Fresh from our garden!

Here’s a fun custom portrait of Liza’s children; Lilly and Max. I really like this piece!

Liza wanted a park setting so she sent me some photos of their favourite park. I prettied up my version of the park by adding some lily flowers and two critter friends:)

She also included pictures of the kids’ favourite outfits and toys for me to reference. I love Lilly’s dress, I wish they had this dress in my size! And this is Buster, Lilly’s toy dog!

I’ll be taking in custom portrait orders for the New Year. If you’d like a portrait of yourself, just email me or purchase them from my shop here. You can view the rest of my portrait collections on my Little Mo and Friends Facebook page.

I was talking to my mum on the phone tonight and I promised her that I would blog soon, and post some pictures of tonight’s dinner. So here you go mum.

We found some fresh large banana prawns at the local supermarket. At first I thought I would try to make one of my favourite dishes from Malaysia, Fried salted egg yolk prawns. However I didn’t have any salted eggs with me and I figured that it was probably out of my element! So I made something similar.

Crisp fried prawns

I coated the prawns in flour, curry powder, salt and cayenne pepper. Then I fried some chopped spring onions and added the prawns into the oil and pan fried it.

Some people like to cook their prawns in their shells and some like to shell them first. Any way is fine but I think if I was going to make this dish again, I would remove the shells from the prawns so that it would be covered generously in batter.

Soy sauce tofu with chili and garlic

I’ve found that the combination of soy sauce and kecap manis goes well together. Kecap manis is an Indonesian sweet soy sauce. It is thick and syrupy and has a lovely treacle like flavour. lt can be used on stir fries and noodles. For the tofu sauce, it was a mixture of soy sauce, kecap manis, chili and garlic. You can also substitute tofu with chicken or pork, and fry up some cashew nuts with the lot!

Woah. It’s hot over here.

I’m spending the rest of my Sunday inside my room…trying to keep cool from the blistering summer heat. Luckily I have a few things to keep me occupied.

Letters from a very dear friend. I love that she included band-aids in her mail (I’m quite accident prone…how did she guess?). I’m also currently reading my copy of Push the Envelope zine by Goodnight Little Spoon.

If you love snail mail and all things related to mail art, this is well worth the read! Even better, you can win your own copy of the zine or one of my recycled writing sets by leaving a comment on Allana’s giveway competition.

I’ve also started on a pencil sketch for a new custom portrait that I will be working on this couple of days. I can’t wait to share the finished piece with you!

A bit of update on the shopfront, I have added a new batch of keychain designs in my shop! Each piece is handmade by me and comes packaged in a recycled gift box. I think they’ll make cute little stocking stuffers for Christmas:)

All of my pieces are available to purchase here and here.

Which is your favourite design? I like the watering can and Panda Mo best!

There is only TWO desserts that Richard loves. Anything with chocolate in it…or anything with sweet red bean in it.

He loves Dorayaki in particular, a Japanese pancake wrapped around with sweet red bean filling. I asked him this morning, if he had to choose between a Dorayaki or a chocolate what would he choose? He pondered over this for awhile (which I found quite endearing). He said he would choose a Dorayaki filled with…chocolate! Ha! The best of both worlds.

This is the easiest Dorayaki recipe. It’s so easy that even my husband who is hopeless in the kitchen, can make this all by himself.

Easy Dorayaki
Pancake mix
1 can of sweetened red bean paste (you can get this at the oriental shop)

- Make pancakes as how you normally would
- Add a dollop of sweet red bean paste onto the pancake and spread it around
- Top with another pancake
- Serve with green tea

Making melon stars…

and then off to the post office to post off some Little Mo orders!

Happy Monday everyone! 6 weeks till Christmas time!

Some random things that kept me occupied this weekend.

Fresh basil from the garden. I took a handful and made mushroom and ricotta pasta for dinner.

Sun parasols. This was a wedding gift from one of our guests and now that spring is here, it has started blooming again:)

Fresh strawberries for tea.

Grab some Little Mo art online. Visit my shop here

Two years ago, I told Richard “I’d like to pick up my pen again and draw”. So I searched around the house for an empty sketchbook and started practicing. It had been a long time since I actually sat down and draw properly.

These were my first few doodles. A bit rusty…and I wasn’t EXACTLY sure what I was supposed to be drawing. Then I moved on to the next page, and I started drawing a little girl.

I enjoyed the whole process and I realised how much I had missed drawing on paper. So I drew another piece.

And this piece led me to an idea. What if I started making things from my own drawings? What if I made a range of paper goods with this character on it? On that very same day, we decided to call her Little Mo.

I printed my first drawing on some recycled postcards and listed it on my Etsy shop (after hearing lots of good things about it). I named this print Little Mo and Twigs.

Two years on, I am still drawing Little Mo. And what started off as a doodle, turned into an awesome adventure for me. Thank you so much for your love and support! I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

It’s still not too late to grab some Little Mo art in my Etsy shop. My Two year anniversary sale ends on 8th November midnight. Buy any two items from my shop and get 20% off your total order.