Yes - I’m still making kitty cat toys!

I can’t believe we’ve been doing this since 2012.  It all started with my daughter Sofie making a couple of toys for our own cat.  I was selling my Bits Of Fiber items at a Farmers Market in The Plains at the time and told her she should take some of those toys and try to sell them.  And selling we did!  I also had her set up her own Etsy shop which we named MauveMoose.  Funny thing is that for a while she wanted to change it to MauveMice or MauveMouse but we had invested into the MauveMoose name with business cards etc so we decided to keep it as MauveMoose.  Anyways, we thought we were nuts for taking our first large wholesale order of 475 strawberry catnip toys until we ended up making 5400, yup you are reading correctly ... 5 4 0 0 cat toys we made ... by hand!! We did use the sewing machine to stitch them but the cutting, filling, stuffing and sewing them once filled was all done by hand.  We did ask a couple of friends to help us out with that order.  But that was the end of the large wholesale orders.  Me working full time, running my other Etsy shop, Bits of Fiber,  Sofie going to school etc we decided to focus on just the retail part of the business.  As time moves on, life moves on ... a lot has happened since 2012.  My dear husband passed away, I sold and purchased another house, moved to a totally different part of Virginia and I’m planning on retiring by 2021.  I’m looking forward to chapter #3 of my life that I hope will be filled with lots and lots of new projects, new people and new adventures and no need to panic ... I’ll continue making cat toys in between.  

Avocado Brownies

 I've seen recipes for brownies made with avocado which kinda made me scratch my head.  So cruising through Pinterest last night I remembered I had saved one of those recipes on my "This is making me hungry" board.  I did have enough ripe avocado's to make "avocado brownies" so I put on my apron preheated the oven and went to work.  Now being the artist I am makes it hard for me to follow a recipe which isn't always a good thing to do especially in baking.  In cooking things it's usually not that big of a deal when you change the recipe a bit but in baking it doesn't always work.  But ... since I didn't have some of the ingredients in the recipe I had saved I had to adjust it ... right!?  Well I must say they turned out awesome and since it has avocado in it I claim them "healthy".  And for those who are wondering just like I was ... can you taste the avocado? ... not at all!  Or at least not in my recipe.      

Avocado Brownies

3 eggs

3 small avocados

3/4 cup light brown sugar

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla liquid

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cacao powder (sugar free)

Preheat oven to 325.

1. I sprayed a glass pan with Baker's Joy non-stick baking spray.  You can use parchment paper if you like.
2. Mix eggs with the sugar and vanilla liquid
3. I mashed the avocados with a fork until pretty smooth and then mixed it in with the eggs and sugar.
4. In a separate bowl I mixed the cacao powder, the flour, baking powder and the chocolate chips.
5. I then combined the dry ingredients with the wet ones and used a spatula to mix it all together.  Only long enough until combined.  Probably best not to over stir it.  
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and put in oven.  
7. Since I changed the ingredients from the original recipe I had no idea how long these needed to be in the oven so I checked them after 10 minutes and then every 5 minutes.  All together they were in the oven for 25 minutes.  My pan was pretty big so the batter was only about an inch thick before baking.  If you use a smaller pan then the one I used they will need to bake longer.

I put a bit of confectioner sugar on top just for the looks.  

Now I couldn't wait until they had totally cooled off to give them a try.  I read that if you eat them still warm you would be able to taste the avocado ... well I tried a slice when still warm and couldn't taste the avocado at all ... all I tasted was delicious chocolate brownie!  With the ingredients I used they turned out more cake like compared to the gooey brownies.  Maybe if you use 4 small avocados they would turn out more gooey?  I'm not a professional baker, I'm just an artist putting my own twist on baking these brownies!  

Enjoy!  and please let me know if you end up trying my recipe on how they turned out for you.  

 

 

  

Wire Fairy Timelapse

I love making sculptures.  If you look back at some of my posts from a couple of years ago I was making them with a product called Powertex.   I still have lots of my supplies which has me thinking about making sculptures again.  Especially watching this video which had me in awe!  

Toadstools or Mushrooms or Championnekes

What's a mushroom?  "They describe a variety of gilled fungi, with or without stems, therefore the term is used to describe the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota.  These gills produce microscopic spores that help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface".

Mushrooms or toadstools have always caught my interest (see needle felted toadstools earrings I used to make or the baby shoes with needle felted toadstool designs I've created in the past) but never to the point to go foraging for them.  I'm too scared to end up picking a poisonous one.  

While taking these pictures I started thinking about "Toast Champignon" my mom used to make and while I'm not crazy about eating mushrooms that did make my mouth water!  I found a recipe on a Flemish site: https://dagelijksekost.een.be/gerechten/toast-champignon.  My mom used to make it with some kind of Alfredo sauce which toned down the flavor of the mushrooms a bit.

The reason I'm talking about mushrooms is because I found these beauties in my yard a couple of days ago after storm Isaiah came by.  The ones in the backyard I had to get rid of because I have two dogs that love to nibble on grass.  I wouldn't want them accidentally eat one of these since I know some of these are poisonous!  

I think the lighter colored ones are "parasol" and the darker ones

"shaggy parasol" but I might be wrong I'm not a mushroom

expert!

I did find a page that talks about these and if that's what these are they are edible ... 

but trust me I'm not going to try to eat them, better safe then sorry.

Here is the link to the article on how to cook them if that's what they are:

https://gallowaywildfoods.com/parasol-mushroom-edibility-distribution-identification/

I think these are called "Yellow Patches" or Amanita flavoconia

Poisonous

When I went searching on the internet to find out what these were called I ran into this article "15 worlds funkiest fungi"   OMG!!  

Here is the link to it:  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/89768/15-worlds-funkiest-fungi

Mother nature doing her thing!

So guess what I'll be making for dinner!?  Toast Champignon ... but definitely with store bought championnekes!

Always in my heart

 Since I missed a couple of years out of this blog I thought I'd share some of the things that happened in between then and now.  It might not always be in chronological order.  Things that pop into my head will be popping up as they come to me.  

Today I was thinking about the floral heart arrangement I made for my honey to put on his grave.  Looking at the pictures I want to make another one soon.  This next time I'll share how I go about making it with step by step instructions.  But for now, here are pictures of what the one I made looked like.  

They are all real flowers, greenery and moss.  The base is a grapevine heart shaped wreath that I took apart and used only a few of the grapevines which I then wrapped with chicken wire to get the elongated shape of the heart.  I used oasis inside the chicken wire.  I used rosemary from our garden since that was one of the plants we always had to have in our yard wherever we lived ... it was his favorite herb so I made sure it was part of the arrangement.    

 

Life Goes On

 I know it’s been a long time since I posted, but here I am.  So much has happened since my last post.  My dear husband ended up passing away December 31, 2017.  54 is just too young to die.  He put up a long hard fight with his kidney cancer but finally lost his battle.  I miss him dearly but I’m ready to move on and look forward to make the best of the next chapter of my life.  Kinda strange to think it will basically be my last chapter.  I don’t have any plans to leave this earth any time soon.  I’m hoping for at least another 20 years!  

I started working part time a couple of years back but I’m happy to say I’m planning on retiring come January 2021.  I must say I’m really looking forward to doing so.  Ready to work in my garden, ready to bring all those art projects to fruition, ready to keep the cat toy business going, ready to relax a bit and ready to catch your interest with the things I’ll be posting.  

Wow, time flies

Yes, it's been a long time since I posted.  So much has been happening.  My mom passed away from a stroke shortly after I did my last post in July.   The good thing is she didn't suffer very long, the sad thing is that I didn't make it back to Belgium in time to say goodbye.  She passed away a couple hours before my plane landed.   On the other hand I'm okay with the fact she didn't hang on and I got to see her and say goodbye to her earlier in the year after she had her first stroke.  I kinda had a feeling back then I wasn't going to see her again.  My brother, who lives in Belgium with his family was amazing in regards to taking care of all the stuff that needed to get done.   I can't believe we were able to put mom's house up for sale and basically sold it in a matter of a couple weeks!  Anyways, my mom was 80.   She had a good life I think and she really wanted to be with dad who passed away 6 years ago. It's not easy having to say goodbye to your parents that's for sure.

As far as my husband is concerned, he's one strong man!  I've lost track of the amount of radiations he's now had done for the spread of the RCC (renal cell carcinoma).  We also discovered (while I was in Belgium and he stayed here in Virginia) he has a big tumor in his humerus (also a met from the RCC).   He had surgery where they inserted a rod through the humerus and through the darn tumor so his upper arm will stop falling apart since the tumor has eaten away a lot of the bone.  I hate cancer!  Did I tell you yet how much I hate cancer!  Anyways, besides that he's had more radiation for two mets in his brain and also on the arm before they did the arm surgery.  Another radiation for a met on his T11 and we just found out he has more mets on his T8 and his femur!  But the good news today was that all the tumors he's had radiation for are either stable or getting smaller.   We know it's not going to go away but his life is being extended which we are thankful for.   Can you believe he's still going to work!  The cancer meds he's taking causing issues with a bad cough which is also enhanced by having pneumonitis which is an inflammation inside his lung around the tumor due to the radiation. He's been on prednisone for that for weeks now and we're hoping him coming off the prednisone might make a few other side effects go away.  I took him to the hospital a couple weekends ago when he was having severe stomach pains and a blood pressure of 237/135!!!  I don't know how his body and heart can withstand all of this but he's a trooper and presses on that's for sure.  Watching a loved one having to go through this sucks but together we try to make the best of what we got and we'll fight till we have nothing left to fight for.

Enough about sad stuff!  I finished a couple of sock dolls these past couple of weeks.   These are so much fun to make.   Both of them are listed in my BitsOfFiber shop on Etsy so if you like what you see don't wait to get them since I usually make things without a pattern they are all unique and OOAK.

Here are the links and some pictures of them.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/496377908/sleepy-bunny-doll-soft-sock-doll-plushie?ref=shop_home_active_1

https://www.etsy.com/listing/507804447/sweet-soft-doll-sock-doll?ref=shop_home_active_3