Festive Snapshot 4

I feared the conversation would never return, but it did.

Festive Snapshot 3

A special new friend. Instant attraction. Pocketed with great affection. Completely inseparable!

Festive Snapshot 2

For Christmas, Cameron made me this lovely card signed by himself and all his favourite Pokemon!

It reads:

"To Mum,

Merry Christmas

and have a jolly good one too!!!!

hope you like your cards"

Inside the card he had taped an envelope which contained handmade Pokemon trading cards for us both to play a special game together.

Home made cards and presents from children really are so precious, I shall treasure them forever.

Festive Snapshot 1

7.15am Christmas morning

Cameron finding surprise Pokemon figures in his stocking!

12 Days of Pokemon & Merry Christmas!

I'm not sure if anyone will be reading here today but I'm posting anyway!

As part of my 101 things to do in 1001 days list, I had included learning a new Christmas carol. Cameron wasn't too keen on doing a traditional carol so instead we adapted a Christmas song we already know - The Twelve Days of Christmas - into a Pokemon song!

We had a lot of fun writing it and singing it over and over again, just to make sure it works!

Cameron has kindly let me share the lyrics here (the spellings are his - I haven't got a clue if they're right or not!).

On the first day of Christmas my trainer sent to me...

A Starly in a pokeball tree

Two Turtwigs

Three Piplups

Four Raichus

Five Pachirisus

Six Wobbuffets

Seven Gliscors

Eight Glaceons

Nine Happinys

Ten Togepi

Eleven Drapions

Twelve Pichus

***

I can't quite believe it's Christmas eve already! We have done everything we had hoped to do and our pace of home life throughout advent has been mostly calm and comforting.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the life that Cameron and I are building together. This is the tenth Christmas since Cameron was born and a lot of those have been fraught with difficulty in many ways. I feel so blessed to have got to a more comfortable stage.

I'll be popping back here with a few bits and pieces between Monday and the new year but, for now, I shall bid you farewell and wish you a very merry Christmas - may your children's eyes sparkle and your hearts glow!

Festive Preparations

Gifts for children who already have everything

When children's houses are filled to the brim with toys from loving family it can be hard to find a gift that they will like, and that doesn't take up a lot of space in an overstretched home. It can also be difficult to find something for a baby who doesn't really know what's going on and their parents tell you not to bother because they are lucky enough to have so much already.
I found myself in these circumstances this Christmas, but still wanted to give something on Christmas day.

For the baby in the family I made a multi-coloured window star. It takes up no space at all and is pretty to look at. I'm also sure these stars aid imagination and intelligence in some way.

For the toddler in the family I decided to make some home-made play dough. I made four colours (the dark one is purple but didn't photograph very well) and added glitter to make them a bit festive! I think play dough is a great gift for a toddler, I've yet to meet one that doesn't enjoy playing with it. It shouldn't take up much space and obviously wont last more than a couple of months.

Here's the recipe I used (per blob):

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 cup plain flour

half cup of salt

1 cup water

1 tbsp cooking oil

food colouring (as much as you need to get the colour you want)

Glitter

Mix all ingredients in a pan over a medium heat, stirring continuously. When it leaves the sides of the pan it's ready! Don't worry if it's still a bit sticky, as it cools it becomes less so.

It keeps for about 2 months stored in an air tight container.

I wrapped the blobs of play dough into a cracker shape.

I hope they like their presents as much as I enjoyed making them!

Solstice greetings and mince pies

Winter Solstice greetings to you all!


We marked the day with the exchange of a home made gift each, and by making mince pies.

It couldn't be more wintery here at the moment. We have so much snow! The roads nearby are like a big sheet of ice and we're hoping that our food delivery will arrive safely tomorrow, so that we can have the Christmas we have planned.

Stay safe if you are travelling over the festive period x

Home spiced and roasted nuts

Spice and roast nuts was another one of the items on my list of 101 things. There is a roasted/flavoured nut stall regularly at our local market and we love it but it's quite expensive and the nuts aren't that fresh. When we visited the German Christmas market and tasted the freshly roasted nuts we were amazed at what a difference it made so that encouraged me to try making some at home and cross another item off the list.

We both chose a recipe to try that appealed to us. Cameron chose Cinnamon Roasted Almonds - recipe here. They were amazingly easy to make and taste better than the sweet almonds Cameron usually picks at the market.

I can see these being quite versatile too - they could be crushed and used as toppings for yoghurt, fruit crumbles etc.

I wanted to try something savoury so I went for Cajun Roasted Nuts - recipe here. These were also fairly easy to make but didn't taste quite as I'd imagined because of the strong heather honey I used but they were still pretty tasty!

I read that you can make these in advance and freeze them until you're ready to serve them, which is very handy.

Snowflake Quesadillas

It's snowing today! It's not settling but it's big beautiful fluffy flakes and wonderful to watch. I read somewhere that when it snows, it's a rare time when you get to see what a million looks like!

What to eat for lunch on a snowy day? Another item to cross off my list of 101 things - Snowflake Quesadillas!



They were inspired by these Snowflake Quesadillas on the Martha Stewart Website, years ago. I'd printed off the recipe and put it in my inspiration folder for another day.

We skipped the spinach tortilla bit and filled them with ham and cheese for lunch. They were delicious and Cameron was particularly impressed (he's been calling me Mummy Martha all day!).

I think this is a really versatile recipe, there are limitless possibilities.

Christmas cake 2009

I always try to think of a new idea for decorating our Christmas cake each year. Not so much to impress people, but just because I really enjoy the process of decorating cakes.

You can see some of our past Christmas cakes here.

This year I searched for cake toppers for inspiration and didn't really find anything that I was happy with. I knew I wanted to use roll-out icing as last year I didn't do very well with the royal icing method.

As December approached I still didn't have an idea and then we were making glittery Christmas pictures one day and it made me think about some edible glitter I had in the kitchen cupboard.

Here's what I ended up doing:

I covered the cake in marzipan and ready to roll icing as usual. I made some sugar syrup using just sugar and a little water, reducing it so that it got nice and sticky like glue.

I painted a simple snowflake design on the cake, then covered the entire thing with edible glitter (disco green, just because that's what I had in the cupboard) and waited about 10 minutes for it to really stick and dry a little.

I was going to dust off the excess glitter with a pastry brush but Cameron decided he wanted to blow it off - so he did! - and covered our entire kitchen in glitter!

The sugar "glue" worked well and I finished it off with some sugar pearl decorations from a shaker set we bought at the supermarket.

I really like it - what do you think?

Homemade Transfer Tees

When I started planning for festive presents, back in the Summer, I had planned to make some clothing incorporating Cameron's superhero characters - the ones he created himself to feature in comics and things - but I held off on making them as his interests can change so quickly and I wanted to get it right.

My instincts were correct and Cameron's interests moved towards Pokemon during Autumn and so that has been my focus theme for this project.

I borrowed some of his drawings of Pokemon characters and scanned them. Then printed them onto transfer paper - making iron-on transfers to go onto plain cotton t-shirts and vests. I found out that my printer has a setting for transfers and also mirrors the images so that they end up the right way round (very important if your image has writing on it!)

Transfer paper is pretty cheap and available in some shops, I couldn't find any in my town so purchased it on eBay.


I love that he will now have clothes that are not only unique but feature his own illustrations!


I made a few more, using images from the internet (I'm unsure of the law around copyright for images online but I think this is legal as long as I don't sell them?).


The transfer paper worked really well and the finish is much nicer than some ready-made transfers that I've bought and used in the past that can feel quite plasticy and heavy. The kind I bought also had clever colour changing backing paper that told me when I'd applied enough heat which was really handy.

I'm so pleased with the way they've turned out and I can't wait for Cameron to see them!

Festive Baking

We're at it again - festive baking - but not on such a grand scale as last year's 12 Days of Festive Treats!


I thought I'd post some links to the (badly photographed) recipes from last year - we are repeating a few of these this year but they are all really great.

Chocolate Star Biscuits

Candy Cane Cookies

Orange Cinnamon Sables

Santa Lucia Buns

'S' Shaped Cookies

Sugar Cookies

Chocolate Pepper Cookies

Applique Cookies

Cheesy Poppy Seed Bites

My mince pie pastry recipe

Grantham Gingerbreads

Peanut butter cookies

I hope you find something you like!

Festive coconut ice with sprinkles

We made these as a contribution to our local home education group Winter party.

Here's the base recipe we used (from Festivals Family and Food) - if you're intimidated by the huge amount of sugar, the recipe can be halved to make a smaller amount!

2lbs caster sugar

quarter of a pint of milk

1oz butter

8oz dessicated coconut (I used a touch more than this)

Food colouring (optional - we like white for this time of year anyway)

Put the sugar, butter and milk in a heavy saucepan and bring slowly to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Boil for 4 mins. stirring all the time. Remove from heat, add the coconut, stir well and pour half the mixture into a greased tin about 1 inch deep (I lined my tin in baking paper and it was fine without greasing). Allow to cool a little, then colour the other half and pour on top. Score when it is half set and cut when it is cool.

An added delight is to cover the top of the coconut ice - when it is cool - with melted plain chocolate.

We covered the top with milk chocolate - at Cameron's request - and added some seasonal sprinkles we found at the supermarket to make it more festive.

Be sure to check out my linky love section in the sidebar, I'm adding posts, sites and ideas regularly.

Christmas Pudding Icecream

I wanted to make Christmas pudding ice-cream and cleverly tick off a few items on my 101 things list at the same time, but instead I have had my first big FAIL since starting the list over a year ago!

I was gifted an ice-cream maker by a family member a couple of years ago and it's been sat in it's box in the attic pretty much since then because I figured it was too much faff, and you can make ice-cream perfectly well without one. But I did want to try a machine, to see what all the fuss was about, so I put it on my list of 101 things.

I unpacked and cleaned all the bits of the machine. I assembled it and switched it on - and it worked perfectly.

I froze the canister for the exact amount of hours recommended by the instructions for our freezer temperature.

I made the mixture and added the first spoonful whilst the machine was already churning, and guess what? IT STOPPED! It refused to move, regardless of several things I tried. I left it going for a while, thinking it might build up some momentum.

Then, it just stopped trying. It must have burnt out the motor or something, I guess. To say I was disappointed at this stage, would be quite accurate.

So next, I thought I'd scoop the mixture into a tub and freeze it, whipping it at half frozen to make it less tough. Not as easy as it may appear, because the ice-cream maker I was gifted was not just a run of the mill ice-cream maker - oh no - it was a special soft scoop dispenser ice-cream maker. This means that you can't scoop it, or pour it out of the canister. The only way to get it out of the canister is to open the dispenser bit at the bottom and the "soft scoop" just slides out in star shaped swirls. Except this was now impossible, because the freezing cold canister had frozen the bottom layer, leaving me with half frozen, half runny ice-cream mixture, with the churning thingy stuck and nothing coming out of the dispenser part!

I finally managed to get the mixture out of the canister, into a tub and into the freezer. It was a very messy, sticky operation.

The moral of this story (that I want to rant about anyway) is not to give people second rate appliances as gifts, however impressive you may seem in front of other family members who are unaware that it is, in fact, utter tat!

If you are considering buying an ice-cream maker, I suggest NOT buying this one. I took solace in reading that I was not alone in the reviews!

However...

Christmas Pudding Ice-cream is yummy, and better still - can be made entirely without an ice-cream maker or any other fancy gadget.

The recipe came from a magazine, several years ago. Of course - I adapted it!

100g raisins

100g sultanas

100g dried cranberries

6tbsp brandy

6tbsp cointreau

2tsp ground ginger

1tsp ground cinnamon

quarter tsp all spice

500g FRESH custard (bought or home-made from scratch), chilled

6 tbsp icing sugar

Place the dried fruit in a shallow dish. Pour over the brandy and cointreau and leave to soak for at least 2 hours.

In large bowl, combine icing sugar and spices and then stir in the custard.

Stir in the fruit and and remaining brandy/cointreau juice.

If you have a functional ice-cream maker then do your thing using the instructions for your model.

If you don't have an ice-cream maker (or yours goes wrong too) then put it in a tub and into the freezer for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer, whisk, and return to freezer.

The ancient article also says "To serve, scoop ice-cream into bowls or pretty glasses, garnish with chocolate straws, if desired, and serve immediately".

Oh Christmas Tree...

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,

How lovely are your branches!


O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,

How lovely are your branches!


In beauty green will always grow

Through Summer sun and Winter snow.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,

How lovely are your branches!


O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,

You are the tree most loved!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,

You are the tree most loved!

How often you give us delight

In brightly shining Christmas light!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas tree,

You are the tree most loved!


O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,

Your beauty green will teach me

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas tree,

Your beauty green will teach me

That hope and love will ever be

The way to joy and peace for me.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas tree,

Your beauty green will teach me.

Our tree - in all it's wonky glory!
It took a lot of reading, fiddling and time to capture the light of the tree the way that I wanted, without manipulating the image with software (I prefer not to do that), but I think I got there in the end.
Unfortunately, I can't photograph the amazing smell, or the magical feeling that lingers in the room in it's presence but I hope that I've managed to capture some of the wonder we feel for our beautiful tree.