Author: Jade Goulding

Designer of interiors. Stylist for spaces and homes, food and products. Photo taker. Lover of my beautiful family. Creative life enthusiast. www.newhenrydesign.com

Vegan Chocolate Ice cream

This delicious and healthy delight is my favourite thing at the moment. Its sooo delicious and makes very good bribery material. My girl loves “Chocolate Ice Cream”, and she will become very compliant at the mention of it.

You can use this recipe as a guideline, and create your own flavour combos. I originally used this recipe from thekitchn.com, and made my own variation.

 

Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream

1 x bunch of bananas – chopped into bits (raaar!) and frozen overnight

about 1/3 cup cocoa

about 1/3 cup melted coconut oil

about 1/3 cup brown sugar (for an even healthier version use rapadura sugar)

splashes of vanilla

ingredients             bananablender 2

Put all of these things into a food processor and blend! As always, my wish is that you will experiment and test out different amounts of the flavourings to your own taste. I personally like lots of cocoa and vanilla. It comes out so creamy and delicious, I put it in a container and keep it in the freezer. Its the best thing for a healthy summer night treat.

choc icecream in blender         choc icecream2

 

 

Easy Christmas Decorations – Homemade Salt Dough Decorations

OK, this is REALLY fun. You can make anything you want to hang on your Christmas Tree! I found a recipe which I can’t find again. But there is one here which I think is pretty much the same.

I used a pack of cookie cutters I got from Aldi, and my super special Ninja Bread Men cutters
Acrylic paints
Christmas ornament hangers

It’s pretty straight forward really, make the dough, roll it out and cut out your shapes. Make a little hole with a skewer so you can tie ribbon or use hangers to hang the little guys.

The recipe I used said I only needed to cook them for 10 minutes, so when we were painting them they were still a bit squishy! I put them back in the oven for about 1.5hrs on 100degrees. That really dried them out properly, and it didn’t ruin the paint either. Have a look at the cool shapes we made, and my little girl loved doing this. (For about 5 minutes anyway)

Interior Decoration – Easy and thrifty home ideas

My all time favourite magazine Real Living is having their readers competition. So I thought I’d enter a few photos. I didn’t have as much time as I’d like to sort out the rooms around my house, but did enough to create some beautiful spaces and get some snaps. They were mostly already like this, but I just added in a few of my favourite items and rearranged some things to look a bit stylish.

Most rooms in my house have a combination of something I’ve made, something new, something second hand/vintage style, and some kind of free or super bargain decorative piece. This type of style works well with the old Queenslander house style house we live in. Lots of wood and warm colours make a cosy home!

Loungeroom: The painting is one of mine, and I just grabbed some branches from the tree outside for a natural look with height. My hubby brought home from work the gorgeous wooden Scotch box with a map of Scotland cut out, and the cute wooden chair was from an auction.

Bedroom: We have a lovely 4 poster bed with netting, so I’ve gone with a romantic vintage look with roses, lace and pearls and vintage ads.

Entranceway: One of my favourite things is this interesting wooden shelf I got at an auction for like $10. I think its an old document sorting tray, but makes a really unique shoe rack! I found the piano seat under one of my old houses, and made both the storage box and coffee sack canvas myself.

Crafty shelf: I love love love having an eclectic array of storage vessels. They make a great display as well as being functional for storing bits and pieces. I create the chalkboard storage boxes myself, and have collected many little boxes, suitcases, tins and baskets along the way.

Easy Christmas decorations – homemade wrapping paper

Today’s Christmas craftiness began with a potato and an old book, and ended with creative and cute gift wrapping!
I love collecting old books when op shopping, to use for a myriad of purposes. This is another thrifty way to cut down costs of Christmas and make it more personal.
So…
I carved some rough star shapes into a potato, ripped some of those old book pages I so love to use, got out some paint, and here you have it. Stamp the potato in the paint, I used green, red and gold. Then go crazy on your recycled vintage paper. I wanted a rough and natural style, so the stars aren’t always distinguishable in my pattern, but you can definitely be more meticulous. Easy peasy, and another great one for kids to help with. My gift tag is an old Kikki K bag cut up, and some cute brown twine will top off the natural design. Have fun!

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Xmas Present #3 – Green Bean Relish – In memory of Pippa

My grandmother (Pippa or Lorraine) used to make the best green bean relish. I’ve recently had memories about it after she passed away last year, and have been trying to recreate it. (Family members reading this, if you have any idea where the original recipe could be, please let me know!)

I’ve discovered that there aren’t many people in the world who know about the delights of Green Bean Relish, but I am changing their ways.

This is the recipe I’ve come up with, and I have to say its pretty darn good… with eggs in the morning, sandwiches at lunch or meat in the evening. Again, its also a pretty low cost thing to make, and could be used as a very delicious gift!

500g green beans
2 brown onions
1 cup water
1 cup malt vinegar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tblsp mustard seeds
2 tsp turmeric
salt and pepper
2 tblsp corn flour

Basically, I just chopped the beans and onions, and put all these ingredients in a pot for about an hour. After an hour, I put the cornflour in a jug, and mixed a bit of hot water with it to make that white milky consistency. Note, I tried this by ladling some of the liquid out of the pot, but it didn’t work, it was too lumpy.
Pour the cornflour mixture into the relish and stir and allow to thicken. It depends how thick you like it, but you could put more in if you like it thicker.

Enjoy!