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!