...

via

The Brown Sweater: Update (oh man)

Lengthened the sleeve by 3 1/2 inches. I've been working on this for over a year now. Pathetic :(

Perfume Making

Remember I took a class on making perfumes at The Nova Studio back in December? Well my Aunt requested that I help her come up with a custom perfume for her to use :) Check out our mess:

My ingredients

My oils, some coffee beans, and some containers.

Things got more and more messy as time went on :)

 When I took the class, I had the opportunity to make my own blend, that I ended up liking a lot. But when I got home, I had a feeling that the blend was way too juvenile for me to wear (it smelled surprisingly similar to a 50/50 bar). So when I was helping my Aunt come up with her perfumes, I also added another essential oil to my blend. The addition? Ginger grass. Literally one of my least favorite scents.

And now I love the blend & feel like I can wear it :)

Raspberry Bread

Has anyone noticed that I like making bread? I like making bread. Here's one I made recently:

I used this recipe, but instead of just splitting it into two for two loaves, I split it into four. I put half of each loaf into the loaf pan, put a layer of fresh raspberries down the center, kneaded crumbled pecans into the remaining halves, and then set the second half on top of the raspberries. I had no idea how the loaves would turn out, because I've never used fresh fruit in bread before, but I decided to go with it. 

It was pretty tasty :) Especially toasted! I don't know what it is about homemade bread, but when you toast it, it gets nice and crispy on the outside, but delicious and soft on the inside :) I love!

Pineapple Jam

I wasn't sure if it was possible to make jam from pineapples. Turns out it is, as long as you use canned pineapples :)

I used a recipe given to me by Nick's grandmother. 1 can of fruit, 3 cups of sugar, a tablespoon of lemon juice and a packet of pectin boiled for a few minutes and then ladled into jars. 

The pineapple decals were a gift from my boss. It makes the jam look very happy to me :)

Fail Muffins

So remember how I made that bread with a little Teff flour and it was amazing? Turns out replacing all the wheat flour with teff isn't so hot. Meet Fail Muffins:

Fail muffins were so dry that even when I split one in half and filled it with homemade cranberry spice jam, it was inedible. Yuck.

Teff Flour

Teff is really great stuff. "Teff flour is made from the grain teff, and is of considerable importance in eastern Africa (particularly around the horn of Africa). Notably, it is the chief ingredient in the bread injera, an important component of Ethiopian cuisine" source. It's a pretty healthy flour, and I bought some to try to make injera.


And when I realized that making injera isn't something I wanted to spend a lot of time doing, I tucked the flour away and forgot about it.


Until I recently wanted to bake some bread (because baking bread is fun) and found the little bag of teff flour in the back of my pantry.


I substituted 1/4 cup of teff flour for 1 cup of wheat flour in the recipe, and the bread was delicious.