Lovely Christmas

Hello! Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year! Sorry it's been a while since I blogged but what with Xmas hecticness and people feeling ill I haven't had time to catch up!

The couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were a flurry of creativity and stress! I was making pressies, painting wrapping paper, and cooking scrummy food as well as shopping for more pressies and more food! The we had an assortment of 'fake' Christmas days with various friends and family members.

Every year we have a Merry Un-Christmas Day (like happy un-birthday in Alice in Wonderland) with our friends Rosie and David, and it always a wonderful relaxed day (or eveing). I spent a couple of days finishing off Rosie's gift, this cute owl cushion. I got the idea for him at a xmas fair and then raided my materials and dusted off my sewing machine. He's called 'Twit-Twoo' (named by my little girl!)


I wrapped most presents this year in wrapping paper which I made by painting shapes onto brown paper. Some were abstract stars or circles, some were baubles, one of my faves was pink reindeer which I stippled through a stencil. I then tied them up with ribbon or raffia (using no selloptape so I could iron the paper afterwards and re-use!) and made my own gift tags, as well as using the crazy snow tags me and my daughter made. I really loved the look of these presents under the tree, and I liked being able to re-use it all, I always hate how spoilt papers get and these ones have stayed relatively intact to be used again next year (apart from the ones my nan kept coz she liked them so much!) Here's a few of them so you get the idea, I never had time to photograph the rest:

We had a really nice Christmas Day with my Dad, Nan and Grandpa. I haven't spent Xmas with all of them since I was a kid so it felt very special and it was good for my daughter to get to know my Nan and Grampa a bit as we don't get to see them often. I think they enjoyed themselves being offered endless cups of pretend tea by my little girl (she got a kitchen, a tea set and pretend food for xmas!) and lots of scrummy real food from me. We had a feast for xmas lunch of turkey with all the trimmings and all had to have a nap in the afternoon! (You can see the toy kitchen in the background - a very girly princess one!)

My daughter had a fit of giggles trying to pick up a pretend sausage with her kitchen tongs, it kept falling on the floor and she'd giggle for a minute and then pick it up, walk two steps and it would fall out again. Kept her going for at least half an hour!

I was determined we wouldn't have any unused leftovers this year and I almost succeded. My favourite leftover recipe was Jamie Oliver's Christmas Pudding Sundae (from last years programme). It has vanilla ice cream, cranberry sauce, fried pudding leftovers and I put crumbled cooked chestnuts on mine (think he used flaked almonds.) Me and hubby had one on boxing day and it was delicious!

Well I think that's enough catching up for one day! I am determined to get some scrapbooking done soon so will be uploading some layouts I promise!

Happy New Year! xxx

Tweet

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

Tweet

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

Tweet