Liebster Award!!

A bonus post for the week you ask?!  Something outside the regular Sunday post for Sew Lah Tea Dough?!  I know, weird right - I love routine!  But I have some exciting blog news to share... On Saturday morning I got a wonderful comment linking me to the great Anyonita Nibbles blog, letting me know that she had nominated me for a LIEBSTER AWARD!!!! Yey!!  Many of you know what this is, and I had seen it on a few blogs I follow but never thought that it would be my turn any time soon, so as you can probably imagine, I am super excited to be a part of this... hence the bonus post!

But what is a Liebster Award?  The award is given from bloggers, to bloggers... Giving recognition to new and small blogs of 200 followers or less - and yes, that is me - I am pleased to have 69 Facebook followers, but yes, 50 of these are family and friends!  The purpose of the award is to meet new and up and coming bloggers :-)  Yey!  

So with a combination of our friends' new baby boy (check out my cupcakes here) and an incredible long weekend filled with adventure AND this exciting blogging news it is all just wonderful around here :-)

Onto the Liebster Award fun... Here are the rules:

Answer the 11 questions your nominator asked you.

Post 11 random facts about yourself.

Give the award to at least 5, but no more than 11 other bloggers with less than 200 followers.

Tell your recipients that they have received the award.

Come up with 11 questions for your recipients.

Here are the questions (now with answers) that Anyonita from Anyonita Nibbles asked me:

1.  Why did you start blogging?

All my life I have crafted things, baked cakes and loved to be busy making and baking!  As I got more adventurous in my cake decorating, and with the arrival of Pinterest in my lives I noticed how much the world loved reading about arts, crafts and all things food!  Maybe I could put my things down in writing as well?  I tried a Tumblr but didn't stick to it but here I am, since January this year blogging week after week, linking up and sticking to it - and I am so pleased I get to write things down, learn more about how to do things better as I go and that you all get to read about it :-)

2.  What is your favourite thing to blog about?

Hmm, well as you can see from the title of my blog - Sew Lah Tea Dough, I created this blog to not only be about 1 activity, but all my favourite things!!  If I had to chose one, I think it would have to be Dough - baking, decorating, all things cakey in particular!

3.  If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

That is TOUGH!  I love city breaks but most of all I love adventure - exploring nature, seeing new things and finding secret places all over the world.  Wherever it would be, I would want it to be with my husband Jonathan - I wish everyday could be spent travelling together ♥

4.  Which do you prefer; beach or mountains?

Definitely mountains!

5.  What is your favourite food?

Again, so hard to choose!  The amount I love to bake is definitely outweighed by my love for savoury food.  So I would have to go with sandwiches, preferably the steak variety with crispy onion straws on top, with a side of sweet potato fries!

6.  What is your favourite season?

I think right now I would have to say Winter - I LOVE Christmas, I love everything about it - the food, the family, the giving of presents, singing carols... and I also love Winter weather - snow snow snow :-D

7.  What is your job?

I love my job!  I am a piano teacher, and a music teacher to little ones - I love making music with the littlest of children but most of all I love sharing my piano learning experiences with them - creating fun and exciting piano lessons, instilling a love for music that will hopefully stay with my students throughout their lives ♫

8.  What is your favourite cuisine?

I love ALL food so it is hard to pinpoint one, but if I were to think about restaurants I love to go to it would have to be Mexican, or at least Tex Mex - burritos, fajitas, tacos, nachos - yes it would have to be that!

9.  What is your greatest achievement?

In the academic world - graduating from my Undergrad in Music, and also getting my Masters too!  In the blogging world, well the fact that so far I have stuck to it and there has been a post per week since January :-)  And in life, the greatest thing I have achieved, is the marriage to my amazing husband ♥

10.  Would you consider living abroad?

I DO!  In 2009 I went on a huge and scary adventure, leaving friends and family to be with my now husband Jonathan in Canada.  I miss home every single day and wish there was a way to be in both places at once - but here I am, a British girl living everyday in Toronto, Canada!

11.  Have you ever met anybody famous?

Not realllly.... a few bands and singer-songwriters after gigs when I was a teenager, but that's about it!  Nothing major I don't think...

And now, 11 random facts about me:

1.  I get bored REALLY easily.  I cannot watch tv without doing something else!  Not always a good thing.

2.  When I was at school my Mum helped me with ALL my sewing and textile class projects that I disliked.  I bet she never thought I would one day own my own sewing machine!

3.  I cannot eat ice cream like a normal person.  I can't bite on it, and definitely prefer it almost melted in a bowl.

4.  Dublin is one of my favourite places to go in the world and am lucky to have spent a whole lot of my life there on trips seeing my grandparents!

5.  My piano teacher was an American living in England, and now I am an English piano teacher living in Canada!

6.  I once dressed up as a double bass for a Music in the Community event where I worked in Sheffield, UK!  It was the best :-)

7.  I am British and I love tea.  But just the regular kind thanks.

8.  I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan.  Like seriously.

9.  My favourite thing to do would be to learn and play ALL different instruments all day long, forever learning new ones ♫

10.  On our road trip around the East Coast of Canada last summer we bought a lobster trap from a fisherman, which now sits on our balcony - I love it!

11.  I hate paying full price for anything.  I LOVE sales!

And my nominees for a Liebster Award are:

1.  Kate at Home

2.  Cupcakery  

3.  Make Something Daily

4.  Let's Pour Tea
5.  Janae Today
6.  Good Morning Pancake

I love all of your blogs for different reasons, inspirational ideas and creations, British influences, cakes and bakes and lots more - thanks for sharing your posts :-)

11 questions for you!...

1.  When and why did you starting blogging?

2.  What is your most best, or favourite post you have written so far in your blogging life!?

3.  Coke or Pepsi?

4.  Did you join Pinterest before or after starting your own blog?

5.  Sweet or savoury?

6.  What is your favourite thing to blog about?

7.  Where are you from in the world?  

8.  What is the best thing about where you live?

9.  Ice cream in a cup, or in a cone?

10.  Do you play a musical instrument?  

11.  Outside of work, and blogging, what is your favourite thing to spend time doing?

I am so super excited to be part of this Liebster Award, and thanks again to Anyonita for nominating me - it has been a lot of fun thinking about those questions - learning things about myself whilst writing the answers, and I love the chance to tell people about the great blogs I love to read :-)

Cupcakes for a New Baby Boy ♥

"Straight from heaven up above, here is a baby for you to love"

We are so happy that our great friends welcomed a new baby boy into their sweet family earlier this week - he is a baby truly loved already, and we were so excited to be able to go and visit when he was just 1 day old - treats and gifts in tow of course!

I have been busy for a good little while now making some secret projects (that I had to hide away when they came over to visit!) in advance of their new baby and have a lot of blogging to do about it but first, seeing as I had shared a Sneak Peek of my cupcakes on my Facebook page I thought these could come first.

There was definitely a theme to my handmade gifts, you will definitely see elephants popping up on this blog a few more times as I write more about the projects.  A lot of the inspiration came from a cookie cutter/press I found months ago in a small kitchenware shop that I KNEW I would want to use for their new baby!  I hadn't used it until now, but I am so so pleased with how it turned out.  

The best bit about choosing an elephant theme... elephants may be making an appearance in the new nursery they are preparing!!  SO excited to see more elephants everywhere, we are all zoo lovers after all!

We found out their new baby had arrived on Monday afternoon, so straight after work I got to making the final sewing project for him (whilst watching the Leafs get knocked out of the NHL Playoffs BOO) before starting on some cupcakes to take with us when we visited the next day!

I had known all along I wanted cupcakes to be a part of the gift, and this set of 3 designs meant a little bit of variety, but still on the same theme - blues and elephants of course!

I used a basic vanilla cupcake recipe, with buttercream frosting piped on top (see the recipe below), and whilst I was aiming for a pale blue buttercream colour - the liquid food colouring I was using (which was definitely blue!) turned this beautiful shade of mint green after a few drops, and I was happy with that - it's such a summery colour (and one of my very favourite colours!) and provided a good contrast with the cupcake toppers and decorations I was going to use :-)

As I mentioned before, I used a cookie cutter/stamp to make the elephants but rather than cutting out cookies, I cut out fondant I had coloured grey!  BAH I love the press - and am definitely going to buy more from that same shop!  I also cut out pale blue fondant stars, and then used blue and white sugar big round sprinkles (that came from a pack of red, white and blue jubilee style sprinkles!) for the other two designs of cupcakes.

I am SO pleased with how these cupcakes turned out and cannot wait to share the rest of my projects with you, although the most important people this time already received them...the new beautiful baby boy, the cutest big sister and excited parents of two little ones! :-)

Recipe - makes 12

Ingredients:

4oz butter, softened
4oz caster sugar
2 eggs
4oz self-raising flour

I told you it was basic right?!  I also added a splash of vanilla :-)

8oz icing sugar
4oz butter
1 tablespoon of milk
Flavouring or food colouring if required

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C and line a 12-hole cake tin with paper cases.
2.  Place the butter, sugar, eggs and flour in a large bowl and beat together until smooth.  Add vanilla if you like!!
3.  Spoon the mixture into the paper cases.
4.  Bake for 15-20 minutes or until well risen, golden brown and when a cake tester (I use a potato skewer) comes out clean.
5.  Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
6.  While they are cooling, make the buttercream:  Place the butter in a bowl and beat until fluffy - sift in the icing sugar and beat together until smooth.
7.  When the cakes are cool, spread or pipe the icing on top of each cake and decorate as you like!

Nice and easy, which was lucky as it was 10.30 at night - but all totally worth it.  And I got the best approval of the taste - when a not quite 2 year old keeps coming back for more bites... Now that makes me a happy baker :-)

*** Two links to click today! ***

Check out the incredible photography business our friend and cousin runs here in Toronto - taking a little break while she enjoys time with their new baby gives you lots of time to read her blog and check out her great website full of beautiful babies and their families :-)  

Click here to see the fantastic Krista Lii Photography website.

And don't forget my new Facebook page is always looking for new followers and friends!  Click here to 'Like' my page and get Sew Lah Tea Dough updates right to your newsfeed.

A Taste of Britain: Golden Syrup Cake

The second Mother's Day of the year is done!!  We had a yummy lunch for my in-laws at our place, prepared with great teamwork between me, my husband and sister-in-law :-)  We had Jonathan's grandmothers over as well, so it was a nice tight squeeze for 7 people around our small round kitchen table in our not huge, but all nice and tidy for the occasion condo!!

We had yummy chicken breasts done on the barbecue - marinated in lemon juice, garlic, sage, honey and olive oil - check out the recipe we used here!  It was a quick phone search in the car on the way to the supermarket, but it was really delicious and flavourful so a good find!!

Accompanying the chicken was my rice salad I blogged about last week and part of that great teamwork - a potato salad brought over by Jonathan's sister.  And at first I wasn't sure that the dessert I wanted to make would be cohesive enough with the light fresh chicken and cold salads but as it turned out Toronto decided to have some serious winds, snow, rain and a frost warning for tonight so perhaps the warm sponge cake with cream was just about right!

Today marked occasion number 2 in less than two weeks that I baked this Golden Syrup Cake, that's a lot of syrup that has been around here recently. The first time we baked it for our friends who came over for dinner, partial to a sponge cake but without wanting to do the norm I was excited to figure out this recipe.  It seemed like a sticky toffee pudding idea with a twist.

Lyle's Golden Syrup, you are the key player in this recipe, hence you made it into my 'A Taste of Britain' series of blog posts.  And yes, we are ridiculous and bring heavy things like 454g of syrup in a tin back from England - Canada with us.  All because of the 'Happy and Glorious' Queen's Jubilee edition design - but seriously, it is amazing - I love it and although it is now empty I am for sure keeping the tin as a prop for future golden syrup baking blog photographs!

The first time I made this, I actually halved the recipe, and baked it in a 6 inch springform pan but today I did the whole thing in a 9 inch pan, and there is quite a bit leftover!  You could probably also do this in a loaf pan, two sandwiches (mm yum, with a filling inside?!)...oh and also some cupcakes too!  Last night I put a little of the scrapings in a couple of cupcake cases just to see and it worked well too - just need to watch the timing to see when they're done!

Alright, enough chatting, here comes the recipe...

Ingredients: 

(to serve 8)

225g unsalted butter

225g light muscovado sugar

450ml Lyle's Golden Syrup - not all Canadian supermarkets sell this, I don't know about in the States but search not only the baking aisle, but also look with the other syrups and spreads!

450g self-raising flour

2 large eggs

300ml whole milk

And one final item the recipe included but I decided to omit was an additional 4 tablespoons of the golden syrup meant for pouring over the warm freshly baked cake - after a little taste of the scrapings I was a little wary of just how sweet it would be and I didn't want it to be sickly sweet and figured I would be serving it warm so if our guests wanted an extra dose of syrup flavour they could pour some on along with the cream!

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 160°C/ 325°F and grease a 30cm cake tin and line with greaseproof paper - again I used a 9 inch springform pan and it was an almost perfect size for the cake to rise without overflowing!

2.  Place the butter, golden syrup and sugar into a large saucepan and heat gently until the ingredients are just melted together, stirring occasionally.  Remove the pan from the hob and leave to cool for 10 minutes.  Really do use a large saucepan... Later on you will be mixing all of the ingredients not in a mixing bowl but in this pan so go big!

3.  Beat the eggs with the milk.  Add the flour and milk/egg mixture to the cooled syrup mixture in the pan and beat steadily with a wooden spoon until smooth and lump free.  At this point I actually 'tempered' the two mixtures - pouring a little of the still warm syrup/sugar/butter mix to the egg/milk first so the warm-cold wasn't too much of a shock for the eggs, and then poured it in as per the recipe.  Watching all these baking shows on tv maybe has paid off :-)

4.  Bake for around 50 minutes (quite a bit longer for the pan I used, wider I guess - I did extra 5 minute intervals, probably looking at 1 hour and 10 minutes in the end).  The cake should be well risen and springy but still very moist.

5.  The step I skipped:  Leave to cool for a few minutes, then pierce the cake all over with a skewer and spoon the extra golden syrup over the top.  Leave to cool completely in the tin.

Now I am pretty glad I have no kind of nutritional information on this cake, let's just say there might be quite a few calories per slice, especially having been served with Devonshire clotted cream!!

I left the cake in the springform pan after cooking and then put it back in a low heat oven for 10 - 15 minutes  to warm because isn't thick delicious cream melting slightly over a warm sponge the best way to eat it?!  I think so.

I hope everybody enjoyed Mother's Day lunches, dinners, treats, crafts everything today (or in the UK in March!) :-)  Have a great week!

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Rice Salad in the Sunshine

What a week we have had weather-wise!  Glorious non-stop sunshine and it isn't ending any time soon... We have had a mammoth afternoon of planting flowers and herbs again (in our DIY herb garden I posted about a couple of weeks ago!) and are about to enjoy a yummy bbq dinner on the balcony :-)

In addition to the sunshine, I also finally created a Facebook page for Sew Lah Tea Dough - after 4 months live to the world I thought it was about time.  I would love for you to 'Like' my page and follow me there.  Click here to find me, and get post updates right to your news feed!

Inspired by the sunshine this week I got to work making a cold salad for a weeknight dinner.  We had made it once before, last year some time but I changed up the ingredients a little this week and got it ready to go.  As I have mentioned before, coming home from teaching piano late in the evening doesn't always mean for much fun getting dinner prepared and eaten before I fall asleep!  This was a perfect side dish that I could prepare in the daytime and it would be ready to eat all week long.

Added bonus... my husband LOVES it!  So we'll definitely be making it again really soon, like this week again maybe!!

Here is the recipe with the ingredients I chose to add in and the amounts of each.  But the best thing about this recipe is how interchangeable it all is.  If you like nuts a lot, add more... if you don't like cranberries but you do like raisins, then sure, why not - switch it up!!


INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups brown or white and wild rice blend
2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt

Here are the extras I added:

1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion (last year we did big chunks and these weren't so nice to eat whole, this time the finely chopped pieces were so much nicer!)
1/4 cup green onion (yes, that's what they call spring onion!) - this was about 2 sprigs out of the bunch
1/8 cup finely chopped cilantro
1/2 cup sliced and blanched almonds - toasted first for about 2 minutes
1/2 cup cooked and cooled sweetcorn
50g feta cheese, just less than 1/2 cup of small cubes

For the dressing:

1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp honey

METHOD:

1.  Bring the water to a boil in a large saucepan.

2.  Add rice and salt.

3.  Bring down to a gentle simmer, cover with the lid and cook for 18 minutes (or as your rice packaging suggests)

4.  Fluff with a fork and leave to cool.

5.  Refrigerate if not using right away.  I kept mine in the fridge until that evening when I got home from work and threw in the additional flavours and ingredients.

6.  Mix all of the "extras" into the cooled rice.

7.  Combine dressing ingredients and stir into rice mix.

8.  Scoop and serve!! Enjoy!

This recipe made 5 cups of salad.  Perhaps enough for 6-8 servings, depending on how hungry you are (and for us, that definitely meant 6 not 8...oops!)

I would love to know what flavours or ingredients you prefer, or what additions you would make to this!  Drop me a comment and let me know :-)

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Fun(d) Fair SUCCESS!

What an amazing day!

We have just returned home, exhausted but super happy as the Fun(d) Fair we organised with our church youth group is over... and was a huge success!!!

I for SURE have caught the sun, that is - I am pink and freckly (not tanned!).  Weather-wise, we had the best day of the year in Toronto so far, with beautiful hot sun and around 19°!  Pretty amazing... and lucky, because we did not want umbrellas and rain for our outdoor planned event.

So for our Fun(d) Fair we had a yard sale, bake sale, games, cotton candy and face painting!  It was all SO fun and everybody worked so hard and also so well together!  Yey!

The yard sale had an incredible amount of donations from church members, youth group families and members of the public who wanted to donate a few boxes!  We rented a super cute cotton candy machine, and also had our talented arty youth group members doing the face painting, and tattoos for the kids.  We had a LOT of fun with a few different games; pick a stick, water balloon toss and guess how many jellybeans in a jar!  For our bake sale, we just asked if anyone who felt like baking for us could bring along things to sell... we had some beautifully packaged butter tarts, biscotti and cookies, and also some of the traditional Estonian 'saiad', amazing almond pastries and then of course cupcakes and other fun baking :-)  Late last night I baked some mini cupcakes and did various colourful toppings and decorations.

The best part was how well it all went!  We had such a great day... This was the first year we had tried this event and worked hard (really hard!) to make sure all of the details worked and that everything was organised... and it was a success! Phew!  We had a lot of fun, altogether, in the sunshine - joining not only our church community but also the local neighbourhood - we had a few kids who just could NOT stop playing the games - they had a lot of fun!

And the best part... it was all for charity!  For the last few years, around this time of year FOJ (our youth group) had done the 30-hour famine in aid of World Vision.  Challenging and also fun, being together fasting and learning about the charity and why we were doing it... but this year we wanted a change.  And we went big!  But for sure we'll be doing it again next year :-)

We are so proud to have raised $1200.50... And this was just the first year.  Hopefully we will get even more visitors next year, more yard sale donations, more baking and even more fun!!

Here are a few pictures of the event... Let me know if you want any more info on the games and how we put it all together.  I will write more about it soon, but for now - it is time for dinner and then rest!  A crazy crazy April is done! Now to enjoy the start of this sunny weather R

The night before, planning and sorting!

Water balloons ready to go...
There were many many many that popped before we got a bucket full!

Pick-a-stick game all stuck in the sand :-)

The morning of!  Yard Sale being set up and all laid out.

Posters and banners on display...

A couple of "former" youth group members helping us out!

Tall people and banners!

YUM!  Bake sale goodies making their way outside.

The shopping begins... 

Fire Escape doing double duty, clothes rail for a day!

Well this water balloon toss didn't win the hamper or
Toronto Maple Leafs mini stick set, that's for sure!

SO CUTE!  I love the cotton candy machine we rented :-D

And a few of the cakes I made for the Bake Sale...

Pre-Baking the night before...

Mini vanilla cupcakes later to be topped with water icing and sprinkles

Baking done... colourful and cheerful :-)

Cherries... Chocolate sprinkles and blue black and white for the Estonian flag!!

My favourites, little sprinkles...big sprinkles!!

* Small and Sweet * Almond and Orange Mini Cupcakes

Well life is a little crazy right now with a lot of work stuff on the go, a lot of extra-curricular life activities and some big crafty projects half finished so for that reason I am posting a * small and sweet * blog post today, something from earlier this year that hasn't been written up yet... until now!  The other sewing projects and crafts will have to wait until another day, although I am SUPER excited about how they are going and how they will turn out... we'll just have to give it a few more weeks before they can be made public :-)  Watch this space!

So for today, here are my mini almond and orange cupcakes.  They were made for a couple of reasons - it was my snack night at choir, and also my mother-in-law's birthday, so although I wasn't joining them for dinner due to my choir rehearsal I did send a few their way!  Whenever it is snack night at choir I love having the chance to bake and to try something new.

This time I wanted to a) make mini cupcakes, b) try a new flavour and c) make them less from a recipe, more from my own creation/experimenting!

I came up with a basic spongey cupcake, which included almond flour, and flaked almonds in, and then, with a glaze to make it juicier I thought orange would pair well with the almonds.  And there you have my * small and sweet * mini almond and orange cupcakes.

This recipe made 24 mini cupcakes with a little batter left over for a couple of regular sized 'tasters'!!

Ingredients:

115g butter
115g sugar
115g self-raising flour MINUS 2 tablespoons, replace this with 2 tablespoons of almond flour
100g flaked almonds
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon almond extract
Zest from 1 orange

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 375°F/ 190°C and line cupcake tray with paper cases.
2.  Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3.  Gradually beat in eggs, then add almond extract.
4.  Sift in flour and fold into mixture.
5.  Add zest of orange.
6.  Spoon mixture into cupcake cases, and add flaked almonds just before putting in the oven.

7.  Bake in oven for 10 - 15 minutes but check these often until springy to the touch, and until a cake tester comes out clean.  Cooking time will depend on if you make them mini or regular sized!

For the glaze:

Whisk together icing sugar and the juice from one orange until you reach the desired consistency - I used 8 rounded tablespoons!

Pour over the cakes as soon as they come out of the oven.

I was really pleased with how they turned out, and the reason I posted them today is that I have been thinking about making them again soon!  I'm glad I had written the recipe down and now it is on the internet forever!!  I love the almond/orange combination, although in the citrus world my love lies with lemon, and sometimes the orange flavour just isn't tangy enough for me!  Maybe that's another flavour to try another day... 

That's all from me today with this * small and sweet * post!  Time to get back to work... Have a fantastic week everyone :-)

DIY CD Rack turned Herb Garden

After last week's blog post asking you where you were, Spring, perhaps you are indeed showing your sun shining face...finally!  We are just waiting for some sunshine, some warmer weather and the chance to get outside :-)

This time last year we were excited to make a start on our first garden.  We had moved into our condo when we were married at the beginning of Autumn, and with Winter soon approaching we didn't actually do much on our balcony, apart from the bbq and a couple of chairs of course!  So last Spring was the beginning of our gardening adventures in our 'garden'... or rather concrete space that we are actually very fortunate to have a large version of!

We knew we wanted some flowers, but with no flowerbed this wasn't our main priority.  What we really wanted was stuff to eat!  Herbs that we could use for cooking... real life edible produce rather than just flowers that looked pretty!!

We had the perfect item in storage (thanks to my grandmother-in-law for holding onto that in my 'room' for me!) and were super excited to convert this old CD player to a herb garden!

I had owned this CD rack since I moved to Canada when a neighbour in the first apartment I lived in was getting rid of it, but it was a perfect addition to my little basement apartment for some shelving.  After moving into our condo we had no real need for it ... until now!

This started off a nice royal blue colour, but it wasn't really the look we were going for on our balcony.  And we thought we should probably weather-proof it a little.

We chose a exterior waterproofing paint in a nice earthy brown colour that would match anything.  I sanded off some of the blue paint, just to rough it up a little and then over the course of a couple of days I painted 3 coats of the brown.  I made sure to get right into the inside corners to get a full seal everywhere.

Once everything was dry we put gravel down at the bottom of each section, then soil, then the herbs themselves!

We actually planned it so that the nearest herbs to this edge (which is closest to the sliding door entrance) were the ones that needed the most watering, the middle ones only occasional watering, and the final ones hardly any at all!  Although, our balcony is facing west and gets some SERIOUS late afternoon heat in the Summer months so we did have to make sure the English herbs in particular weren't drying out!

We planted:

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme (♫ Scarborough Fair in anyone's heads?!)... Dill, Stevia (we had big ideas for iced tea and baking substitutes!)... Tarragon, Mint (used in my Summer Citrus Cake)... Basil, Chives, Lemon Thyme, Cilantro and 2 Strawberry plants.

So whilst the weather is still not quite good enough to grow these again yet, we had a lot of fun with this DIY Herb Garden project last year and the CD rack is still out on our balcony looking good, just waiting for it's herbs back!  

Bring on Summer!