.

So it was a good week!   I have cut up a whole pumpkin (I did this in stages yesterday) and this plus sweet potato and onion are in my big crockpot for soup.  These were veggies I got recently so cheaply on one of my further afield grocery trips.   So it will be a soup weekend! 

After the rain all night it is sunny now.  This will help the grass grow!  

I hope you had a good week.  How did you build up your nest, get ahead, save... add to your pantry?

Have a great weekend! xxx