Postcard • Spring is here early

 The sun is out here and weather is abnormally high, joy ! Here is a sunny picture.

Sugar time • great dessert and the art of Maple Syrup

Maple Syrup season has begun here in Quebec and the sugar shacks (cabanes à sucre) will begin collecting sap flow and creating this divine Syrup. We visited the "sugar shack" of my uncle last weekend. 

The weather was fantastic, and maple trees were producing lots of sap flow.

I love maple syrup and I usually buy it by the case. It is best drizzled over pancakes, waffles, ice cream and fruit. And I use it in many recipes.

Here is a great article on Maple Syrup with nice recipes - She Knows

My dog loved it...

Here are is my favourite recipes ( Pouding-chômeur)
Source from a French cook – A la Distasio

'Pouding - Chomeur'

Ingredients

• 18 oz Maple Syrup
• 18 oz Heavy Cream (35 %)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cup of flour
• 2 teaspoon Baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup of milk

Preparations
Preheat oven to 200 ° C (400 ° F).

In a large heavy saucepan, bring to boil maple syrup and cream monitoring to avoid overflow. Let it 3 to 4 minutes then remove from heat.

Using a mixer, beat butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat about 2 minutes. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir dry ingredients to egg mixture alternately with milk.

Pour the mixture into a rectangular mould of 32 X 23 cm (13 X 9 inches). Cover the preparation of maple syrup and bake for 30 minutes.

Enjoy !
Mona

Amazing pictures from Pixdaus

Funny Socks

Owned

Where the spring is

Follow mommy !

 I Love this site, perfect when you want to relax and look at amazing photo - Pixdaus

Postcard • Rome

This week is very busy, I am planning a business trip to Italy and leaving in 9 days.  Rome is my favorite city, sadly this year I will be visiting Rome for only 5 hours... So here is a picture from my last visit.

How about a game of tic tac toe

When I was tackling the idea of creating a quilt, I tried several little project to get an idea of it. One was a game for my boys.

Although they are teenage now, we still try a game of tic tac toe on piece a paper from time to time. So here my take of a 'quilt' version of this game.

I sew 5 pieces of 'X' and 5 pieces of '0'.

I used left over fabric from Amy Butler beautiful line Daisy Chain.

And the board was done with natural cotton and small strip of scrap of Amy Butler - Midwest Modern.

This is not perfect at all, but it is great small project.
For an interesting read about this very basic game - tic tac toe

Project Quilt {french general} - part 2

Ok a week off from work is great to get ahead with projects. I did not expect to go this far with my quilt project. But I have finished the 36 blocks planed to do this enormous project. 

 So I was very happy to set all the block down and see how it would look like.

The problem was to put these things together.... Well some are smaller than others....

I have managed to sew the 2 first row before the end of my vacation, but it seems that there are some spots where fabric bubble a bit. I can't wait to move ahead and see if everything will fit. I hope after all this work.

Any hit on how to gather pieces that do not have the same exact size ?


 

How to relax

I am back from a perfect week off at our country home. Kids were off from school and I needed time away from the office. I was lucky to be able to get away for a while. I have a very demanding and rewarding job; sometime I need to get away so I can go back to it rested. My two boys and my husband are very active and we need to craft holidays around relax time and activity time.
With no internet and almost no phone calls, our country home offers the best relaxing time. It is set in the middle of a ski region so we tackle the slope almost everyday.

I enjoy driving to our home.

Nice friends along the way.

Every morning I watched birds feed.

And every nights we enjoyed a nice fire.

Skiing was perfect with sun and very warm weather.

I have done lots of sewing and I will be back with the state of my Quilt project soon.

So here was my week.
Mona