We'd originally planned to celebrate 'our' Christmas on Friday 28th - which is the first day that Chris is not working. However, following a call to his parents yesterday to wish them a Happy Christmas, I found out that they are expecting us to arrive on Friday and not Saturday as I thought. So Christmas was brought forward to today - not that anyone truely minded! The only problem was the joint of beef I had planned for our dinner was still in the freezer - however Sausage & Mash is our traditional food on Boxing Day, and it went down really well! Lots of fun was had by all, I got some wonderful gifts - including a lovely scarf knitted by the lovely Lou and a wonderful bear made by Joe. However this just sums up our day. Hope you all had great days.

Party Food

It's the Children's school party today and these are the goodies they are taking in to share. There has obviously been some testing going on - in the interests of quality of course - or at least that was what I was told. Plus there has been a request to make more of these at the weekend.

Presents for teacher

Well not actually the teacher - but the thought is the same! Lou has made this for the lady that she talks with. She's having some issues again and has really low self esteem and she feels she can't talk to Chris or I, for fear of us 'changing our mind' and sending her away. We tell her we won't - no matter what she does, but it just doesn't penetrate her fear. So anyway, she made this for the lady she talks to - and is rightly proud of herself, which is a great start. My contribution was sewing the last inch up.

Saturday evening

Two words....
Lasagne
Gethin

Now really - do I need to say anymore?

On the first day of Christmas...

Well I can state that there are NO partridges in this tree! There are however 54 packages all tied up with ribbon, red for our daughter and green for son. Why 54 and not 48? Well it fits our family! This Christmas, as is usual, Chris is working again. So whilst most people will be tucking in to a dinner with all the trimmings, the children and I are planning to be in our PJ's all day eating 'naughty nibbly' food whilst Chris will be at work ready to go to any unfortunate person/family who should need an ambulance. We've had one Christmas together properly in the last 7 years - where he isn't working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter about it - I'm used to it now.

When the children came to us in 2003 we explained that Daddy was often working Christmas and together as a family we decided to 'move' Christmas. The children chose to not open presents until we were all together and thats what we have done since. This year we will have our Christmas Day on 28th December - hence the 27 gifts each! This may have swung the children into chosing to wait for our Christmas!!

Christmas

Last day of November today and I am SO disorganised. I really don’t know what has happened to me this year - but it isn’t good. I’ve forgotton birthdays, appointments and usually by this stage I am READY for Christmas - thats all the cards written, presents wrapped, advent calendar made, cake iced, Christmas meat ordered. I’ve done none of it so far.

My tree goes up tonight, so I’ve got a heavy day of work planned - plus a custom order from Etsy to complete, and I’m away tomorrow for the weekend on a training course and just to add to it - I’ve got some ironing I really must do. Guess I need to log off here, get the children off to school and then work like a mad thing.

The only good thing is that my husband has his works night out tonight, so I won’t feel too guilty about ploughing on through into the evening.

Tired

I’m so tired today. I had a really busy day yesterday with a cello lesson, lots of baking, a trip to the court to meet my mentor (just become a JP), followed by home to do tea, before a committee meeting. To top it off we also had two of the children’s schoolfriends over after school for tea and to sleep over. This was the biggest problem… I think they finally stopped chatting just after 11pm last night.

Burnt flour smells awful - as I discovered last night, when I went to take the loaf out of the breadmaker - I’d forgotten to put any water in! So a new loaf was made ready for toast this morning. However I managed to get 4 children up, washed and dressed within 40 minutes, breakfast made for us all - including bacon and scrambled eggs, so if I do nothing else today least I achieved something.

Phew!

Yay - I'm home! After rather too many late nights over the last week I'm now home from my first Christmas Fair, and it was much better than I expected, which is always good! I took quite a few things - not everything I'd intended to take, but enough. Need to make more crayon and pencil rolls which sold very well and a few more felt reindeer, robbins and puddings, but I can at least relax now and just concentrate on getting them into my shop!

SOLD !

I'm so pleased this morning. Got the children off to school and then went and logged on to Etsy and whats happened? I've had my very first sale. I'm so so pleased. One of the crayon rolls I added has been sold. I rather liked this one particularly as it was boy focused. There is so many lovely things for girls, its nice to do something for the boys. Thank you so much to my lovely customer...

Craft fair progress

I went and collected our mini Christmas tree off my mum yesterday. We plan to use this at the Christmas Fair to display my felt ornaments and Anna’s glass.

I've still a fair amount to do for the fair, but I am half way through the felt ornaments, the Christmas gift tags are now done, and the Lavender hangers have been scrapped - I wasn't happy with the quality of the lavender, and its one thing to give them as gifts, but another to expect someone to purchase them! Quality control wasn't something I worried about before. I made something because I wanted to, and with all the time in the world. Having a deadline hurries things somewhat, and has resulted in the occasional slip in quality. Everyone I've shown the 'dud' items too assures me that they could see no 'error' in it, but I could, and if I'm putting my name to something - I want it to be good!

On a brighter note, I've also decided to take some felt magnets and some fabric tissue holders along and they are all finished!

Birthday Boy

Today is Joe’s birthday. He turns 8 today and is very very excited by the prospect. I actually suspect this has more to do with the DS lite he is hoping to get - should he get enough cards! Its something he’s wanted for a while and we explained to him that we couldn’t afford to just buy one for his birthday. Lots of hard thinking later he came up with the idea that those who usually gave him a gift for his birthday might like to give him money towards it instead, so this is what was planned.

Now this conversation was weeks ago, and since then he has been been saving all he can. Good lad. Sadly two of his birthday cards have been intercepted and the money removed from them, and whilst the sensible side of me agrees it wasn’t sensible to send cash through the post, it was awful to comfort a little boy crying on his birthday. However a very green penguin (I forgot to buy black colouring!) helped somewhat - that and finally having enough money to buy the said DS of course!
Happy Birthday Joe, xx

Wedded Bliss

Today my husbands grandfather got married. I'd sat next to them both at my sister-in-law's wedding in August and amongst chatting about this that and the other told them how lovely I thought it was that they were together and that it is lovely after both losing their respective partners they have been able to find love and happiness again. On the Monday Kay went home to Southampton and Grampy Bill realised he didn't like it and so he rang her and asked her to marry him over the phone...

Which they did - today.It was a lovely simple civil ceremony followed by a celebratory lunch - Grampy Bill chose the menu himself and we had a lovely piece of Roast beef (Good choice!). Everyone had a wonderful day, the sun shone and I wish them all the best for their life together.

A shop!

Okay, I'm not sure what's happened to me, but I'm being rather rash all of a sudden! First there was the agreeing to do a Craft Fair with my friend, and now, I've gone an opened a shop.

Well, not a proper 'bricks and mortar' shop, but one on the internet. Its on a site called Etsy that proclaims to be the 'place for all things handmade'. Now the site is based in America, and all the prices are in US Dollars - which, with the help of a currency converter, I've managed to get my head round.

If you fancy having a look at my shop, (which has only got the Mini Cakes in at the moment), it can be found at: Made By Cara

Work In Progress!!!

Never has 3 little words held such meaning to me! My friend makes beautiful suncatchers and often does a craft fair or two at this time of year. She'd seen my soft trees - plus some felt snowmen I'd made and suggested we shared a table at one of the fairs.

I rather like making things, I've just never sold them before. I've made bunting and fabric gifts for people, and baked, but never sold. The thought both scares and excites me. Scared because what if someone stands there and rubbishes my things - in front of me! However it gets me a little excited to think that someone likes what I do and thinks they'll sell. So I said yes, and now I'm really quite worried!

It did seem like a good idea, I think. To appease my fear that nothing will sell, I've decided to make a selection of things - hoping that something may catch someones eye and that I won’t look a complete nonce. So going with me will be:
* Felt ornaments
* Christmas tags
* Lavender hangers
* Bunting
* Ribbon hair slides
* Mini Christmas Cakes

Mr Potato

Last week at my children's primary school they 'scrapped' the normal timetable in preference for a week focusing on Harvest. They made apple pies and crumbles and all sorts of other goodies, and applied science, maths and english to them as they went along. This was one of the things Joe did last week - and he's rather proud of it. Therefore it currently resides on my kitchen windowsill and will remain there for as long as he doesn't start to pong!

Every Friday the Lower Juniors co-ordinate a 'Cake Sale' to fund activities throughout the year. Tomorrow is the turn of Joe's class to provide the goodies. I know I really should go and bake tonight, however the pull of the sofa, a good book and Classic FM is too much. Guess it'll be an early start tomorrow then.

Tree Gnomes!

I came across a pattern last week for soft trees, and I just knew I had to do something in this vein. Now we have two Christmas Trees in our house - a rather sedate glass ornamented version downstairs and a multi colour mish mash of decorations on a smaller one upstairs. So I decided to make some trees out of felt to adorn this upstairs tree. Doodling away whilst on the phone I added a face to one of them (on the paper!) - and this stayed, so here are my offerings!

Mini cakes are a go!

The fruits were put in to soak last Thursday and I was intending to bake the cakes shortly after. However when I looked at the quantity of the fruits I realised I didn’t have enough tins to bake the ‘mini’ cakes in. So the fruits have been left soaking up the brandy, whilst we have eaten more beans on toast than we truely care too. We even had Spaghetti on toast - and it was AWFUL. I used to love Heinz Spaghetti Hoops on toast when I was younger. Now, either I had dreadful taste as a child or they have changed the recipe. It was foul!

I finally thought we had enough tins, so I made up the mix this morning and lined an 8″ round tin and 8 tin cans. Spooned the mixture in and realised I still had lots of mixture, so quickly lined a 2lb loaf tin and generally made a real mess and created mounds of washing up. The mini cakes were baked for 2 hours, the loaf tin and round cake have been in 4 and a half hours now. Now I know I am biased - but I’m very, very impressed with how the mini cakes have turned out, so much so that I’ve decided to make up another batch and sell them - I’ve agreed to do a Craft Fair in November with my friend - but thats another post!

Christmas Cakes

Last year I wanted to bake Mini Christmas Cakes to give as gifts, however Chris thought the tins for this too expensive, and I couldn't work out a better (read cheaper!) way to do this, so I let the idea slip, resolving to figure it out, and promptly forgot. Until now!

Still none the wiser and unable to persuade Mr L to change his mind, and unwilling to compromise on wanting to do round cakes instead of square ones the scheme again looked set to fail. I decided to pop on over to the ‘Old Style’ boards on Moneysavingexpert.com to see if the wise people there had any ideas, and naturally they did! Tin Cans - why didn't I think of that!

Now all we have to do is to eat lots of tinned goods. I've started soaking the fruits today and shall stop when I have enough tins!

Today is also my little sisters birthday - so Happy Birthday Casima!

Hello World !

Just typing those two words feels quite daunting. A new blog is like a private diary - its there, but people don’t know about it and really you’re just writing for yourself. But then over time word gets out and your blog stops being just you, your computer and some words and becomes a place where people pop by, to read whats going on, who maybe leaves a comment or two. What should you put in a first post that to all intensive purposes probably isn’t going to be read? Do you wax lyrical about you, your life, your aims or simply just say hello? I think I’ll choose the latter - particularly as this one post has already taken over an hour to form and being deleted numerous times! So…
Hello!