Category: Making, Cooking & Co

When your garden gives you lemons

Picture of a lemon tree with lots of lemons.
Happy lemon tree

Our lemon tree is very happy this year. We were lucky enough to have a Meyer lemon tree in every single garden we called home in the Bay Area. And no, we did not pick houses based on the garden plants. In fact lots of houses in this area seem to have lemon trees.
It has lemons almost the whole year but January-March is really peak season so I have been busy the last couple of weeks to make some good use of these lemons.

Picture of on a white kitchen counter.
Pretty lemons

So far I made Meyer Lemon Marmalade, lemon curd and lemon bars. I have also made Ginger Cardamon Meyer Lemon Crinkle Cookies and Lemon Sorbet before and of course lemonade. My favorite is the marmalade recipe. I have a handwritten version of it that was given to me by the previous owner of our house. It has all her notes and I thought it was really sweet of her and special. Every time I make the recipe now, it reminds me of her. I most like to eat it with yogurt or on toast or rolls with cream cheese. So good!

Someone holding a scone with a dollop of lemon curd, next to a glass of lemon curd with a spoon inside.
Lemon curd goodness

Even though I probably used 50 lemons so far, it does not seem to have made a big dent in the yellow lemons on the tree. I already gave some away, too. It just keeps on giving.

Which recipe would be your favorite and do you have any more suggestions for recipes?

Crafting therapy continued

I almost skipped today’s post because I was out of words. But then I thought I just share more of my makings over the last couple days. I really wish I had the space for a separate craft room but as it stands it has to be the dining room table which I share with my kids’ D&D meetings on Fridays and Saturdays. Since I have to put everything to the side I always feel like I need to make good use of my time and accomplish as much as possible.

T-Shirt with Boiling Isle (from the Owl House) logo

I feel I am still pretty new to the Cricut game and I always wanted to try more iron on projects. I made the above T-Shirt for my daughter’s birthday. The image of the boiled isle I ordered via an instant download. You do need svg file for the Cricut that are easily scalable. I also made the below T-Shirt for my book club meeting. I met the organizer through Instagram and she came up with this beautiful logo. You cut out the template on iron on vinyl, remove the access with the weeding tool which can be tricky if the design is very detailed. Cricut also sells heat presses to apply the design to your fabric but I just used a regular iron. It worked like a charm this time and I am happy with the results.

T-Shirt with my book club’s logo

I also made some more cards just because. If you get a subscription the Cricut comes with lots of premade projects – so I can’t take credit for these.

Cards – jut because