Four Exciting Deliveries in One Day

I feel like I have been waiting for ever and then suddenly all my parcels turned up at once, last Friday. The first one is a series of Caladiums. These are a fancy leaf plant of which I already had a baby one with red leaves, then a sale came up and John ordered 5 more. Just love them. I had to pot them up though as the roots were coming out the bottom. 

According to the Jungle Collective ....Caladiums are a seasonal plant. They grow their striking foliage on long slender stems that emerge in spring when the ambient overnight temperatures are above 20c. The foliage dies back toward the end of autumn when the weather is cooling down.

New Caladium

The like a shady to semi shady spot so I am going to stick them under the tree off the verandah, with my fancy Bergona Rex plants also with colouful leaves. 

New Caladiums

 The next Delivery same day, and with all my new art classes happening I had to get some new paints in Watercolours paint and  Paper,  and gouache paints all turned up as well actually from two different companies. Plus 3 very expensive watercolour  paint brushes from a third.

 One thing I have learnt about painting is the paper you work on gives the best result if it is good quality, and the paints are more vibrant and lightfast if the pigments are artist quality. 

 That is not to say I will go mad on using expensive stuff first,  but will test everything on Student quality first to get ideas and structure.Probably using my good old Jo Sonya's.

 I am joining the local art group every Sat. morning, and  have visited them already. 

It has been fun finding all my old stuff and sorting out an area for me to paint, which will probably be upstairs in the spare bedroom on my mum's table in there, which I feel good about. Even found a large piece of plastic to cover the table with.

The last thing to turn up was some new Oracle cards. The have just come out and by Colette Baron Reid which I have 2 other sets of hers, and really like how accurate they are. Just a bit of fun for me, and good for journaling on the result when you pick a card a day. 

The artist is Jo Nakamura and he describes his style as a blend of folk art modern country naive style, using Tribal art and mythology. It appealed to me, so we will see how they go with usage. I have only just opened them as I write this. 

 I did do some more  Gluten Free baking this week using some gluten free flour from Coles and made  Anzacs, and found a recipe, just in case something had changed for gluten free flour, but basically was just as I always do. 

The white one are because I forgot to put the brown sugar in, taste alright though.

While I was at it, used a gluten free cake mix to make some Lemon  Poppy Seed Muffins. I just added chopped up lemon peel really fine, and substituted 2/3rds. milk for 1/3rd of milk and the other lemon juice, and added a lid full of poppy seeds.

 They were later iced with lemon icing, after I took the photo and I froze them. I kept two back to test them, one for John and one for me. When I went to get mine, several hours later, for afternoon tea, it was gone!!!! Apparently they taste like normal. 

I don't supposed anyone wants to know I picked and froze another 500grms of beans, this week. If you are sick of reading that, I am sick of doing it. lol

  Till Next Time.