Everyone's a Winner Baby

This week I decided to make macarons and see what all the fuss is about. They actually don't require too many ingredients which is what draws me to make things from recipes. Anyway, these are the chocolate ganache filled type and I guess they turned out alright. They are very sweet though due to the icing sugar so I'm on the fence about whether I like them or not. They are quite chewy which is what I do like and the ganache is easy to make.

Here is a close-up of them. They didn't have 'feet' like real macarons and only a few puffed up. The rest of them were rather flat and some cracked. I think I probably undercooked a few of them. My brain is telling me they are too sweet but my hands keeps reaching for them. Hmmm.. But now I have macarons under my belt I can scratch that off the bucket list.

Yesterday I had some child free time (very rare) and I finished the lining of the jacket. This jacket project was dragging it's feet as I lost pieces of lining, didn't cut all pieces of lining and I was ready to leave it for next Winter but I pushed my procrastination aside and did bits and pieces here and there. The first time I did the lining I had no idea what Burda was trying to tell me. I tried sewing the whole collar and top edge all at once in a hurry to 'just-get-it-done' but that didn't work out well for me. So I unpicked it and realised what I had done wrong.

The self-facing piece (I think they call it) forms that rectangular shape under the collar. It was that scary piece I cut out at the beginning and wondered how it would sit after folded. Anyway, The (pink) lining piece fits in all the gaps and you hand stitch the lining to the collar. Urghhh. I wanted to avoid the pain of (my wobbly) handstitching but it turned out for the best... really. So now that I'm happy with the lining I can try to figure out where to put button holes, hand-stitch the bottom lining to the hem and we're done.

I recently discovered this little handy storage compartment in my machine. It's really easy to grab what I need without having to find the hidden sewing box. I think my other machine had it at the back but I never used it.

We've been enjoying lots of sunshine and a bit of warmth lately so I made tabbouli to go with some grilled chicken for lunch. Yummmmy!

Thankyou to the helpful coments about cutting down sugar in our diets. And the winners of the Natvia giveaway are... lol... all the comments in my last post! Yippeee, no-one misses out. Please send me your mailing addresses: Melinda, Cha-cha, Linny, Pam and Jennie (Posie Patchwork) and I'll have the great team at Natvia post out your goody. Have a great week everyone.