Ooh christmas is coming!

I've been working a month of weekends away, but I haven't got another until the end of January, so now I can get very excited about xmas! I've been in a christmas frenzy: decorating, baking, planning presents and making pictures with my little girl!

Here's some reindeer we made (after seeing the very cool ones my niece had done) - you draw around your foot for the head and your hands for the antlers then stick them together, adding eyes and a nose and drawing a mouth. Quite fun and a good way to record hand and foot size if we make them every year!:

A cotton wool snowman which my daughter had fun making until she got glue and fluff stuck to her fingers - then she started moaning that her hands were messy!:

I have just finished making some mince pies, I made my own mincemeat for the first time which I'm very proud of. The pastry went a bit elastic though - I don't suppose anyone knows what I might have done wrong to cause this to happen? I was following the recipe by the hairy bakers from their xmas special last year. I like their cheeky, laid back approach to cooking and I'm looking forward to this year's xmas special which is on this coming wednesday. Here's the pies:

And finally a shot of our lovely christmas tree with our lovely little pixie in front of it! She loves pointing out all the decorations (penguin, snowman, tigger etc.) and tells me off when the lights aren't on! She is also loving a singing, dancing santa which is driving me crazy! It sings the chorus of 'last christmas I gave you my heart' over and over again. I've had to tell her it's broken a couple of times so that I could switch him off for a bit and get her to stop setting him off (noise activated)!

Hope you're all having fun with your own decorations / creations!

x

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I love books...

I have loved reading for as long as I can remember. I used to hide under the covers with a torch and a book (especially Chronicles of Narnia) when I was suppossed to be sleeping. I wrote short stories about 'my little ponies' or 'puppy in my pockets'. I still love reading and writing just as much now. I recently got a lot of books back from my mums where they had been stored up her loft, so my two big bookshelves are finally full and they look so pretty...

They are tucked away behind a sofa so my daughter can't get her sticky hands on them too easily (she has a box with her own books in where she can reach!), and I'm now quite protective of the shelves, my hubby was a bit upset that I cleared all his electrical bits and screwdrivers off and said they couldn't go on there anymore!

Some of the books I got from mum's attic were the 'Making Out' series by Katherine Applegate, which I devoured as a teenager. Me and Rosie have been re-reading them and reminiscing. We were impressed how well written they are for teen books, and though some of the story line seem a bit silly now (two girls going out with each other's ex-boyfriends, another girl going out with her best mate's brother etc), we are just as addicted to reading them as we were when we were 15. I think it's great that I still enjoy them so much, they can obviously stand the test of time.

On another note, I was trying to get my daughter to help me make xmas gift tags. I was aiming for finger print snowmen like this pic out of a xmas craft book:

But she refused to put her fingers in the paint saying 'no, no mummy, yucky'. She has a bit of a thing about getting messy! So I gave her some cotton ear buds to dab the paint on with and we ended up with some abstract snowy gift tags instead...

Not quite what I was going for but kind of cool! I have just bought some cotton wool to try and make some snowmen so I'll give that a go in a couple of days and then upload the results!

x

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Gingerbread...mmmm!

My little girl and I baked gingerbread today. I haven't made any for years and I really want to make some for Christmas decorations this year, so I decided to have a practice now. Good job too as I rolled them too thin so they got a bit burnt, and I think I'll add more spices next time as they weren't quite gingery enough for me. We had great fun making them though, getting flour all over the dining room when it was my daughter's turn to stir!

When it came to decorating she mostly wanted to eat the decorations to start with (especially the raisins, she was quite possesive about them!), but once she realised what I was trying to do she got in the swing of things! I left her on her own with a few biscuits, some icing sugar and a little pile of each toppings to see what she came up with and I really like the heart she did in the bottom right of the pic above - with a splodge in the middle with one raisin squidged into it. She pushed the raisin in and then shouted 'finished' for me to come and take her masterpiece away! We also made the people look like our family, and our friends Rosie and David. She really liked putting on their buttons and eyes. I'm looking forward to making some more on xmas eve. Perhaps it will become a family tradition!

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xmas looming - and haven't scrapped last year yet!

With xmas decorations going up in the high street and December rapidly approaching I'm starting to look forward to Christmas and to my daughter's reaction to the decorations and presents (she already says 'ooooh' and 'pretty' at the decorations in the shops). But this is leaving me feeling guilty as I still haven't scrapbooked anything from last year - her first Christmas.

She wore some oh-so-cute PJ's for xmas morning, she looked like a lovely little elf, especially with her sticky out ears and almost-bald head! I almost wanted to leave that outfit on her all day long!

She was very cute when we were opening presents - tearing them slowly and carefully. She got a bit bored after opening a few but she liked playing with the presents - especially the ones that made noise! (Like the ABC bath toy!) The rest of the day she had fun playing with her nanny and grandad and S. And she really really liked christmas dinner! (She always does love her food!)

I need to try and scrap the photos before this christmas otherwise I'll never get round to it! I'm hoping I'll have lots of great stories and photos this year, and hopefully it won't take me so long to create layouts from them, so that I'll be able to remember more stories!

*

Thank you to everyone who wished me well for my first craft fair, unfortunately I didn't sell much. I don't know if my prices were too high or if my stuff just wasn't 'gifty' enough as it was a christmas fair and I didn't really have much that could be presents for people. But hey-ho, I will try again one day, it could just have been bad luck. Below is a photo of my stall:

And even though I didn't sell much I did manage to do a painting while I was manning it so it's not a total loss! The painting was of a watercolour christmas fairy, I'll upload a pic of it once I've done the little finishing touches (and I'll post a pic of the xmas LO once it's done too).

There's always stuff to keep me busy! x

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Never enough time!

I'm feeling bad because I'm reading Shimelle's prompts every day for the 'Blogging for Scrapbookers' class, and I'm getting a few ideas from them, but right now I just haven't got the time to do them justice!

This week's been spent preparing for my first ever craft stall I have on sunday. I've been sticking my contact details onto my cards, stuffing them into cello bags, framing my paintings, trying to scrape together change for a float... and the list goes on! If I don't sell anything I might cry!

Here's a couple of the cards I'll be trying to sell:

I've had to work (part-time, thank goodness) at the same time as doing all this prep, so I'm feeling guilty for neglecting my little girl. I've been trying to give her as much attention as possible but I've been dashing about doing the housework too so I think she's mostly seen me as a whirlwind. I'll make it up to her next week - though I actually don't think she's been that bothered about my inattention - it's given her more chances to get up to mischief. The other day she found an old snorkelling mask which kept her amused for a bit:

and today I found her eating a square of chocolate I must have left within her reach - most of it was around her face and on her hands though! She's been getting a bit upset by mess at the moment, if someone spills something (even on a t.v. programme) she shouts for me to come and clean it up! So she wasn't too happy when she realised the chocolate was all over her, I held her up to the mirror so she could see her face, and for once she sat still whilst I wiped her face and washed her hands - she was desperate for the mess to be cleaned up!

Bye for now x

P.S. Does anyone think I should get my daughter's hair cut into a fringe? I always hated having a fringe when I was little, so I'm loathe to start cutting it now, but she won't wear hair clips or bands. The fringe doesn't seem to bother her but I wonder if she's just putting up with it well? Any thoughts?

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Cheeky surprises!

I love how my daughter surprises me all the time, making me jump, laugh or gape at her in awe (sometimes all three!). The other day she hid behind a floor length curtain with a recess behind it, and I really didn't know she was in the room. When I walked in she almost made me jump out of my skin when she stomped out shouting 'rahhh' like her lion impression!

Yesterday she was entertaining herself going through my odd and bods crafty bits, including old jewellery, that might end up on a layout or project. When I turned to look at her she was wearing a necklace like a head ornament and grinning up at me as though she was the cleverest thing on the planet. Which of course she is - I want to start wearing my necklaces like that!!

x

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why ducks have webbed feet

This photo is one of the clearest memories from my childhood. I'm not sure how old me and my little brother are in the picture, but I know we were on a summer camping holiday in Norfolk.

He had asked me why ducks have webbed feet and I was trying to explain it to him, and I remember feeling proud that I could pass on some knowledge to him, and also feeling a level of responsibility towards him, because I knew he was really listening to what I had to say and trusting that I knew what I was talking about.

We may have had lots of silly arguments when we were young, and grew less close as we got older, but I treasure the fact I had him to grow up with, and share magical moments like this one.

Below is a layout I created for this photo. I wanted it to be fun and playful, but also have a sense of peace and nostalgia, so I used a mix of bright Papermania Retro Floral paper and accents with some DCWV Old World papers. I also found a little duck brad from craft works to show that childish innocence!

The only problem I had was that I planned the page and then had to write the journalling really small to fit it into the space that I wanted it to go in, should have thought about the journalling first! There is more journalling hidden on a tag with a bit of ribbon knotted on to pull it out, of stories I'm not ready to share yet!

x

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My crafty space

Here's my crafty space, where I write, scrap, paint, create and will hopefully now blog! (Though at the moment I'm blogging from my sofa...) I love my crafty space as it's so colourful and messy, and full of little bits and bobs of inspiration and little characters to keep me company, like Humphrey the penny farthing traveller...


I also love my laptop, as though it can be a bit small for working on websites that also means it's easy to cart about and leaves me plenty of space to spread out other stuff over my desk!


It's the first day of the 'blogging for scrapbooker's' class today so I fully intended to spend some time at my desk today. I got as far as choosing a photo for a scrapbook LO for today's prompt, but then I had to roast some chestnuts! But I did think about what it is I want to get out of this class, and my goals are:

• to get in a stride of blogging regularly
• for my blog to be a diary of events as well as a gallery for my projects
• to make some online friends who share my joy in papercrafting

Finger's crossed! I'm gonna try my best to blog every day or two but November is a busy month for me so we'll see! On that note, I've got my first ever craft fair coming up (scary!) so here's pic of two cute xmas wall hangers that I've made for selling: (sorry the pics aren't great quality)

That's all for now, bring on prompt two!

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Jennifer's Blog take two!

Well, I know my blog was a bit of a failure at first attempt but here we go with take two. Have signed up for Shimelle's 'blogging for scrapbookers' online class so hopefully this, combined with the approach of my first ever craft fair, will give me the push to get this up and running! Am looking forward to tommorrow and the first class prompt!

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