Day 16 - shopping, cleaning, baking, eating

Yesterday was my artists date as Effy talked about in this blog post and as written about by Julia Cameron in the Artists Way. It is a day to yourself that you spend doing something related to art.

My artist date was to one of my favourite art store Artshed. I wandered around here for ages and this is only half of the shop.

It is huge and full of so many, many things that I love. I do a fair bit of online shopping for art supplies but nothing beats going and seeing, touching, smelling, feeling art supplies. Well that sounds a little creepy but my art friends will vouch for this fixation and addiction to art supplies. I already have so many brushes as seen here in a recent blog post but a girl can never ever have TOO many can she? 

 Apart from paint, I think my favourite art supplies that I just keep buying are brushes, canvases, and pencils of all sorts. What are your favourite art supplies that you cannot resist buying even though you have a healthy stash at home already?

Due to my shopping trip and a bit of housework that needed to be done I didn't put brush to canvas.

Although I may not have put paint to canvas yesterday but , I did pick up a lot of canvases, quite a few new paintbrushes, cans of picture varnish and fixative and some charcoal pencils, and a few other little bits and pieces, all essential to my creative pursuit.

Today is our art society's AGM so no painting until tomorrow but I did do a bit of baking this morning and just have to share this recipe. Those close to me know that I have cut out sugar in my diet over the past 18 months and have been gluten intolerant for the past 8 years so it is always a bit of a challenge to find something tasty for afternoon tea. Usually when you go gluten free you find that all the products available substitute sugar for the gluten so you end up giving up one thing and eating too much of something else that is bad for you. 

I recently came across this recipe and I recommend it to anyone. I replaced the raisins for dates and will be making it regularly. I also used "fake" maple syrup as it has 1/2 the sugar of real maple syrup - go figure! I have decided that I will be cutting it up and freezing it so I don't eat it all in one go. Even though it is low carb, low sugar, gluten and lactose free it is still a treat.

Here is the recipe from the Simply Living Healthy Blog and here is how mine turned out. 

My drizzle isn't as white but it tastes fantastic. I even made my own coconut butter to use in the drizzle, which was easier that I thought too. You can find those instructions here.

Have a yummy weekend everyone. Hope you are spending it with friends and loved ones

Namaste

Lee