I have 22 listings ready to go for my Etsy shop, but in the interest of keeping them higher on Etsy’s search pages, I’ll be listing two a day for the next eleven days, starting on Saturday, August 16. I’ll be adding things every morning and afternoon.
If you follow ameliastudio on instagram, I may even send out a secret coupon!
My neglected blog doesn’t show much of my recent work. Here are some photos to remedy that!
If you want to stay up to date with me, Instagram and Facebook are the ways to go lately.
I’ll be taking all of this work to the Strawberry Swing in Kansas City on Sunday, August 3. I’ll also have some of the necklaces and ornaments that I have left from last winter’s show at the Kansas City Clay Guild.
I hope to see you there!
I’ll be there on Sunday with lots of mugs, hanging planters, platters, bowls, hair ties and necklaces! I’ll try to get some photos of my new work posted here soon.
Behold! The most beautiful cake in the world!
Or, not. But it did taste good! I’ve been meaning to post this recipe for a while — since, uh, Easter. Hence the lamb.
My mother-in-law has been eating gluten-free for a while now, and she was also avoiding dairy at the time, so I wanted to make an Easter dessert that we could all enjoy. I make a lamb-shaped pound cake every year, so this year, the lamb got the gluten-free, dairy-free treatment. (And it tasted even better than usual!)
This recipe is based on a pound cake recipe on the Land O’Lakes site, but I changed some things and it kind of became a completely different cake. A yummy cake. A beautiful cake. OK, just yummy. (At least the lamb’s head didn’t fall off.)
GLUTEN-FREE, DAIRY-FREE COCONUT-LIME POUND CAKE
2 cups sugar
1 cup dairy-free butter, melted (I used Earth Balance)
4 eggs
3 teaspoons gluten-free vanilla
3 cups Gluten-Free Flour Blend (I use King Arthur’s)
2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
1 cup coconut milk
1 TB lime juice
zest of 1 small lime
Heat oven to 350°F. Grease pan/muffin tin and sprinkle with gluten-free flour blend. Set aside.
Combine sugar and melted butter in large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until creamy. Add 1 egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla, lime juice and lime zest; beat until well mixed.
Stir together gluten-free flour blend and baking powder in small bowl. Gradually add flour blend mixture alternately with coconut milk to butter mixture, beating at low speed until well mixed.
Pour batter into prepared pan. If using bread tins, bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pan. If using muffin tins, I do not have the time amount, but I’d start checking on them somewhere around 15 minutes and every few minutes after to get the right time.
LIME GLAZE
1 cup powdered sugar
2 TB lime juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Whisk together powdered sugar, lime juice and vanilla until smooth. Use immediately.
Summer is over. Where did it go? It wasn’t spent here, as you can tell by the complete lack of posts.
A lot of it was spent in the swimming pool, wearing that same Lands’ End swimsuit that has lasted me three summers and is still going strong.
A tiny bit of it was spent on our fourth night away from children in EIGHT YEARS. Real clothing! Hotel! Being out in the dark!
A large part of it was spent driving, and driving, and driving. We drove from Kansas City to Colorado, Utah, California, Arizona and back. We camped a lot. We saw friends and family whom we love and miss every day. We saw mountains and arches and canyons and the OCEAN!
I managed to fire some platters.
I finished this custom wall platter. I’m still trying to decide whether I want to do this sort of custom work regularly.
And there was so much more. Family came to visit. Two of my girls learned to ride bicycles. One of them jumped off the high dive! Two had birthdays. I had a birthday. Chris had a birthday. We have another birthday coming in a couple of weeks.
All the girls are in school — preschool for one, elementary for two, and college for me. I am back in school, taking graphic design classes again. I haven’t had time to touch clay in a month, and that makes me sad. It has been kind of insane trying to keep up with the kids, the house, the dog, the cooking, the shopping, the bills, the laundry, the dishes AND go to school. There’s no room for clay. So I don’t know what to do about that.
I should perhaps make some choices, but if I know myself, I’ll just keep trying to choose everything.
I am now the awful blogger who only posts about store updates. So. I am updating my etsy shop. The end (for now).
I’m lame and forgot to mention a while back that I had updated the etsy shop with a few new things. There are some pots and some buttons and this little jellyfish wall tile. Most of the buttons are white; I need to restock on brightly colored ones. Anyway, check it out!
I disappeared there for a bit. Where did I go? I went into the iphone black hole. I got my first smartphone.
Actually, I’ve been around, just not here. I don’t really like sitting at the laptop now that I have this handy from-the-future toy. I bought a used phone and am using a value service, so if we get rid of our land line, I’m on track to actually save us money every month! I didn’t think that would be possible with an iphone, but there you go.
I’ve signed up for instagram and vine, and I’ve been having fun taking little photos and videos. If you would like to follow me, I’m ameliastudio on instagram, and I’m Amy Harding on vine. I suppose I should have made those the same, and actually I thought I did, but I don’t know — I’m new at this.
I’m already starting to get a case of texting thumb, which is apparently possible even if you don’t really text and can only type about two words per minute.
For Valentine’s Day, I got Chris the latest Chris Ware collection, “Building Stories.” It’s an amazing package of graphic art/comics/I don’t even know what to call it — all in different formats. We are long-time fans of Chris Ware. His work is meticulously designed, and we were pretty awe-stuck by “Building Stories” just looking through the package. Anyway, this giant book/box needed wrapping, so here’s what I did. It’s pretty self-explanatory. I always love a project that uses what I already have around.
Next, I used my valentines for Chris and the girls as an opportunity to play around with Illustrator. Though I took a class on Illustrator years ago, I am very much a novice with this software. Use it or lose it. I’ve lost it. Frankly, I was pretty pleased with myself for being able to make a heart shape with the pen tool. Baby steps.
As soon as all the girls are in elementary school, I’m hoping to finish up my half-completed degree in graphic design. I have a feeling pottery is going to require a day job, and jobs for editors (my pre-child career choice) are few and far between these days — not that graphic design is booming, but I enjoy it. When I took my typography class, we were using rub-on type. Rub-on type! Do they still do this? It’s not like we didn’t have computers then … Anyway, until I’m back in school, I’ll continue to make little projects for myself like this. Practice practice.
Sidenote: Check out the new button in the corner of my images. It allows you to pin the image to Pinterest, so pin away! Just be good and give credit where credit is due. Speaking of which, I got the ISLY Pinterest WordPress Widget from Melissa Esplin here. Thank you, Melissa and Chris (her husband who made the plugin).
We are planning on doing some camping this summer, so we recently purchased a tent! Our old tent was ruined in the great flood of 2010, and it wouldn’t have held five people anyway.
We were all pretty excited about the tent, so we decided to do a test run in the living room. We moved the couches out of the way, but it was too big. We were whacking walls and windows and pictures with the poles. It’s giant. So, no tent in the living room. It caused great disappointment among the littles when we decided to wait and set it up outside the next morning.
The evening after we set up the tent, a big storm came in. The tent was subjected to lots of rain and strong winds, and it didn’t leak or tear! So I guess it is a pretty good tent for our purposes. (It’s the Coleman Montana 8 if you are wondering.)
I’ve been soliciting advice from friends and family about camping with kids, and everyone has been so helpful. Besides the usual kid-craziness, I think our biggest problem may be how to get all of our equipment in and on our car, which isn’t huge. I’m looking at either the Sherpak or the Rightline Saddlebag. I’ve even toyed with the idea of getting both.
Looking at camping equipment is so fun! It reminds me of Girl Scout camp, which I only attended once and was plagued by shyness the entire time. But the equipment? The canteens? The little metal cups? The name tags in your shirts? That stuff was great. (Can you tell I’m a camping novice?)
Do you have any camping tips?