The Needle-Felted Gnome

It has been lovely to put my studying books aside and relax doing some cratfy bits again, over the past couple of days I have made this little gnome, I got the instructions from here although as you can see mine is a little different! It was pretty simple to do and didn;t take very long – he’s for sale in my Etsy shop if you’d like to take a look at some more pictures – click here for my Etsy shop

Scottish Tablet

My Mum used to make this every Christmas time and it’s delicious, it’s a bit tricky to make as it takes a lot of stirring but it’s so nice, it tastes like crunchy fudge.  Here’e the recipe I use, there are lots of variations of it but this one always seems to work out okay.

Ingredients:

450g caster sugar

50g brown sugar (any type)

2 tablespoons golden syrup

120ml condensed milk

30g butter

90ml water

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Place all ingredients into a large saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium heat – stir all the time to prevent sticking to the pan.

Bring temperature down a notch, don’t simmer but boil at a low temperature – remember to keep stirring in a circular motion.

Will begin to thicken and get darker (with streaks) after about 20 minutes or stirring, it will also double in thickness. When this happens, remove from the heat and stir quickly for approx 5 minutes or until it begins to set on the side of the pan (though not so that it gets very tough).

Pour into a lightly greased tin and score after 10 minutes so that it is easy to break, will take a couple of hours to set and will keep for a couple of weeks.

It’s Christmas!!!



 We have spent today putting up the tree and getting into all of the lovely Christmas traditions. My Mum always decorated oranges with cloves to hang up in the house at Christmas, they release such a lovely festive smell and I always have to do them each year too. I followed a different recipe for mince pies this year and they were really good the pastry was a shortbread pastry and it was a really easy recipe to follow – you can find it here. This week we also received T’s fantastic stocking, it was made by a lovely lady in Arizona, her Etsy shop can be found  here, the design is compeltely customisable from  the pattern to the colours and is made of lovely quality Peruvian wool. The little pudding decoration was made by myself a couple of months ago when I tried out some needle-felting, it was very quick and easy to make and looks quite sweet on the tree too!

A lovely place………

I am finally near to finishing T’s bedroom, I have been working on something to go on her wall since I was 10 weeks pregnant but unfortunately since having her I have put it to one  side (once the studying and housework is done I tend to have little time left!) Here is a little snapshot of how it looks so far, we have since purchased a lovely picture for her wall (will add photo soon) by the lovely Molly Brett. The blue dolly was made for me by a friend of my Mum’s when I was very young and hasbeen with me forever so I’m pleased to pass it down to little T.

Playtime

T and I stayed in this morning as T is teething and has a bit of a cold so we aren’t going out unless we need to, instead we have been playing with her toys, she is now at the age where her toys are begining to become a bit boring as she’d much rather try and climb up the furniture or play with things she shouldn’t, so it was nice to see her really play with her ‘actual’ toys!

Christmas is coming………..

We have had a lovely few days getting into the Christmas mood, shopping with T’s Grandma to choose her first Christmas tree decoration, having my step-son to stay on Friday, my husband, T and I going to our local Waldorf School’s Christmas Bazaar, and shopping today with a good friend for a couple of last Christmas bits and a lovely lunch, just need to put the decorations up now to really feel festive!

More Snow

We woke up this morning to more snow, how nice to have lots of snow in December, making me feel very festive, can’t wait to put the decorations up now.

Home-made crumpets

There’s nothing like some home-made crumpets to warm you up on a snowy evening! Not quite as neat as the ones bought in the shops but they were rather tasty with some hot melted butter on them. I got the recipe from Rachel Allen’s cookery book, you can also get it here