The Christmas Meal

Hi All,

I just realized I never got around to posting what we had for Christmas...so here goes.

Asian Glazed Roast Pork. Garnished with chopped Parsley

Roasted Irish Potatoes with Mint and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Roast Fish Fillet...With Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, Parsley and Butter. Yum!!!

Ice Cubes made out of freshly juiced pineapples and lemons

Cocktail: Pineapple, Pineapple Punch and Red Grapes

Ready to Serve

 

Seafood Gratin: Fish, Shrimps, Carrots, Spring Onions, Dark Soy, Garlic, Heavy Cream...etc.

Apple and Cucumber Salad dressed with freshly squeezed lemon juice, chopped mint,  salt and black pepper

Roasted Honey Glazed Chicken

Beef Sauce: Minced Beef, Bacon, Chipolatas, Capsicum, Dark soy, etc

Beet root and Feta Salad. Dressed with Pineapple chutney, Balsamic Vinegar and Mayonnaise

And Garnished with parsley and toasted peanuts

Oh and there was some cous cous (Far Left) for some added starch.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I guess this will be one of my longest posts :D.

After the chaos of Christmas cooking I decided to lay low on New Years and didn't entertain any guests. I also did minimal cooking...only roasted a chicken. I should have a picture or two somewhere...will update when I locate em.

Until next time, God bless you.

Love, Preye.

Sewing Update: Pillows

Hi People!

A couple of weeks to Christmas a friend commissioned some throw pillows and after a few days of back and forth pinging (via Blackberry Messenger) we finally settled on the fabric and styles she wanted for her pillows (Well she picked just one style and I just flowed with the rest).

And here are the results (Pictures were taken at night so apologies for the less than stellar quality)

Pillow One: I call this one The butterfly pillow.

I worked with a black fabric for the base and used her chosen fabric for the butterfly effect with the aid of a big black belt buckle...I like the sound of that :D...The Big Black Belt Buckle Butterfly Pillow.

Ok moving on. Next is The Ruffle Pillow with button accents.

This one kind of reminds me of Cultural Dances in Secondary School...we'd tie little wrappers around our waists and shake our bums to beautiful traditional lyrics. Yeah, Beyonce copied that booty shake from moi :P

Zipper

Next up, The Cool Dude. After the dancing lady above, I wanted something a bit more masculine to balance things up and The Cool Dude was born.

Bow-tie effect with a silver buckle

And last but not least, the most time consuming of them all (And the only style she chose herself), The Pinwheel Pillow...

If you recall I made this for my home sometime last year and blogged about it in this post. And if you also recall, we had a little incident with over-stuffing. Well, lesson learnt and applied :D.

I used an invisible zipper for this one as well

Here are the pillows together.

And here are a few construction pictures.

Prior to stuffing

Fully Interfaced

I used a regular zipper for this one since the ruffles covered it completely

And that brings us to the end of project "Throw-pillows"

Until next time, Stay Strong and be blessed.

Love, Preye

Sewing Update: Checkered

Happy New Year!

And welcome to 2014...Our year of unusual strength.

I am not much into resolutions but as far as targets go, I have loads of them and I'll get into them in a bit.

But before that; a proper wrap up of 2013. I have quite a line up of projects I haven't posted from last year so I'll get right into them.

First off, The checkered dress!

I made this dress the week of Christmas..the Saturday before Christmas I think. I actually started out the day with a project for myself but the client (who was very persistent) wanted her dress and wanted it NOW. Since she was a first time customer I decided to oblige and leave the twenty-something other pending projects originally scheduled before hers. 

She is pretty conservative so the target for this project was to create a style out of the two fabrics she provided that would still stay true to her tastes. We had the basics down as she wanted pleats...so I decided to play around a bit and eventually ended up with the checkered details...and I knew I had struck gold :D

I started out with the belt detail then had a little glitch with the original sleeve I inserted which resulted in my having to redo the sleeves. So I figured the patchwork could make it to the sleeves as well. At the last minute, I decided on the Tulip variation for some added pizzazz.

I also piped the bottom of the dress with the black fabric...all in the little details people.

Here is a close up of the belt.

This project took a lot longer than expected but turned out great. And save a slight issue with depth of the back neckline; the client loved the dress.

Sadly, my dress which I had planned on making that faithful Saturday lies there unfinished and awaiting the day I'll have a break from sewing for others :D

Until next time, God bless you.

Love, Preye.

What I Ate: Dirty Rice and Beetroot Sauce

Hello People,

I had never had wild rice and had been itching to give it a try for quite a while. So when I saw a shelve full of different varieties of rice at one of my old hunts (Onime's Food Basket), I quickly grabbed some and started planning a rustic meal; and some weeks later I finally cooked up the meal.

One thing I didn't know before I started cooking was that wild rice takes a long, looonngg time to cook.

The pack specified cooking the rice for about 50 minutes but I ended up cooking for the better part of two and a half hours. Although to be fair some part of that time was spent preparing  ingredients and making the sauce.

Anyways, back the the meal.

For the rice I used:

Brown Rice and Wild Rice Mix, about 3 Cups
Chipolata Sausages...6pieces
Streaky Bacon...4 strips
Shrimps...about half kg
Unsalted Butter
Dark Soy Sauce
Worcestershire Sauce
Onion
Garlic
Seasoning and Spices
Juice of one orange

I started off with the rice, using the packet instructions and left it to cook.

Then chopped up the sausages, bacon, onions and garlic.

I browned the sausages and bacon in the butter to get some caramelized flavor. Next I took out the sausages and bacon, and added the chopped onions and sauteed them for a bit. Threw in the sausages and bacon again, added the shrimps and the rest of the ingredients and seasonings and finished off with the juice of one orange.

When the rice was almost cooked, I mixed in the rest of the cooked ingredients and allowed it simmer for about 10 minutes to infuse the flavors and the dirty rice was ready.

For the sauce I chopped up some carrots, onions and beetroots and sauteed them in some butter then added some chicken stock, seasonings and some chopped mint. Finished it off with some heavy cream and the sauce was ready.

For the chicken, I had some boiled chicken in the freezer so I just browned them a little bit in some olive oil in keeping with the rustic theme of the meal and voila, the meal was ready!

Though this meal took a long time to make, the taste was totally worth it. I got five stars from my numero uno taste tester :D

I'll definitely be adding this to my list of staples and you should give this a try.

Until next time, God bless you.

Love, Preye.

What I Ate: Watermelon Hearts

Hi Everyone,

A couple of weeks back I saw a picture of some watermelon hearts on a friends profile so next time we were having watermelons, I dug out my cookie cutters and proceeded to make a fun presentation of watermelons :D

 

 I started out with this.

Then played around a bit

Decided to garnish with some chopped mint.

And then for the man who inspires me (DH), a special edible message :D

I think the watermelons tasted better with all the love in the air ;)

Until next time, God bless and complements of the season.


Love, Preye.

Sewing Updates

Hi Everyone,

Its been a bit...and I am glad to say I have been able to catch up on my much needed rest...though I was somewhat forced into it (I was ill).

Despite my "rest" period, I have been able to get in a bit of work (sewing) and play (cooking).

Oh yeah, the wedding has come and gone, and the bride looked lovely. I was/am so proud of myself. I am waiting for the pictures from the bride to do a full post as I was unable to attend. But here are some table-top pictures of the dresses I made for the wedding party (A dressform is on my wishlist if you're wondering what to get me for Christmas :P).

First, the Maid of Honor's dress...AKA Chief Bridesmaid

Its a long flowing gown with a band detail.

This was one of the fastest dresses I have made. I used a metallic fabric for the underlining and lined with a single face raw silk in a matching color.

For the skirt part, I skipped the lining and used just the underlay to reduce bulk so I had to finish the joining at the waist with a bias tape cut out from the Raw Silk

Construction Picture

 For the band I used the raw silk and interfaced with a stiff interfacing for structure. I also used my usual metallic zip.

And my usual metallic Zipper

I love this color and will def be making something for myself with this fabric

Next up, the bridesmaid dresses.

The dress isn't sized to the model in the picture so it doesn't show the true fit.

Peplum detail with a button. 

I made four of these dresses and it was a learning process for me. The lace was a stretchy lace and just when I'd think I'd got everything figured out the fabric would head out to a different direction.

In the end, the all turned out well and I conquered my fear of stretch lace!

For the zipper I skipped my usual metallic zip and opted for plastic zippers as this lace was quite soft and I didn't want it to catch in the zipper.

All in all the dresses were successful and lovely on the ladies and I have one more feather to add to my hat :D

Until next time, God bless you and complements of the season.

P.S I typed up this post a couple of weeks back and forgot to post it...Merry Christmas.

Love, Preye.