recently | creative

A little peek at something I've been working on since I got home - a new design for our range of hand painted bags (& aprons). Very much inspired by Polish/Baltic florals, papercuts (wycinanki) & folk art - hopefully the first design of several we will be producing. I've drawn, re-drawn, scanned, enlarged, printed the design & it is now ready for me to cut out a stencil, before we can start painting.

I'm really enjoying drawing these stylised florals - I kept this one quite simple, but have also been having fun with more intricate designs - & along with some other influences/inspirations from my travels, they should start appearing in all sorts of mediums...

day 3, from before...

3/7

Mum brought this hat back from the Tatry region of Poland many, many years ago (the hat is older than I am).
& I don't know if you can tell, but it's way too small.

also

christmas treats...

This year we have made chrusti for a special christmas treat...

Chrusti are a Polish 'biscuit' - sweet pastry, rolled thin, twisted, deep-fried & then covered in icing sugar.

They are very light & easy to eat (possibly not such a good thing ;)  & these are coming to adelaide with us - part of Babcia's christmas present.

food, glorious food...

Mum & I spend today preparing some of the food for Christmas...normally we arrive at Babcia's on Christmas Eve & just help with the last minute stuff, but as we're staying home this year, we have to do it all.

Today we made Uszka (little ears) which are pastry filled with mushrooms & rice, to be served on Christmas eve in clear beetroot broth. They're a traditional polish Christmas dish, kind of fiddly to make, but totally worth it.


& while Mum cooked tomato sauce (for the fish patties), I baked some of Babcia's apple cake.


I'm not sure if apple cake is also a polish tradition, but it is definitely a family tradition....along with baked cheesecake, which will be cooked in the next few days.


There are still some dishes to be made before the day...bigos, potato salad, barszcz (clear beetroot broth), the cheesecake...yum!