Time to stop

I think it is time to stop. It has been a good few years of posting and with my past health issues and now my husband is not well, I think it is time to call it quits.

It seems that there is an abundance of craft and home lifestyle blogs available and I am just one more. I am not complaining. Either you have it or you don't and apparently I don't. I don't need to post to keep in touch with far flung friends and family. A part of my would like to keep posting but there's no point if no one is interested.

It is hard to judge peoples' reaction to my blog and obviously I can't be objective. Statistics don't tell me much more than how many visitors and what country they are from. Rarely does anyone show enough interest to comment other than one or two close friends whom I see regularly anyway.

Don't fret though. I still have my RV travel blog and I will be keeping that blog going as long as we keep on traveling around this great country of ours. It will include some recipes and maybe those crafts that I do on the road.

If I have judge incorrectly and there are a silent audience that like what I see then please let me know in the comments at least this one time and I may yet revise my decision to stop posting here.

So here is my thank you card for any of you that are still with me. It has been a great learning curve and sometimes I have been challenged to do things I would not have done otherwise. (PS The card style is called an Easel Card. You can watch and learn with how to make your own easel card with this YouTube tutorial that explains it quite easily.)

Pop over and see me anytime on the Robbiebago Blog

POST SCRIPT: It is  now a few months later and what a difference this has made. I feel rejuvenated and I am encouraged by the improvement in my husband's health. He will never be 100% but he is leaps and bounds ahead of what last year seemed to indicate. This has reflected in my outlook and my own health is stable with no cancer noticeable in my regular 3 monthly check ups. Eventually I should be able to cut it down to once or twice a year if there is still no changes. So all in all life is good and God is in charge and I just have to hand everything over to him, the negatives as well as the positives.

Hobby Horses are loved by the kids

I was going back through some posts and discovered that I had neglected to post my hobby horses that I had made for my grand daughters and a niece.

The first one took a bit of time making it but once I had played around a bit and finally designed the pattern and tweaked it, then the project came together neatly.  I found a simple  sock horse tutorial here, but I really wanted pretty ones for my girls.

The girls loved getting them as presents and had many hours of pleasure from them.

Easy Picking Mulberries

Mulberries are a wonderful tree to have in an out of the way part of the garden. Hang on, I can almost hear you saying! Why out of the way? Well the down side is that they drop a lot of fruit and this can stain concrete, pavers etc. I haven't any problems with birds eating then pooping stains on my clothes line and it is only 10m from my line, but I have read about it as a complaint for some.

I just have to eat some along the way as I collect some for the table.

Mulberries are wonderfully healthy for you as they contain significant amounts of Vitamin C and K, Vitamins E, B6, Thiamin, Riboflavin, and Niacin. They also contain a decent amount of iron, minerals, protein, fibre and even Omega-6 fatty acids. Mulberries contain high levels of reserveratrol, which is the same powerful antioxidant that is found in the skin of red grapes and red wine. Reserveratrol helps to prevent cellular damage by free radicals, reduces the growth of cancer cells, is good for maintaining a healthy heart and promotes longevity. Mulberries have been used medicinally by many cultures, especially the Chinese, to strengthen the kidneys, help with weakness and fatigue, reverse premature gray hairs, balance out blood sugar levels, promote restful sleep and to calm the mind. (Some of this is copied from http://www.healthyreader.com/wild-mulberries/ since I have no medical training what so ever.)

A bowl full of delicious Mulberries

They are sweet and rather mild tasting. I love to eat them fresh as well as to cook desserts with them. Others I know make jam but I never remember to collect jars.

These need a few more days before they ripen to dark purple black

 
Picking mulberries is very easy. You almost only have to touch the ripe berries and they will just about fall off with very little effort in your bowl. Ripe mulberries are dark purple, almost black. The under-ripe ones will have some red or pink and are little too tart for eating fresh off the tree. They wont continue to ripen. This year we had an extraordinary bumper crop. In just one day I collected 2.5 kg and that was only half the tree and the tree didn't even look like I had taken any berries off it.

Just a teeny handful

This was how I came to realize that there was a super easy way to get my berries. Since the ripe ones drop off so easily and you will have them fall onto the ground sometimes before you can get your hand there to catch it. So I thought I would grab a large but old bed sheet that I was keeping for a paint drop sheet and place that sheet under the branches I was working on. All I had to do then was wiggle the branches and most of the rip berries would drop onto my sheet. A few not so ripe berries would fall too, but they are easy to spot and I popped these into the compost. If they are just a it under ripe you can still use these in cooking allowing for the tartness.

Note the sheet on the ground. I also garden in my old cut off jeans

Mulberries have a very short shelf life. If eating fresh, they are best consumed within 24 hours else they go mushy and mouldy. Mulberries are fabulous for freezing. Rinse them if you desire, however since I never spray my garden, I tend to spread a single layer of berries on a cookie tray and freeze them whole. When they are frozen then I scoop them into zip lock bags as they will separate easily into the quantities you desire. They will defrost all soft and mushy ready for use.

Mulberry Muffins

Mulberry Buckle

Mulberry Pie

Try these wonderful mulberry recipes: My husbands' favourite is a Mulberry Pie. My favourite is some super tasty and light mulberry muffins. My daughter tends to add them to her healthy smoothie and my son adds them to his breakfast yoghurt. My sister in law just sent me a recipe for making a mulberry sorbet, so guess what I will be trying next?

Mulberry parfait.

Did you know that you will also get a smaller second crop when autumn comes around? 

So what's your favourite berry recipe?

More Sock Snowmen and an angel too!

Hooray! After a few false starts, I am finally getting a roll as far as my crafting goes. Here's some more snowmen I have made lately.

The Olafs are very popular at the moment. I have sold a few of these and the ordinary snowmen  and will be gifting the rest to a charity that's close to my heart: The Illawarra Cancer Carers. These wonderful craft ladies were the reason why I didn't completely lose my sanity on the long road to health after my cancer diagnosis.
 

I even started to get serious and had a production line sort of set up going. It certainly makes it faster when you are doing half a dozen of similar jobs at the same time. These snowmen are really starting to come together quickly. I have even been asked to show & teach a small group of ladies at a local craft group. I haven't taught crafts for years. It is great to be asked again.

I wanted at least one of my snowmen to have a hat and so I played around with my felt and made my own little felt hats.

I also played with the idea of making a sock angel and though my first angel looks a tad startled, (I was aiming for a singing angel) I am quite pleased with how she turned out too. I will certainly be making more angels but hopefully not quite so startled! LOL.

I hope you enjoy looking and maybe even become inspired to make some for your loved ones or for charity.

Christmas is only a couple of months away. 

Have you started making any Christmas crafts yet?