Recipe: My Never Fail Cake

I made my Never Fail Cake on the weekend and as the name suggests this cake is always fluffy and tasty with a fresh citrus taste. If anyone bakes cakes that don't rise, burn, dry out, or any of the other things that I usually do I promise you this cake will have everyone asking for another slice. Its delicious and as the name says won't let you down! Admittedly by day 3 it was a little dry so I put it in the microwave for 10 seconds to warm up and had it with a scoop of vanilla icecream mmmmm so good ... Maybe the real problem is that cake lasts more than 3 days in my house must eat it faster in future :)

You can see the recipe in the photo above in my trusty recipe book where I write in all my favourite recipes I like to keep. But this time for the icing I used

1.5 cups icing sugar

a squeeze of fresh orange and

sprinkled coconut over the top before the icing set

Do you have a never fail recipe?

Please share I'm always on the look out for tried and tested recipes :)

[All images my own]
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The Tarp Is Off And The Tiles Are On

The roof tiles have FINALLY been laid on top of the new garage construction and I can FINALLY start sleeping at night without worrying if the ceiling will start leaking water or rip off with all these storms we keep having or worse someone is going to crawl inside the house in the middle the night and get me! It was a labour of love and tile by tile Mr P and helpers spent over 12 hours on the roof this weekend in the rain and wind laying the tiles. 

This is the last look at the new roof construction and

what the tarp has been covering for about 3 weeks

These are the tiles we bought ages ago for the job and we used nearly all of them
and might actually need more because we have
one more row to do once the gutters go on and they weren't actually as good
a quality as what we thought when we bought them unfortunately
a lot are chipped and broken and can't be used

Ok it's time to get laying lads!

All day Saturday they laid the tiles from the edge up to the ridge capping

Front is done they're half way there

Doing the back

Doing the side against our awesome new wall

On Sunday Mr P was up there in stormy winds cutting all the tiles that

sit under the ridge capping so they fit properly

So now there is the bottom row of tiles to be laid once the gutters are on (yes we're still waiting on them) and it will be a bit fiddly trying to get that last row on now but we didn't want to wait any longer on getting the roof tiles secured so we'll just have to work around it. Also we can't find any more metal clips that hold the tiles on, we are calling everyone in Gumtree, and even tried a few salvage yards and everyone has tiles but no little clips. Worst comes to worse we'll just use wire and make our own clips but they'll be a bitch to remove if we ever need to take off a tile.

The next job is to have the inside of the garage plastered and rendered which a friend is booked in to do for us this weekend. The front and back of the house will also be rendered but that will be a bit later on. After the rendering we'll put the ceiling in and pour the new concrete floor. Lots of work happening around the Jarrah Jungle in the next few weeks!

Sharing with linky parties Wow us Wednesdays at Savvy Southern Style 

[All images my own]

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Book Review: A Sky Full Of Kindness By Rob Ryan

I picked up this quirky gift book A Sky Full of Kindness by Rob Ryan from the $5 bookstore in the CBD last week

I recognised the artworks on the cover which is by the incredible artist Rob Ryan who cuts out all the letters and pictures by hand. So amazing. I have a tea towel from this designer too  which was a freebie with an Inside Out magazine and I have all intentions of framing it for the kitchen but for now it's tucked away safely in the linen cupboard.

So about the book, the story is meant to be a children's book about two little birds who become parents. I'm not a parent, I don't have kids, but I think this book is just gorgeous and would suit any artistic adults who would buy it just for the quirky pages. Of course it would make a cute childrens book too. I'd be tempted to colour photocopy some of the pages and frame them they would make cool diy art (or maybe I'm a little obsessed turning my books into art at the moment!)

Here are some more pages from the inside

I give this book 5 stars, I love the design and the words it's a sweet little story

Jarrah Jungle's Star Rating:

1 Bad - I'd rather eat brussel sprouts topped with anchovies than read this again

2 Not Good - I'd rather watch re-runs of Neighbours than read this again

3 Ok - I'm sitting on the fence - its not great but not terrible either

4 Good - I'd pass up a pack of tim tams for this read

5 Great - I'd pass up a date with Johnny Depp for this read

[All images my own]

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Point and Shoot: Clothes Swap Party

When: Friday, 8 June 2012 @ 7pm

Where: My friends clothes swap party

This is 8 bags of clothes/shoes/bags/belts etc that I cleared out of my wardrobe and took to my friends clothes swap party on Friday Night. All the girls were invited over and the only rules are that you bring a minimum of 1 item of clothing but you can take as much as you like. The Salvos are having a shortage in donations so she has organised for them to pick up anything that was leftover. It's a bit of a laugh I keep seeing my clothes in the piles that someone took last time, but brought back again to swap. It doesn't matter because it hasn't cost us a cent and we get a few new items for our wardrobes. I brought home only 1 bag of clothes and got rid of 8 I was being restrained!

As for the rest of my weekend both Saturday and Sunday from lunchtime until it got dark was spent on the roof laying the tiles over the new garage extension. They are finally on and secured and I don't need to worry about the wind and rain and winter weather that has been beating around Perth all weekend.

While the lads were outside working hard I was inside busying myself in the kitchen ... I made a big pot of wholesome chicken and vegetable soup and didn't even use a recipe and it turned out really tasty, a never fail cake which was fresh and orangey and a spicy chicken and prawn laksa. It's been a while since I've had a cookathon must be the cooler weather making me feeling like cooking up a storm.

How was your weekend?
Head on over to Sunny + Scout to see what everyone was up at this weekends Point and Shoot

[Image my own]

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Thanks Mr Weather Man

All I asked for was a few weeks without the rain

Ok and then I might have extended it by a week because the wrong gutters were delivered 

And what do you do Mr Weather Man just 2 days before we are able to put the roof tiles back on?

I'll tell you what you did!

You sent a freaking tornado our way didn't you .... Oh don't you worry about the rain Miss Michelle I'll just send you some lightening thunder and winds that will smash windows out blow down trees and power lines then you wont be worried about a few drops of rain anymore mahahahahaha

I kid you not, mere kms from my house a tornado went through on Thursday leaving 5000 homes without power and hundreds damaged. It's virtually unheard of that type of weather happening in the metro area of Perth. I hope the damaged homes are insured and the people can get them fixed up soon. You can read all about the storm here.

That could have been our roof but by some miracle the tarp stayed on and the tiles are still up there holding it down. No damage. No leaks. No rain has got in. Phew. The tiles FINALLY went back on today what a relief I'll be able to sleep easy tonight now and I'll put up some progress pics soon.

Thanks Mr Weather Man for keeping the weather away from our house and also a big thanks to my fellow bloggers who wished the rain away for me until we could get the job done it worked :)

[All images from Perthnow]

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Winter Warmer: Its All About Hats

There's no denying it any longer that the winter season has arrived here in Perth.

Although we've had some sunny days, the chill is definitely in the air and the mornings are so freaking cold it is so hard to get out from the warm doona. No more nudie runs into the shower I have to throw on my fluffy dressing gown just to walk a few metres!

This winter its going to be all about hats for me, I want to wear my hats more - I have a cute grey beret, peaked caps in brown and maroon and some different coloured beanies too that need to be let out of the wardrobe and shown off.

What will you be digging out of your wardrobe this winter?

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[All images via my Fashion Favourites on Pinterest]

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Roof Construction (Almost) Finished

I thought I'd give you an update on the garage extension progress since the walls went up last month, and then we removed all the roof tiles in anticipation of the roof construction starting. The roof carpenter has done a weeks worth of work starting bright and early at 7am each morning, I make him a strong cuppa (I love my coffee machine!) and give him some choccy biscuits and then leave him to it - always treat your tradies well, if they're happy you'll be happy - trust me!

All the gorgeous old timber beams were taken out of the roof structure, unfortunately we can't reuse them and had to order all new beams - the old timber we sorted and kept the best pieces to make something out of (I'd love to make a timber bench to go near the front door) and the rest of the wood we loaded into the back of the ute and drove down to my parents farm so they can use it for firewood or to fix fence posts etc.

The new roof beams are treated pine, not as beautiful as the old solid jarrah but that's what all the new houses are built from now - we ordered all the material ourselves to save money, lucky we have a large front verge to store it all

Here is the new roof supports, steel beams, and pine posts being built in - it's basically a new roof pitch from the living room wall which is next to the carport so that it can extend across into a double garage

This is the view from the back of the house, you can see the old jarrah beam and then the new pine ones put in (they haven't yet been cut to size in these pics) the old eaves and gutters were taken down too. The pipes that run down are our air conditioner which he sawed in half because the pipe was in the way - lucky its not summer buddy or you'd be in trouble! We'll need to reattach the pipe when it's finished. The foxtel dish is also in the way we might need to move it and the tv ariel has been disconnected for about 6 weeks which is killing me I'm really missing the news and The Block and Offspring and MasterChef and so many of my favourite shows!

The roof carpenters helper happened to be an electrician so he offered to put in all the wiring for the power outlets and lights that we want in the garage which was so handy, saved us having to get an electrician out just for that. He wired in power for lights on either side of the garage pillars, 2 lights inside, 2 power points and 2 outlets for the electric garage doors.

So the structure is in and the wiring. The gutters should've gone on as well (you can see one on in the 2nd pic above) but we ordered the wrong size so we have to wait for  new ones to be made and delivered this week. If that didn't happen we could've put the roof tiles back on this weekend before the forecast rains hit TODAY eeeek luckily it's only been a few light showers so the tarps are holding on ok just flapping around a bit but no waters getting in so that's the main thing.

These things happen, hopefully we'll be good to go this weekend coming, to put the gutters and tiles back on and then I'll stop freaking out about the weather forecast!

Sharing with my favourite linky party Wow Us Wednesdays over at Savvy Southern Style

[All images my own]

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