Happy Birthday

Millionaire’s Shortbread– from the back of the can
200g/7oz shortbread biscuits crushed
25g/1oz butter melted
150g/5oz butter
150g/5oz dark brown soft sugar
400g/14oz condensed milk
200g/7oz milk chocolate melted

1 Line a 20cm 8″ square brownie tin with baking parchment.

2 Mix the crushed biscuits with the melted butter and press into the tin to make an even base. Chill for 20 mins

3Place butter and sugar in a non stick pan and stir over a medium heat until the butter melts and the sugar disolves. To make a golden caramel, add the condensed milk, stirring continuously until the 1st bubbles appear on the surface. Remove from heat as soon as it comes to the boil.

4 Spread caramel evenly over the crumb base. Cool and chill for 1/2 hour.

5 Pour melted chocolate over the caramel smoothing to the edges.

6 When chocolate has hardened a little cut into squares.

Today is my birthday so one of these sorts of day.
I got these from the Body Shop as their birthday pressie to me for having their loyalty card. Banana shampoo and conditioner made with fair trade banana puree. Always good to buy Fair Trade when you can. Click on link to find out why.
This is the lovely loot from the family- roving galore, felt, a felting pen, hedgehog and mushroom felt mold, Stephen Fry’s early years biography, Wish perfume, Miami Ink book, Charles De Lint book and a card which reads:

Another birthday
at your age you’ve…
seen it all…
heard it all…
done it all…
you just can’t remember it all!

Hmmm small sliver of cake for daughter then. 🙂 I’m going to have a lot of fun this year with felt projects. The rainbow spun yarn would make excellent doll hair. So many project ideas and so few hands sniffle

In the corner of the room is my fav chair loaded with blog friends’ parcels for my special day.
Stamps from Norway
Germany
And a whole lot from Finland as Ulla wanted me to see as many as possible.
Unusual and beautiful ones.
And look fairies!
I asked hubby to take some of the fairy ones as Daughter has a school project
and his camera was better at ignoring the glitter on their beautiful dresses.
Lovely faces
Butterflies
Music
Beautiful flowers.
I’m getting better with my felt flower making. I loved my Chinese meal’s fortune cookie:
“You will be travelling and coming into a fortune” oh good! 🙂

My special treat wont be until 28th of April though when we are going to go to Manchester and hear Brandi Carlile in concert. Click link to hear her music and where she is touring- Europe and USA. I heard a song covered on American Idol and loved the song so found her here on You Tube. It turned out the song was part of a General Motor ad campaign and they donated the profits to a selection of green charities. That impressed me.
So you’ve probably been wondering what I’ve been up to. Well there’s this lot to sew together still because I’ve spent too long on the computer.
Moths, butterflies, bees, blue tonals, blue harlequin pattern, all between a crackled looking fabric. I wanted a light airy feel as if a little bit of sky was to wrap around you.

The front looks like this- based on Lynette Anderson’s Crow Quilt from her “A Gathering of Crows” book. I had 12 FQs instead of long quarters and I worked out I could get another couple of rows from them so it is 8X6 squares instead of the 6X6. There are appliques to go on. The fabric was mainly a gift from Eileen (who isn’t blogging at the moment) for my last birthday. I thought I ought to have used them by this one at least. 🙂 The range is called Portugal by Moda. Very pretty florals. My fav is the blue one with the birds and red roses.

Next time I will share the contents of those gorgeous parcels.


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