Handmade Christmas

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas! We are still very much in holiday mode with Chris still being home, he doesnt go back to work until next Tuesday so its been a nice break for him and lovely to have him at home with us.

Christmas day itself was a little stressful for me, as this is the first year I have cooked Christmas dinner, we usually go to my mums but she had asked me if they could come here instead so I had dinner to cook for 7! Since then we have enjoyed calmer days playing with our new things.

I made a few gifts this year, which I think went down ok, the main thing was gift hampers filled with handmade bits, I made another batch of fudge for them, peppermint bark and popped in a jar of the Chutney I made at the end of Summer. Also added was a bag of Walnuts foraged in the Autumn and lastly a Mulled wine and cinnamon soap from my evening of learning to make soap







I also made several fabric Elf dolls



Not a gift but is being mostly given away due to there only being me that will eat Christmas cake, we made and decorated our own this year



I may not get a chance to post again until after the New Year so hope you all enjoy the rest of the holidays, Im off to find a tin of chocolates with my name on them ;-)

Hmmm

Our mudpie kitchen which had been forgotten since the weather turned cold was revamped into a mudpie bath this afternoon!

Making and baking

Lots of this going on at the moment while we plan and fill our Hampers we are giving as gifts this Christmas

Bashing up candy canes to make peppermint bark




We made rustic (totally gone wrong but tastes amazing) fudge




and of course where there are bowls with melted sweet stuff, there are little ones armed with spoons ready to scrape them clean, and in PJ's no less :-)



This little miss just had her 4th visit from the tooth fairy!




My Hamper baskets are slowly getting filled up, cards are made and written, parcels and cards posted, I just have some sewing to finish and a few more last minute treats to make before I can start wrapping everything up and then I think Christmas 2011 will be in the bag

Hows everyones plans coming along?

Overwhelmed

Is how Im feeling at the moment, so much to do, time is running out and all I want to do is sit back and enjoy the run up to Christmas with my family. I dont want to ignore this space in the process, but with very little time for Blogging, Im going to do little snapshots from our days, rather than lengthy posts

So for today, look what was waiting for us this morning, Snow!

Today

After the busyness of the weekend we have enjoyed a cosy day at home

We found out the Christmas music



which we played and sang along to while we made trail mix bars for a healthy snack



cut stars out of beeswax sheets ready for making decorations



After lunch we made a huge panful of popcorn



and settled down together to watch a dvd





Sometimes simple days really are the best ones

Weekending

Chris had taken a couple of days off work so we had a long weekend together. Friday we got everything out of the loft, found all the Christmas bits out and set about putting up the tree, only to realise we didnt have any lights so Saturday morning we went to buy some, had a trip to the cinema for their movies for juniors, we saw Cars 2 which Emy enjoyed and then we went into town as Emy had a dance exam. They had changed the time of the exam which I didnt know about so this ment hanging around in town for quiet a while! that evening we got the christmas lights out of the box to find they were tiny and not anywhere near enough to cover our tree, so we boxed them back up and put the decorating on hold again.

Sunday we had planned to go to a Christmas market, but the weather was very wet and with the market being outdoors we decided to give it a miss, but we did go and exchange the tree lights and then at tea time we went to a birthday party, complete with fireworks!

Monday Emy and Henry spent the day with my mum so me and Chris could spend a day together which was lovely, we went into town, decided on a few Christmas presents, had a look at the Christmas market which is really disapointing this year, we had pizza for lunch and then before setting off home had coffee and cake in Starbucks, I can really recommend their Gingerbread loaf cake! Once we were all home again, we finally decoated the Christmas tree :-)



Hope you all had a lovely weekend, do you have your tree up yet?

December

I think I say this every year, but this year really has gone by so fast, it feels a little odd thinking about decorating the house for Christmas, but with today being the 1st of December, thats just what we have started to do.

I gave a little sneak peak in my last post of the Advent calendar I have been making, here it is all finished :-)



I admit I cheated a bit, with so much crafting to do I didnt think Id have time this year to make an Advent calendar, but on a trip to Hobby Craft I saw some make your own kits, all the material is there, you just need to snip out the bits, sew on the pockets, back it and add something to hang it up with, and despite slightly cheating we really love it and its the biggest project I have done on my sewing machine to date!



We decided on fudge to go inside the pockets, something that I was confident would last the 24 days without melting or going stale, so yesterday we set about making chocolate fudge. The recipe was really easy, melting together chocolate, condensed milk and butter then beating in some icing sugar, pouring into a non stick tray and leave in the fridge to set for an hour, unfortunatly our fudge has turned out more like a loose set toffee, delicious, but a bit gooey, so rather than my plan of wrapping all the chunks up and filling all the pockets up, Im having to keep the chunks in the fridge and each night Il fill the pocket up ready for each morning, doing it this way also means little hands wont be tempted to empty all the pockets in one go when Im not looking ;-)



This morning Emy and H were both so excited to get their treat out of the pocket and we lit our advent candle too while we waited for the sun to come up



Wishing you all a wonderful start to Advent x