Baby Pinks

This is Meg's FAVOURITE Christmas present this year. After being repeatedly messed about by a thick bloke who doesn't know he's born, she asked me (jokingly) to make her a "full size boyfriend shaped cushion so I don't have to bother with men". So I did. And his name is Fogarty, given that he's stuffed with 4 bed pillows, thus named by the Mumatron.


Decs are down, house is clean and on with the planning for this year.

All I have to do really now (other than repair the damage the bloomin' wind has created AGAIN) is clean out my craft den.

I got a lovely dressmakers dummy for Christmas and when I got her up tp the den I realised that there is SOOOOOOO much mess up there that I had nowhere to stand her!

She's not got a name yet either ...

I'm going to be using her shortly too - I made Meg a gorgeous 50's style black and red spotty frock that needs finishing quite urgently as she needs it for a photo shoot.

But I met a new person yesterday to make clothes and lovely things for. I defy you to not make cooing noises over her deliciousness!

Bloomin' Teenagers

My teenager's computer is broke. As a result, mine is permanently being used to skype a young German gentleman who shall remain nameless.

As a result, no posts for ages, which is rubbish. So here's some photos of stuff what I have been mostly making over Christmas ... and here's to my new year's resolution of retrieving said 'puter on a regular basis!

Today I have Mostly Been Fabric Shopping ...

...and doing 1940's barrel rolls for Meg's photo shoot this evening.

I made my advent calendar yesterday. I can't take the credit for it, it's a Martha Stewart concept, realised by my good self and fashioned as a result of two year's worth of collecting.

It's made of 25 baby socks, sewn on to a washing line style red ribbon. Each one has 3 sweets and 3 gravy bone biscuits in - one each for the whole herd. I;d love to show you it, but I can't find my little mini gold pegs. When I do, I will show you. Unless I get fed up of looking and post it anyway.

As usual, I had a really specific idea in my head of the Christmas presents I was to be making for my most important ladies this year. And as usual, when it came to buying the raw materials, I bought something totally different and, I think, better. Lovely chestnut corduroy handbags with amber handles and a beautiful print to line and decorate with and co ordinate with the brooch. I'm chuffed to say that I'm making one for my good mate El's Mum. She's setting up a little soap and cream business and is making dreamy products on her kitchen table - I'm thrilled to be her guinea pig.

And I do hope it all turns up soon or it's going to be a 3am finish every night until Christmas again like last year. Lordy, I'm just not as organised as I'd like to be... but who is?

SO in the mean time, this is the "lady garden warmer" I made for Meg's, ahem, "special day" last week. You like?

Oh knickers to it .... here's my calendar.

Christmas Spiwit - Gin anyone?

These are all your Christmas presents. Where shall I send them?! Shameless excuse to use one of my lovely Prima photos really!

So it's the festive season. And the only shop I've been in other than my local hardware store and butchers is Hobbycraft. I don't even usually go there, but I was passing, in need of felt, and sometimes needs must.

This Christmas, because I've not done ANY Christmas shopping (two presents were purchased with actual money some time ago for my better half and daughter - I can't crochet new walking boots to replace the old ones what have died) I feel decidedly smug. And relaxed.

Alright, I have been up until 04.30 the last three nights on the trot making things last minute, but that's my own silly fault for not being as organised as I could be and for taking on a pair of additional projects as requested by my lovely sister at this time of year. I could and should've said "certainly, it'll be in the new year though" but as usual I totally underestimated the amount of time everything else would take. I learned a lesson off of Kevin McLoud (Grand Designs), he said that when building a house or undertaking massive renovations, set your realistic budget, then double it. Then set a realistic TIME budget, and treble it. You're more likely to be only slightly over budget then. I'm starting to realise that all these things I make, do and mend are mini house renovations in their own rights.

But it really is a total revelation. I've been no where near a town centre, out of town shopping centre or any other dreadful haven of unnecessary and thoughtless present acquiring, and it's totally changed my attitude to the festivities. I used to love Christmas, you see, but the last probably even as many as ten years, I've grown more and more disillusioned by it and more and more like my Father - the ultimate in "bah humbug". But this year, I'm loving driving around doing my job in the nights, in the frost and snow, looking at everyone's pretty lights and enjoying the real Christmas spirit.

What I don't love is that D(readful) F(urniture) S(uppliers) and other such horrendous poor quality sofas designed for disposability and with no regard for environmental impact (don't get me started!) have taken OFF the Christmas adverts that they've been running since October instead advertising their "Pre Christmas January sale". For goodness sake, trying to catch a programme or two and getting assaulted by the advertising people at every turn.

After my weekend working last week and numerous complaints (granted mostly from me) about the strong but low winter sun blinding the family in our south facing living room, and taking inspiration from the lovely Danielle Proud's book "House Proud", I decided to make a lovely blind for my living room. I cunningly uses one of my good friend Marie's old bed sheets again, well two actually, one for the main body, and one for the lining, a piece of left over faux suede from my re-upholstering of my sofa bed, and some gorgeous peacock feathers bought for me a while ago by my Step-Mum. I adore peacock feathers, I have a little sort of flower display of them, so I pinched three and turned them into a blind.

It took me a day, but I'm thrilled with the result, and it's beautifully finished (if I do say so myself), highly functional and really, really pretty.

Well, I didn't think today's blog would turn into a rant, but hey, it's been a while!

Oil Be Having a Lovely Time This Weekend

...it's the wedding of the year, you see. My hubby's twin and his gorgeous, brave, wonderful fiancee. I'm really rather looking forward to it. Got my new/old frock ready (I was given it several years ago but have been too fat to wear it for some time so it feels like a new frock) and my dancing shoes, so in a couple of hours, we'll be off!

I finished my oils for my hampers a day or so ago, and not a moment too soon. Yesterday morning I had a telephone call from my lovely friends at the South Wales Argus (or "the Brunell Times" as my friends call it!) wanting to do a piece about my home made Christmas. As usual I had an hour to make it look like I and my house ALWAYS looks this nice, which I just pulled off with the help of my hubby.

For a while I've kind of been feeling like I can't wait to give all the presents to get them out of the way, but now, especially when you see it all laid out and looking lovely, I'm quite fond of it all and will be sort of sad to see it go. A comment on one of my previous blogs has started me thinking about next year. What am I going to do for next Christmas?

Will I do the same thing, just develop it, perhaps spend but instead buy "experiences" (cinema tickes, Groupon deals, National Trust membership that sort of thing) or maybe buy the smallest presents I can find for everyone? My thinking behind that one is that we've all bought junk presents to "fill out"... but I'm not sure I can go back to shopping. It makes me feel a bit sick actually!

And, more exciting news - Prima want to print my recipes in the food pages of the magazine. Wicked! Woo hoo!

Thank Heavens For That!

I spent hours yesterday in my dressing gown (it was warm, I was tired and cold) making the Christmas tree decorations to go into the hampers to be delivered on the weekend. I though that seeing as I was doing some of them I might do ALL of them for the other ones not being delivered yet.

I made an executive decision yesterday as well. Our local wonderful Butcher sells local honey. Our semi-local vet's wife is a bee keeper, yoga teacher and general brilliant woman and there were a few jars available, so I decided to put a jar of it in certain hampers, not all because it's quite expensive. But our close family will get some of that too.

I also completed my flavoured oils, and then I packed up three of the hampers ready for delivery. I did enjoy that bit, I really did, I hope the recipients will enjoy them.

The End is Nigh!

Having decided that gardening is not my thing, I was quite pleased to take delivery of my onions grown down the mountain. Luckily, our goat is of no use to man nor beast, so he hasn't eaten them, or anything else really, other than goat nuts and a few thistles. Weird creature.

So this is the busy week coming up, I have the secret event happening on Friday, so, the house needs to be spick and span, and the Christmas decorations up beautifully. I asked hubby if we had to bother doing it a second time in December (seems pointless to me!) and he just told me not to be so miserable!

It's my niece's birthday next month, so I made her the cushion cover at the top. It's really pretty and I'm quite pleased with it, didn't take too long either, about six hours. That's another one to tick off the list. I did buy the pink felt, (80p) but the ribbon was scrounged, the buttons I already had in the house, and the fabric is beautiful damask cotton (formerly my bedroom curtains!), so I hope it'll stay with her for many years to come.

The Christmas cakes are done. Finally. Never underestimate a Christmas cake. Now, the box that contains all the cakes is so heavy I can't even drag it. So on tho the next thing, the edible tree decorations. Having learned many valuable lessons from making the cakes, I am now perfecting the gingerbread BEFORE embarking on the big bake. I need a perfect batch for next week's exciting event, but then the big bake will be reserved for immediately before the presents are to be given, for freshness purposes.

Bethan's Production Line

I once heard that the mark of a good recipe is the mess that it gets in. In that case, I think I have the best recipe in the world!

Crikey, if you ever thought that making a Christmas cake is easy, you have another thing coming. On the plus side, I have got one that's available for current eating and one test one that's living with the other gift ones for quality monitoring over the next few months. Honest!

The recipe "in print since 1978" was lies. It said "bake on the bottom shelf of the oven for 4 1/2 to 4 3/4 hours on gas mark 1" well they weren't cakes, they were Christmas puddings. So I put them back in for another hour on gm1, no good. Another hour on gm4, still a bit gooey. 45 minutes on gm 6 and that pretty much did the trick. So, the next batch, I decided to only do two at a time, but I cooked them for 2 hours on gm3.5 then two hours on gm 1, then I turned the oven off and allowed them to continue cooking while the oven cooled. They came out pretty damned perfect, I must say.

I bought a big clear plastic air tight stacker box to keep them in last week. The smell when you lift the lid is just to die for, but I can barely lift the box already and there are only 5 cakes in there. There'll be 13 by the time I've finished. I have another two in the oven as we speak, another 4 are prepped ready to cook on Monday. I'm working tomorrow so I'm not going to get chance to cook them. I'm still struggling to think how I'm going to present the cakes in the hampers though. I guess I'll see how much cake boards are, I could go for one of those and some cling film. I supose if I could get my hands on some really strong cardboard, I could make round cake boards myself cunningly using foil.

As usual, I've learned several valuable lessons making these cakes:

1. Never underestimate the work, love, attention and blinkin' expensive ingredients in a Christmas cake.
2. Always have a practice run with a new recipe (schoolgirl error - sorry Mrs Phillips :) )
3. Go with your gut instinct to save money and ingredients (I dispensed with the very expensive candied peel and after 6 cakes decided to also dispense with the fresh orange and lemon zest because they it was an awful lot of extra work for very little result, AND, not everyone likes peel).
4. It makes you feel very smug in September when you're virtually ready for Christmas!

I don't know if I mentioned that I have completed the kids Christmas sacks. They turned out really well and have given me some ideas for what the children will be getting next year. It's never too early to start planning! However, I have managed to overlook another two birthdays coming up so I'd better get cracking on that. Not really got any ideas yet either. Hmmm.

And the other thing I have to do this week, other than make some edible gingerbread Christmas tree decorations, is make my Christmas cards. Luckily, Meg and I had a brainwave involving blank cards bought cheaply and one sheet of expensive gift wrap. A couple of hours that'll take, and that'll be another job ticked off the list.

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

... get out of the kitchen, because your probably in my way anyway. I have a LOT to do!

The Christmas Cakes have started. I've done my research, found the recipe I like, and have dispatched my trust husband to retrieve the ingredients. He has an extensive list!

In order to make my cakes, I reckon four at a time I can cook. They'll have cooking times of nearly 5 hours per set of four, there will be four different cooking sessions. I think I'd better schedule in an oven clean after that!

Kath, if you are reading this I PROMISE I AM NOT GOING TO BE EATING ANY OF THESE CAKES!

I needed a calculator just to work out the quantities. I must knock off after this to tidy up and make sure I have enough room for the ingredients, before anything else.

13lb Currants

6 1/2 lb Sultanas

6 1/2 lb Raisins

2 lb Glace Cherries

2 lb mixed candied peel

A bottle of rum/sherry, something like that

6 1/2 lb Plain Flour

2 jars of nutmeg

2 jars of ground mixed spice

6 1/2 lb Butter

6 1/2 lb brown sugar

52 eggs

2 lb flaked/chopped almonds

1 tin of black treacle or molasses

13 lemons

13 oranges

1 bag of whole almonds

Crikey!

This is now an urgent appeal. I need cake tins. Not the sort you cook them in, the sort you store them in. Roses tins or biscuit tins, that sort of thing. I had loads after Christmas but they've all been given away as presents. Either that or some good ideas for how else to present them?

Feels VERY Weird Making Christmas Stuff in August

These 'ere are my newest creation. I was making them last night while waiting for the meteors to start. What a display they put on for us! Fabulous! So I had some lovely sort of tweedy fabric given to me, really rustic looking and I was determined to make something out of it but was at a loss as to what. Christmas tree decorations for all. Aren't they pretty? I'm going through my buttons at a rate of knots so I've just had to ebay some more but I'm really pleased with them.

And this below, is the first Christmas present sack. The photo does NOT do it justice at all. It's a beautiful rich pinky red velvet with gold netting on the inside of the opening to add a magical twist. The gold stars were rescued from a skip by the Mumatron - any more hanging about there?!

So, my free window dressings as promised. I NEVER waste a good piece of fabric as you know so I was rather befuddled about what to do with the lining from the curtains I took down from the living room. They're a nice chocolate faux suede and I paid £5 per massive curtain in Shaws years ago. So I took them down and then had the brainwave to use them to make a cover for my sofa bed which we keep in the living room for extra seating and extra sleeping capacity. But I needed to pull the linings out to make the covers (which I haven't done yet) leaving me with yards and yards of lovely pale cream cotton. What to do with it. And I needed something to break up the clean lines of the windows, but without a different curtain because we never use them. So I split each curtain into three, hemmed the edges with my machine and sewed three together, end to end. I then spent AGES draping the lengths right around the existing curtain poles. They actually look rather pleasing.

(Cue "Chariots of Fire Music") THE RACE IS ON!

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so rubbish at keeping secrets!!! That's all I can say!!!

So, my bedroom, the recipient of the goods purchased during my slight offence.

The old boudoir was looking really rather tired and unexciting, so I was thrilled when my lovely Step Mother bought me a hand printed Indian throw for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. It's the tree of life, printed with beautiful bold colours and it really is gorgeous. My favourite colour in there is the blue of the birds and the flowers, so, inspired by that, I chucked a bit of blue paint on the wall behind the bed and the wall in front.

For a long time, I've dreamed of having a bed canopy. To tell the truth, I'd really rather like a four poster, but the room's far too small for that. Having "cooked" the idea for a couple of days, I took down the incredibly long white muslin curtains that I did have at the window (the window looks out onto a hillside, nothing else, so we NEVER close the curtains) and the damask cotton curtain I had up dressing it, and I gave them a good long soak in some bio washing powder. I cut a 3/4 inch diameter dowelling rod in half and had hubby attach a pine door knob to each end, then I Bri Waxed it in a dark tone and left it to dry. I then measured up the wall behind and ceiling above the bed, and screwed in some cup hooks to the ceiling and wall. When the rods were dry, I hung the muslin on one rod and hung it from the ceiling hooks. I then took the other rod in front of the drapes, and lifted the weight of it, hooking the rod onto the wall. The result - a rather attractive and romantic lightweight bed canopy for no money, adding instant height to the room. God, I'm good.

Then the three mirrors came into play, to reflect the drapes, the colour and the light as it's not a huge room. Add in the lanterns hung from the ceiling and it looks lovely in the day, but by night it's magical.

The same day that I was putting all this together, I went to visit my good friend down the road. She had a rather badly painted but lovely pine mirror ready to be thrown out. Bizarrely, as usual for me, the corners of the mirror had detail that EXACTLY matched the bedroom colours, so after a day of paint removal and wire wool treatment, when I finally waxed the mirror in the same shade as the rods, it finished the room fantastically. I should add that my rather clever Husband rescued and renovated the fabulous chest of drawers that the mirror lives on from our garage. It was there when we moved in, all old and unloved and I quite liked the look of it. Isn't it fantastic? He is clever!

So, in the last day, I've been working on Squeaky's combined Birthday/Christmas present. Rather unusual as her Birthday is in July. But, if she will decide to swan off to the other side of the world (Spain) with her chums, then I'm not going to see her for her 21st Birthday (sniff!), so she'll have to have one big pressie. I love making things for her because she's such a big fan of all things homemade. Myself, Meg and her fab friend Chloe spent most of yesterday drawing squares on to denim remnants and cutting them out to make said present. I decided to make her a bag (what girl in the world has enough bags!?) and I have been saving denim off cuts to make it. It now looks rather like a flattened cube, all the pieces are attached and I'm just waiting on the delivery of my heavy duty thread so that I can machine it all together. It's well nice, if I do say so myself. I'm now saving denim again because I want one too. I'm thinking weekend bag for me as I don't really have anything for that purpose so I could really use it. There's not a lot else I can do for that at the moment, so it's on to the next thing. Christmas sacks for the little ones. I'm just about to start on that now.

It's my Friday day off, so, once I've taken and uploaded the photos to go on, then it's cutting, sewing and creating. Oh and coffee. A LOT of coffee.

No Need!

Well this week has just flown by. I must be honest, I was absolutely dreading yesterday as I detest training courses, and, as usual, fate stepped in and booted me up the bum and I had an absolutely awesome day that has finally showed me what I want to do with my life. I want to specialize in looking after people with Dementia. Such an incredible disease, and I can't thank the awesome course tutor we had yesterday enough. Utterly brilliant.

I was very kindly donated a big bag of gorgeously luxurious chenille wool by my good friend Lesley and I've started to do something with it. I was a bit stuck for something to do with it as the yarn is just so fat it's not suitable for most things, so I decided to make a loose stitch shrug. I'm in the process of crocheting it up into a long wide oblong, a few carefully placed stitches, et voila.

I must be honest, I'm rather excited as my lovely co-President/former Home Ec. Teacher/good friend Liz has offered to teach me to knit. Liz informs me that she was able to do fair isle at the age of 7 so I can't think of ANYONE better qualified to teach me, and it's a bloomin' good excuse to hang out with her for a couple of hours!

I purchased some yarn last week as I needed to start on my god daughter's Christmas pressie. When I got home, I totally changed my mind about the colour and tried to take it back to Shaws, where I had purchased it from. Sadly, the staff were INCREDIBLY rude, and informed me that the particular brand I had purchased was not returnable. I was not told that when I purchased it 2 days before. Given that I quite liked the colour etc I wasn't really that bothered about the fact that I had spent only a few quid on it because I'll use it for something else, but the fact that they were SO rude, I've now got a major bee in my bonnet about it. Given that Shaws are a good solid Welsh company I've always tried to support them with my purchases, but instead, cutting my nose off to spite my face, I went to Wilkinsons to purchase the yarn I really wanted. I don't think it's any less good quality but I'm not sure. Tsk, tsk, tsk!