Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Hi everyone!
I'm posting this post quite early cause I don't know if I will be able to get at my computer in the next couples of days.

Here are my pictures for this Sunday:

Walking:

 

This is the cat that belongs to my host-au pair family. She's a sweet little thing but is hard to get a photo of cause she always sniffs the camera.

Yummy to my tummy:

For my uncle's birthday last Sunday, my aunt made this "Banoffee" Pie and I fell in love with it! It's heavy but soooooooooooo good! Definitely going to make this when I get home.

Favourite toy:

It didn't even take me a second to know what picture to take for this one. My little canon will always be my favourite toy :)

What I did this week:

This week I experimented on making nutella cookies (same recipe as the last post I wrote) and added peanut butter and oats in the centre. Unfortunately, forgetting that they needed less time in the oven since they were flatter than a nutella brownie, they burnt :( I had to throw them away. SO annoying!

Anything

I was babysitting my 2 year old cousin the other night. She was fascinated by my camera and we took this picture of this art craft her and her 3 year old brother made. Turned out to be in focus for once :) (my 50mm lens's autofocus is terrible). Such a cute crocodile!

So those were my scavenger hunt pictures for this week! Hopefully I will get to do the next one as I love picture hunting.

Have a nice weekend everyone! .

Macro Photos...without the macro lens.

Hello hello,

I was a bit bored today and was playing around with my camera when I remembered reading about a technique to take close-up shots without having a macro lens.
I tried it and I was quite happy with the result, and it was fun!

 

 

So the method is to take off the lens and turn it around. You have to hold the lens against the camera as it doesn't click on backwards. And voila! shoot away and play around to see different methods.

I find these pictures look very arty. I don't think you'd get good close-up pictures of insects and that but it's fun being able to get closer :)
Since the lens isn't attached, the camera doesn't allow me to change the aperture which is constantly on 00. This is why the pictures are quite blurry, but I find it gives a lovely dreamy look to them.

Here are some pictures of how close I can normally get with the lens put on correctly on the camera:

 

As you can see, my prime 50mm lens doesn't allow me to get too close. With a zoom lens, you could get much closer I am sure.

The only problem with this method is that it can let in a lot of dust on the sensor. I was a bit worried about that at first but then I just did it and I don't see too much dust on it.

Well there you go! I learn something new every day :) I'm definitely going to take more in the next days.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Nutella Brownie (or Cookie)

Today I finally tried the recipe I found on the internet.
As you might know, I'm an au pair at the moment in Ireland and the family I'm staying with are not the type to cook anything other than chicken and spuds, so imagine them baking!
I didn't want to ask the mother to buy extra things for me to bake cause that kind of felt impolite so this recipe is perfect!

It's a 3 ingredient recipe: nutella, flour and egg. Things you can find in your kitchen (and that I found here!)

But before I begin to show you how to make this, I have to tell you that I slightly changed the recipe by reducing the amount of each ingredient (otherwise I would have ended up with 12 cupcakes and on my own that would have been way too much). I also didn't find any cupcake pan in the house, so I used a regular cake one... which makes my creation look and taste more like a cookie than an actual brownie.
Well, next time I will try and use a different tray!

Ok so let's begin.

 

 
Ingredients:

. 2 and a half tablespoons of flour
. 4 tablespoons nutella
. half an egg
 

 

 
This was the tray I found. I think it would have been better to use a cupcake pan so that the mix isn't spread too much and becomes more fluffy inside (my one was very crispy; more like a cookie).

 
You can add whatever you want on top: nuts, chocolate flakes, etc. These white decoration toppings were the only things I found in the cupboard that I could use.
I only put them on half of my brownie as a test. Couldn't really taste them when the brownie was finished but it's one way of decorating it.
 

 

 
I was using my phone to know how much time to put the brownie in the oven.
I put it in the preheated oven for 30 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius.

 
I was quite amazed when my brownie started rising after only a couple of minutes. I was quite happy cause I had no idea if this was going to work or burn or go flat.

 
30 minutes later it's time to take it out of the oven.

 

 

And this is how it looks like!

 

 

 

Voila!
I really enjoyed it. However, it was very dry and I had to drink a glass of milk with it but maybe with some crème anglaise or some chocolate cream this would have been perfect!

The real recipe is for a much bigger amount (don't be surprised if your nutella pot is empty afterwards). If you want to make the original one, here is the recipe:

- 1 cup (280g) nutella
- 10 tbsp (62g) flour
- 2 eggs

Bake them the same way I did this one and you will end up with about 12 cupcakes. Great to share with the family!

Well, it was fun sharing this with everyone and I was happy to end up in 35 minutes with a brownie (cookie in my case) in my hands :)

Have a great weekend and hope to post soon again!

A few pictures from the house...

As you might know from the last post I wrote, I am currently an "au pair" in Ireland. I'm sort of living in the family's house, and since I didn't take pictures with my lovely canon for a while, I decided to take pictures of little objects from here and there in the house.
There isn't any logical order or anything in my pics, I'm just posting little things or decorations I like.

But before I show them, I'm first showing you a hairstyle I had to make this morning. Indeed, "Henrietta" (nickname I'm giving for the girl I'm babysitting) has a anti-racisme day at school today and dressed up in traditional Singapore clothes. With that she wanted a bun with those chop sticks inside them. I'm not a great hairdresser :P but I think I did alright. What do you think?

 

So there you have the back of the head of Henrietta. I'm obviously not going to post any pictures of her here in case someone could recognize her AND she has no clue that I have a blog anyway.

Well, here are the photos I took this afternoon:

 

 

 

These photos were taken in my bedroom. When I first arrived here, Henrietta said she had put these up so that I wouldn't feel homesick :)

 

 

 

Henrietta has so many toys it's unbelievable! You can barely walk into her room and it's always dark in there cause too many boxes of toys are blocking the way to the window.

 

These are the new barbies apparently. I remember having a couple of barbies, maybe 6 maximum. But she has 17 of these dolls! They're strange dolls and don't represent humans; they are zombies, werewolves, vampires,etc.

 

 

 

 

 Something I see everyday on the fridge. It's kind of a moral thing which I'm not surprised since they have so many morals here. Henrietta for example nearly never goes to her friends house who lives across the street because the parents curse a little bit, so it's not "a good environnement for children". This is Henrietta who said this herself. I was like, ok, when I was 9 I never thought of these things. So her friend has to come over to this house then. You might see that she has a tendency to be...let's say bossy.

 

This is the dog, she's very cute and gentle but it's sad that all she does all day is hang around in the tiny garden. She's bored out of her head so I bring her on walks when I can but it's not always easy with the rain and the cold.

 

 

 

One of the shoes Henrietta was meant to wear today but didn't since it's way too cold outside.

 

 

The wardrobe that's been lying like this for a few weeks now. I'm not suppose to touch it cause Jill has a plan in her head and knows exactly how to build it. Yet, it's been weeks she's saying that she will build it. Not done yet.

 

And a photo of myself. This dressing gown was a gift from my aunt. She gave it to me when I arrived in Ireland and I am soo happy she did cause the weather is so horrible here and Jill doesn't want to put on the heating (cause it's "very expensive").

So that was my little post. I hoped you liked it and I must go soon pick up Henrietta from school and run after her to clean up everything she messes and dirties. Life is great :D!
Hope to write a new post soon!

Au Pair Life - week 3

 

 

So, it's my third week as an au pair in Ireland. What can I say?

See, I've been thinking of writing posts about my au pair experience every once in a while so that in the future I can read these and look back on my au pairing days.

 

So, I'm in a nice family -one mother that I will call Jill and her 10 year old daughter that I will name Henrietta- I'm creating these names for privacy reasons. Anywho, they're quite nice and live in a common semi-detached house in a village of Ireland. Their life is normal, nearly dull at times: work, school,home,etc everyday the same thing.

 

Well, till now I've been ok. I don't have very strong homesickness (well not yet anyway) and my work is not hard at all (bring kid to school, come back do some cleaning, fetch kid from school, do homework with her and then Jill comes back home from work and I'm off).

 

What I like about this Au Pairing thing is analysing people and discovering new culture. This may seem strange cause I am Irish and have lived here till I was 7 but my mom is German, so I grew up with different ways and habits than the other Irish kids.

 

Here is what I have analysed already:

 

-Henrietta (haha what a funny name! Her real name is much more modern) is quite narrow-minded when it comes to other cultures and foreigners. Any country other than Ireland is called a "weird country" if she doesn't remember the name of it. This isn't like super shocking when people here hear her talk like that but as I am a mixture of different countries and since I love getting to know foreigners, I found this quite vexing.

 

-Henrietta and her friend (that I will name Sunny) only eat "Irish food". Well, it's not totally Irish since British people eat the same so let's say "British food". Whenever I babysit Henrietta and Sunny, I always try and influence them to wanting other food than the usual chicken and fries (oh I think I'll soon hate that dish since they seem to have it here nearly every day!). So I try to talk them into eating some nice Italian pizza or spaghetti or lasagna (god I really need to go to Italy! :)) or even just some rice. But they're answer is always: "nah....". But anyways, next time I babysit them again, I'm not making chicken and fries. They can wine all they want to Jill but I'm cooking them something else!

 

-Jill is quite a feather head, always forgetting to pick up her child from school (when it's her go), or spending hours on the phone to the wifi company cause the wifi doesn't work (when actually all you had to do was switch on the power button on the side), loosing her phone all the time, being 1 to 2 hours late for work nearly everyday,etc.

 

These things are a few things I noticed in the last 3 weeks.

 

Now, let's get to the weather and life part. Ireland is known for it's rain (if you don't know this write it down in case you ever thought of coming here on holidays). So logically, everyday it rains! And it's so depressing when you add rain with grey skies everyday and coldness and dampness. Sounds lovely doesn't it! Sorry, I just realised that there might be Irish people reading this and if there is then I am very sorry. But coming from a warm, sunny place like France to a cold, damp, oh and don't forget windy! place like Ireland, does depress me a bit.

Life here is also quite dull: you can't go for proper walks without umbrellas (oh wait you can't cause the wind is too strong!), raincoats,etc; you're always catching some kind of cold; the housewives here spend their days comparing curtains (yaay!); nearly everyone has a dog. But these dogs are kept to mind the houses and live in tiny little gardens where they get totally bored to death since no one wants to bring them on walks since it's raining, and so on and so on....

 

So you get the global image!

 

Of course I'm not saying that everybody is living a dull life here. I'd say Bono (from U2) is having a great life!

 

Ok enough with the depressing! Cause the family is nice and I get to see my family every weekend!! My family meaning my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins,... that I normally only see like once a year or twice max.

And this Sunday is St Patrick's Day! If the weather is alright, I will go with my family to the Dublin parade (this will be the first time I ever see the parade! yayy!).

 

So it takes some time getting use to life as an au Pair, especially in Ireland (next time I'm going somewhere hot!).

 

I'll try and keep these au pair posts going (without all the depressing stuff I promise!) and I wish everyone a lovely day and a lovely St Patrick's day!!

 

 

 

 

DIY Owl Card!

It's quite late as I'm writing this, since I really wanted to post this before going to bed cause tomorrow I have lots of things to do!
A week or two ago was my aunts birthday but I didn't see her and I didn't get to congratulate her. But since I'll see her in a couple of days, I decided to make her one of my handmade cards.
Unlike the cards I used to make the last years, this time I looked around on the Internet to get new ideas and then I found the perfect one since it's sooo cute!
 
I must admit that I never do or follow things exactly as your suppose to, be it in cooking with recipes or following DIYs.
So, for this reason, I gently tried to copy a card idea that I found, but the person who had made had actually bought the shapes. Well, I just drew the shapes by hand which equalled in bigger eyes, smaller body and bigger ears. But it works and looks adorable!
 
I took photos to show you how I made it. It was quite dark in the room when I made it because of the non working light bulb; so the photos aren't great but they shall do.
 
Anyway, let's begin before I continue chatting! or shall I say writing.
 

 
 
Isn't he cute?
 
You can pick whatever colours or patterns you want for his body!
 
These are the things I needed to create mister owl:
 

 

 
So these are the papers I used. All though I actually didn't use the hearts in the end cause it would have looked too much.
 

 
 
You will need most of these items to create the card. I used the cups to shape the round eyes and the eye contours.
 
There might be a few steps that aren't taken in picture cause I didn't actually mean to make a DIY post about this.
But I think you'll understand how to create the card:
 

 
Fold a paper in two, and cut out an owl shape but make sure to keep the left side of his body attached to the second paper (back of card).
 
 

 

 

 

Cut out his belly with a different patterned paper and glue it. 
 

 
Using the cups, create two white circles for the eyes. Cut them out and glue them on the owl.
 
 

 

 

Using a wider cup for a wider circle, trace two circles, then trace a smaller circle in each of these circles with the smaller cup (does this make sense to you? sorry, I'm not very good at explaining - especially at 2 in the morning). 
 

 
These two black circles shall be cut out and glued on top of the whites eyes.
This adds a lovely owl affect!
 
Then (sorry no photo for this), cut out two black filled in circles for the iris/pupil. Now this if the fun part cause you can put them close together to make the owl look a little stupid, or you can put them normally to make him look normal (what am I saying? :) ).
 
 
 
Then (again sorry no photos), I cut out a triangle from the orange paper for the nose and cut out two small half-clouds that will become the feet and glue them.
 
 

 

 
 
Et voila! This is the result! I find him so adorable and I think my aunt will love it just the way as I do.
 
 
Tip: Since the inside of the card was just plain white, I added a plant/flower pattern with a marker to each side to give it an elegant look.
To do this I used a plastic sheet flower print thingy that you can get in craft shops or on the Internet ( All my things come from Butinette, but I think they only exist in France and Germany).

 

I always love using this pattern.

Anyways, I hope you liked my little DIY! I'd say you would make it better than me, but that's normal cause my diys/crafting/projects often sometimes don't work out or look completely different to what it's supposed to look like. So I'm happy this worked out and was soooooo easy (I hate time consuming, complicated crafting where you need lots of patience!). I'd say it took me about an hour to make this (which includes getting out all my things and trying to find another battery for my camera) but once you get the hang of it, I'd say it's very possible to make one in half an hour.

Hope you enjoyed this post! I might not be able to write another one for a while since I'm going to be Au Pair in Ireland for the next 6 months!! :D and I don't know anything about the Internet connection there.

Wish you all a lovely day/evening/weekend and hope you liked this card!