The big reveal!

So now that Christmas is over and all the presents have been opened (boo!) i can show you some of the things that i made for friends and family this year:

And they all loved them!

I reckon it's time for me to have a bit of a rest......(we'll see how long that lasts, i have to have some kind of craftiness to occupy me!).

And that's a good thing!

Hello hello!

As 2012 draws to a close, it's time to think back and reflect on the past year. And look forward to the year to come!

For me, the year ends very differently to how it began. Much has changed. And i am very happy about that, it's been a good year!

However,  i must do more with my creative offerings. A lot more. I need to stock up my Etsy store and try and get more bricks and mortar shops to sell my things. It all come's down to confidence. This year i will. Indeed!

What are your plans for 2013? Did you have a good year? Whether the answer is yes or no i reckon 2013 is gonna be fab!

My Christmas in pictures...

Just a little note to say.....

Time to ice that cake!

Hooray! It's time to ice the Christmas cake!

Now i have been known to get a bit colourful and creative with the Christmas cake (i will show you my previous years offering in a bit). But this year i was given a new challenge. My little sister Amy insisted it had red and white mushrooms on it! Now how was i gonna get them on a cake and keep it Christmassy?!?

So i started off by covering it in a layer of marzipan. So far so good.

I then had the idea of making the cake itself green. To look like grass. A good basis for the mushrooms to sit on i thought. So i got my green food colouring paste and added a lot of it to the ready roll icing (and got very green hands in the process!).

I then rolled out white icing to look like patches of snow and made little red mushrooms. I put a snowman figure on and a load of glitter and i was done! I am very pleased with it. What do you think? Do you like it? What does your cake look like this year? Christmas and mushrooms on one cake. Woop!

And just to show you what i have done in the past, here are pictures of my cakes from the past two years. They are all very different!

Christmas hamper ideas....

Good morning! It's rainy and gloomy outside this morning. Is it like that where you are?

However as it is only six, yes that's right people SIX days till Christmas i cannot help but be in a very merry mood indeed! I hope you are too.

It's no secret that i like to make my family Christmas hampers. Each year i make all sorts of different bits and bobs for them. And this year is no different. Now, i'm not going to say what is in the hampers just yet (can't ruin the suprise now can i!). But i did want to show you some of the things i have been looking at to get inspiration.

One such thing is this chocolate popcorn. Simple, effective and it look really tasty. I might have to give this a go....

How to make chocolate popcorn:

2 large bowls of popcorn (you can get the kernels to pop yourself from health food shops)

100g of white chocolate (melted)

100g of white chocolate coloured with food colouring of your choice

1. Pour half of the melted chocolate into each of the 2 bowls of popcorn. It will not seem like enough chocolate but continue to stir (for a few minutes) until the popcorn is just coated (too much chocolate will make your popcorn soggy).

 

2. Before your popcorn dries, spread it out onto some wax paper.

 

3. After it is dry, melt your chocolate to drizzle and pour it into a Ziploc bag. Cut a small hole in the corner of the bag and drizzle the colored chocolate over your popcorn.

 

4.Let it dry again and bag it up into small cellophane bags or bags of your choice.

Shhhh....

Good morning!

I am in the process of making a few lovely little things for Christmas. In fact i am a very busy bee trying to get it all done on time! As they are presents i have to keep them under wraps for now.

But i thought i might give you lovely people a sneaky peak!

 Hee hee!

Cute little decorations...

Morning! Have you been engulfed by Christmas yet? Only two weeks to go! We have put the decorations up at work this week and have been allowed to have Christmas tunes on non stop. It's been brilliant!

As you know, the other day i made a gingerbread house. As there was some gingerbread left i thought i'd also have a go at making some little tree decorations (well, you can't waste gingerbread can you!).

So i had a look in my cupboard to see what cutters i had. I found a heart, a bear and a star. Perfect.

So i cut out as many as i could, baked them and then decided to ice them in nice red and green Christmas colours (with some stars and lots of glitter!).

I then went and found some ribbon that complimented the colours i'd used. As they were fairly traditional colours they weren't really right for my mad tree, therefore i decided to bag them up and give them as gifts.

And here they are! I think they look really pretty. What do you think? Do you like gingerbread? What do you have on your tree? Let me know, as you know i love all things Christmassy!

The final teas have made it!

Yay, i have now recieved all my tea swap packages! These two little lovelies were waiting in the post for me. So i now have a cup for every day of advent. Very jolly indeed!

Merry Kitschmas Part 2

Morning! I was having a little browse on Pinterest this morning and found these lovely festive images. I did a kitsch post last year so thought i'd post a part 2. Enjoy!