Saturday, October 1, 2011

Rainy Days...

Treasure Trunk Designs

Clark hates rainy days... he decided to bond with the sofa for the afternoon.
Well, the thesis bombfire celebration armed with bottle of wine in one hand and match in the other hand is officially cancelled at least for tonight.  Hopefully tomorrow will bring better weather although realistically it's calling for rain straight through until Tuesday... yuck.  By then the parental unit will be home from their annual Tremblant weekend with my mum's side of the family.  End result? Bombfire may have to take place with hot toddy rather than wine and mukluks instead of my old faithful cowboy boots!  Yep, the snow is coming... I can smell it in the air!

To make the most of this rainy weather I decided to plod around the house doing... stuff.  I miss living on my own with the freedom to do what I want, when I want, how I want and where I want... ahhh those were the days!  So making the most out of my weekend of rainy freedom, I took over the kitchen pulling out my jewellery supplies to work on a few pieces.  Eventually, I decided to do some baking.  It's not often I get this freedom and I love to cook! 


So I decided on pulling out a box of apples picked from the trees in the backyard to make a lovely pot of applesauce.  Unfortunately this year the apples were infested with worms so out of a big box full of fruit, this was all I got.  Not much but it tastes great! I love home made applesauce with big chunks of stewed apples, both white and brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves... delicious!  I can't wait to have some for breakfast tomorrow morning.


The next project was the long awaited zucchini bread.  Ahhhh zucchini bread! So grabbed a couple of the huge zucchinis from the garden.  The zucchinis are HUGE and way too tough for cooking but they make wonderful bread.  So after pulling out my old Betty Crocker cookbook and all the ingredients... I realized we were out of walnuts. Eish... no zucchini bread today! Will have to be tomorrow's project. 

Next up? More bath bombs! I ran out of bath bombs a few months back and have been substituting my bath time experience with ocean breeze scented dead sea salts but those ran out yesterday.  So out came the kit but... I couldn't find my recipe so I just went by memory. 



Oups! I forgot the cornstarch and the sea salts... so this batch was 1 part citric acid, 2 parts baking soda, green tea and cuccumber oil of essence, almond oil, grapeseed oil, rubbing alcohol, kaolin clay and I decided to go ahead and try a bit of water.  MISTAKE!  While the bath bombs packed up really nice and hardened well, they started to activate shortly after setting them out to dry. To slow down the activation process, I coated the hearts in baking powder which seemed to do the trick. 


These bath bombs are making me hungry!

In the end, there were some cracks and bubbling up which made my little hearts look like they had broken out in a batch of warts! They aren't the prettiest but they are tough enough and will do the trick!

This is the worst of the bunch. 
Now sitting back with a cup of tea after a relaxing soak in the tub, wrapped up in a big wooly sweather and flannel PJs and with nothing on TV, I've pulled out a video of my favourite 'I feel like doing nothing' movies... 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrimore.



I don't know why I like this movie so much but it makes me smile every time.  I'm sure I've watched it at LEAST 50 times lol...  it's still a good past time :)

Speaking of past times, while I await my thesis reader review, I've decided to make myself a leather bound journal and a pair of mocassins.  Yup, mocassins! With any luck, they will look like this:


Pattern from Tandy leather.

Well, guess it's time to sit back and enjoy my movie before hitting the hay.  Early start tomorrow with a 6 am Sunday wake up call... I'm not looking forward to that!  But with all free weekends comes a price.  Off to my mum's cafe for a day full of serving coffee, random chatter and flipping eggs. 

Rainy day blues logging off...

- Tara, Treasure Trunk Designs


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Getting Ready for the Official ReOpening - Just in time for Fall!

Treasure Trunk Designs
Hello everyone!

It's been a long journey to finish my Master's degree filled with all the roller coaster events of being a poor struggling student, lots of overseas volunteer experiences, new friends, ups and downs, lessons learned and some things best forgotten!  But I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and I'm so excited for the next chapter in my life.

While I await the reader review of my thesis, I've been busy working on some new designs and packaging. 

My camera unfortunately had a bit of a breakdown but hopefully, with a little luck, Nikon will help me get her back to her old self. 

New cards have also been developed to help display the cost, metals and gemstones which will make it SO much easier to organize my display case. 


I'm so excited to be working on my jewellery again after my 'thesis hiatus'. 

Please share your thoughts as the new items are posted onto Facebook and wish me luck!

- Tara, Treasure Trunk Designs