Christmas Recap

How was your Christmas?! Mine was lovely! It began with time off of work, and our yearly tradition to bake and decorate gingerbread cookies...

I decorated my little pink Christmas tree, I dearly love my white fluffy lights...

I made some of my own ornaments this year, I was inspired by a nostalgic memory of our old chenille Father Christmas ornaments, sadly disintegrated with age. So, I made my own kitty ones, I was helped with a tutorial from here, easy as pie!

On Christmas Eve, just in the nick of time, a parcel arrived from Holly of Hollyrocks, I will blog properly about our swap soon, but I was very excited to have new little cupcake ornaments from her for my tree:

This year, as I have mentioned, the budget was very tight. I spent the first week of my holidays working away at my sewing machine, all hours of the day, hand making all the gifts for my close friends and family.
Unfortunately, I had little time left between finishing and wrapping the presents, plus I was so sleep deprived I wasn't thinking straight, so have no photos of my hard work! I did manage to remember to photograph what I gave to my two best friends though:

I made them clutch purses from this pattern, and felt ornaments.

I made Darren and myself our own set of lined Christmas Stockings, using the cutest vintage style cat and dog print, with a very helpful tutorial from here:

Also, after seeing many different versions around the internet for Christmas cookie mix jars, I decided to make up a batch of my own for friends and family, I used this recipe. I topped the jars with pretty fabric, that I thought could be used as a doily afterwards:

Perhaps after chasing down my family with a camera I'll blog about what I made for everyone else next week! (hoping for a new one very soon thanks to generous support from my family for Christmas!)

It's been a while...

Hello there, sorry for my longer than planned absence! My poor beloved laptop died, and I had to wait to save up for a new one! Luckily my Birthday was close, and birthday money helped speed up that process!! I managed to forget about my own 2nd year blogiversary, oops!

Well it's time to get back on board, and try and get out of this 'I don't own a decent camera so don't feel like blogging anything slump'

I've made lots of cupcakes, some of which I completely forgot to take photos of, oops! I did do Cupcakes for Charity for October, I made Marble Jaffa cupcakes and raised $95 dollars for WSPA.

I also made some Lemon Blueberry cupcakes with a lovely new friend Emma, for her work colleges.

(pic by Emma - tinselwig)

Friends had a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) party, which was pretty awesome fun! Always looking for an excuse to don one of my wigs!

(pic by Emma - tinselwig)

There was pretty cool decorations.
I made cupcakes, which took forever to decorate:



Here is a pic of my boyfriend and I, sorry for the crappy iphone pics!


Darren wore creepy white contact lenses, really made him look scary!

In November my 26th Birthday rolled round, and I had a 'potluck' dinner party, which went down really well, my friends are all great cooks! I made pulled pork, my god, us Australian's have been kept in the dark about that one for too long! I had a little bit of a lantern and tissue paper pompom theme, which was bright and fun:

(pic by Emma - tinselwig)

Me & my Kelly-pie <3

(Oh please check out Kellys Etsy store, she has the coolest Mario inspired bags, I am amazed they haven't sold out!)

My birthday cupcakes were delicious, I used a Lemon Cupcake recipe from Alicias The Red Deer that I had been wanting to try for months, as it had an unusual ingredient list. I adapted it slightly, adding strawberry puree with an amazing result! Here is the adapted recipe:

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes Adapted from The Red Deer
Makes 24 cupcakes

4 eggs
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Finely grated rind of 2 lemons
1 1/3 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup almond meal
160ml cream
100g unsalted butter, melted
Juice of 1 lemon

Strawberry Puree
1 punnet of strawberries hulled, blended with 2 tablespoons of caster sugar, and 2 teaspoons of corn flour.

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Line 2 12-hole muffin trays with cupcake cases.
2. Put the eggs, sugar, salt and lemon rind in a medium mixing bowl, and using the whisk attachment on our electric mixer for 3 minutes or until light in colour. Sift in the flour and baking powder with the almond meal and cream. Whisk until well combined. Add melted butter and lemon juice and whisk again.
3. Spoon mixture into cupcake liners until 1/3 full, then add a teaspoon full of strawberry puree, then top with more mixture until liners are 2/3 full. Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
4. I used lemon cream cheese frosting, swirled with leftover strawberry puree for the topping. Then decorated with fondant flowers.

Lastly at the beginning of December my little sister turned 18!! She had a Mexican themed birthday party which was a real blast! Did you know Mexican food is my favourite cuisine?

She'll kill me for putting this photo on my blog!

As the budget is a bit tight this year, I got crafty making gifts for my sister:

I made this lady bug clutch purse, getting piping right is a skill that's difficult to master! Free pattern from Here.


I got button and glue happy crafting this picture frame (from a boot sale!) in my sisters room colour theme.


And I hand sewed this cute Pointy Kitty, his head was a bit heavy for his body! You can make one too, the free pattern is Here thanks to Wee Wonderfuls.

I have also been working on a swap with the gorgeous Holly from Hollyrocks, we are both watching our postmen like a hawk with anticipation, I made her one of my favourite tote bags to date! I am very excited, and cant wait to share when both our mail arrives!

It's fun making personalised crafty gifts for people, albeit a little time consuming. This Christmas will be a crafty one for us this year too, and I have been busy scouring the internet for ideas on what to make for my loved ones, but don't you reckon its bloody impossible to make things for boys? My Dad has been the hardest to come up with ideas for! If you have any ideas that you would like to share I would love to hear them!

What a mammoth post! I am off to write Christmas cards and get some sewing done! Perhaps once the madness of Christmas is over I'll think about doing a give-away!