Happy New Year!

I hope you had a fabulous one, mine sure was =)  I was lucky enough to go into Brisbane to watch the fireworks over the river with my boyfriend - it was awesome!  (it was also my first time seeing fireworks close up, so even more exciting!!)

When I started this blog back in...  2009, I believe, I had one idea - I wanted to create cross stitch patterns and blog about them.  Since then... it's changed a lot, and so have I (in lots of ways, but I won't go into that now).  Since it's a new year, I wanted a fresh start in the blog world.  This has been in the works for a while now, and I'm so excited to finally (*squee*) put it out there.

I'm moving.

Blogs, that is.

Coffee and Craft will still be here, but I won't be posting on it any more.

If you want to keep up with me and my crafting adventures in the new year, please pop over to

TiniRawrs.blogspot.com

And follow me in whatever way you please.

Thanks for reading my little blog, and I hope to see you over at my new one!!

Also, hope you have a fabulous 2013, if we don't get to chat soon!!

-Christine

Merry Christmas!

It has been over two months since I last had a post! What a terrible blogger I am.  Hehe.  That being said though, I have been insanely busy- my teaching prac for uni kept me busy every day for a month. No joke there, for a month it was all "hobbies? You have hobbies now? No hobbies for you!"

Since then I have been working on a plan (yes, a blog related plan) which starts in the new year. It has been in the works for a few weeks now, so bear with me for a bit =)

In the meanwhile, you can catch me on...
Instagram
Twitter
Pinterest

Hope those links work! If not, I'm "tinirawrs" on each of those sites =)

Anyway, I hope you and your family have a safe and very merry Christmas and a fabulous new year.
God bless,
-Christine

Pizza Rolls!

Tonight was one of those nights - I knew exactly what I wanted to make for dinner.  Especially since I had discovered some puff pastry in the freezer.  Pizza scrolls!  Because pizza is delicious and all.  The initial idea was, as I mentioned before, was scrolls.  Then I got lazy and hungry, so they morphed into rolls.  Still delicious, none the less.

For a  change, it's actually my own "recipe".  It goes as follows:

Makes 3
You need: 
-3 squares of puff pastry
-300g ham
-300g (ish) tin of pineapple chunks
-lots and lots of cheese
-herbs (I used a premix called "Italian Herbs".  No idea what was in it, but it was delicious)
-tomato sauce

1. Preheat oven to 180(degrees)C.  Line trays with baking paper.
2. On the sheets of puff pastry, spread tomato sauce, followed by ...everything.
3. Roll puff pastry!  Close the ends (...squish them down with a fork).
4. Sprinkle cheese on top!
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes

It was a surprisingly delicious dinner, and there's one roll left over for tomorrow!  Yay.

See you Wednesday!
 

Dr Pepper - Pinterest inspired Cupcakes!

Before we get into the pretty pictures, I'd like to clear some things up:

1) I actually really hate Dr Pepper - not a huge fan of the fake cherry flavor (tastes like the cherry cold medicine I used to get when I was a kid), but my boyfriend loves this stuff.

2) ...I don't have a sifter.  You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Since Dr Pepper isn't exactly common here in Australia, none of my family have actually tried it before.  It was highly amusing getting my family to try a bit - my brother took a small (by small I actually mean pretty much non-existent) sip, and Mum took one sniff and pulled the most amusing face.

To explain the random lumps in my icing...  Yeah, I don't have a sifter.  There was one, once, but it was a weird contraption which had a huge buildup of flour and icing sugar and was impossible to clean (it had rotating blades and was... again, weird).

Apparently these cupcakes were "alright, but not really Dr Pepper-y".  Not my words, I took a tiny nibble and all I could taste was Dr Pepper.  So won't be making these again, but it was an interesting Pinterest-inspired project!

The batter was the other half of the brownie cupcake recipe from last week, and half a cup of Dr Pepper.  The icing recipe was from somewhere on the internet, but they all looked pretty similar when I Googled "Dr Pepper Icing"

See you Wednesday!

Refashion: Dress to Skirt

This is one of those projects.  You know the ones.  The ones which sit on your project pile (or whatever you use) for months until you eventually snap and make it.

...Or is it just me that does that?

Bit of a back story to this one, I bought this dress while I was on holiday with my cousins, considering it was summer at the time (and so. very. hot) and adorable.  Aaaand then I got home.  It got worn once.  I'm not a huge fan of strapless dresses (for the sole reason I've never found a good strapless bra), but the pattern is gorgeous.

Super cute but strapless and not quite right!

And the ruffle!  I love the ruffle at the bottom!  It's so adorable.

Aaaaand we're ignoring the winter-white legs here.  Hehe

As simple as the refashion would be, I figured the best option would be to turn the dress into a maxi skirt.  Conveniently, I'm hoping I can use it for my teaching prac in a few weeks (it's long and in a dark colour.  Considering I'm working with primary students, this is perfect).

Heads up: my top is super slouchy!

I'm super happy with how it turned out.  I should take it in a little at the waist, but I love it.  It's much more... me.  That, and it's much more versatile.

Can't wait to continue cutting down my pile!  One day, it'll be smaller...

Until next time,

What do you do with a collapsed cupcake...?

If you conveniently get the reference in today's title (it's "subtle"), then kudos!

Today, I decided to make cupcakes.  I was actually intending to make Dr Pepper cupcakes (which I actually did, but that's a story for next week), so I went looking for a normal chocolate cupcake recipe.  In one of my cookbooks.  Simply because I don't use them as much as I'd like, really.  After I made these cupcakes, I pulled them out of the oven t o discover...

...You have no idea how hard these were to pull out of the wrapper...

Yeah.  The chocolate brownie cupcakes collapsed while they were cooking.  Funnily enough, the Dr Pepper ones (which were in the same tray) didn't.  But moving on.

Remember the granitas I made a while back?  In this case, I located the coffee granita one and filled my cupcake with it.  It ended up looking like this:

It.  Was.  Delicious.  Also made getting the bowlcupcake out of the wrapper so much easier.  Mm, tasty.

I got the recipe from this book!

Yes, the boar has a tiara on it.  It was from my 21st and  I couldn't bear to toss it, so the boar got it.

Figured photographing the book with some soft toys would be infinitely cooler than just telling you the title.  It's an alright book, there are a lot of recipes in there, but I think this is the first thing I've actually made from this book.

Until next time,

Procrastinated Pinterest Project: Rice Heat Pack!

This is one of those projects which I pinned ages ago and finally got around to making.

Back in high school, I was pretty serious about playing the piano.  I was "practicing" for my 8th grade exam (passed with honors, boo yah!  But that's off topic) and my music extension final.  To cut a really long story short, a few months before my exam and final, I got RSI (repetitive strain injury) in my left wrist.  Yeah, it was really inconveniently painful.

Cut to this year, my wrist still hurts when I write too much or play piano without warming up enough.  That brings us to this week's project.  I've heard good things about rice heat packs, so finally decided to make my own.

Of course it needed a cute case, and I happened to have a cute piece of fabric left over from a bag I made ages ago.  I did love the idea of having a little envelope flap, and it seemed like a good idea since I had no velcro to use.

Thankfully, since I made this, I actually haven't had to use it.  It just sits on my desk looking adorable.

That's the actual heat pack!  It was surprisingly hard to sew it closed after I'd stuffed it with rice.  Never.  Again.  Well, maybe.

Until next time,