Happy New Year

Wishing everyone out there a Happy New Year and all the best for 2008

It's All Over....but I've won an award!

Well it's been some time since my last post which is due to a combination of lots of festive fun and some post Christmas laziness!

A burst of energy on Thursday saw me cleaning my bedroom, finding new homes for my presents and putting away Christmas decorations. It would seem I am of the same opinion as some fellow bloggers that once Christmas is over the decorations have to go! I must confess as much as I love Christmas I love the tidy up that follows.

Well since I finished work things were non stop, a traditional visit to Fortnum & Mason's with my mum, sister-in-law and her mum on Saturday 22nd December,

Breakfast in the resturant....

Yummy scones with jam... I could've eaten hundreds of these!Can you believe these are candles!A wistful look inside Laudree

an outing with my cousin to see Enchanted (a must see film if you love fairytales!) & some more present wrapping (despite my pledge to have finished it all by the weekend it didn't happen!).

Christmas Eve was a pleasure, my favourite day of the holidays starting with carols on the green with a friend and her young daughter, the childrens nativity play at our local church and a trip to our local fish & chip shop.

We ended our evening at home with cheese & biscuits and a bottle of Winter Pimms and hot apple juice - bliss.

Christmas Day was it's usual round of gift giving and receiving and visiting friends and relatives but our families main day is Boxing Day when all the family get together and I was able to give my nan a gift of a scrapbook from a family holiday we had in August.

I'll share some of my gifts in a later post as I have a feeling this is becoming long winded but here's a peek at a wonderful gift a friend of mine gave my parents. We're all going on a holiday to Italy in June and as an insight into the trip the family prepared an Italian themed hamper,
The good news is I have been given my first blogger award by Grace at Rose Cottage Lane which was the "I Less Than 3 Your Blog" award.

The Less Than symbol followed by a number 3 is the internet shortcut for a heart (you learn something new everyday!!) and I am so grateful to Grace for giving me this award, what a nice Christmas gift.

In turn I am passing on to Lucy Bloom who's continual kind comments show me that I am talking to someone! Alison at The Brocante Home who's blog was on of the first I found and last but certainly not least Priscilla who's blogs can be found here and here. Her vintage lovely's makes me want to jump into the screen!

Merry Christmas

I finshed work Friday and since then I've had a very enjoyable and festive weekend and it is set to continue tomorrow as I'm not in work again 2 Jan 08!

I will have much to talk off in a few days once all the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over with so until then wishing you all a Merry Christmas....

Santa Comes Early

It's now less than a week till Christmas but I have been lucky enough to have received some gifts from friends already as we will not being seeing each other next week.

I already own this Kenwood beauty for my bottom draw,

so a friend brought me this food processor to compliment it,

I'm loving the bright red colours and think they'll certainly brighten up any kitchen and make my cooking life much simpler!

A dear friend went to Las Vegas somewhere I'm desperately hoping to visit and brought me back many gifts. He gave them to me all individually in order with a short story to their reason, I was over the moon!

Tis the season to be.....

STRESSED!!!!

Well it doesn't feel like I've stopped lately and being ill last week did not help!

Last weekend was non stop, a Christmas lunch with my girlfriends followed by taking a friend on her Christmas food shop Sunday .

The past 2 days I have been baking madly! My friend asked me to bake a cake for her daughters birthday. Rianna loves fairies so this is what I was able to come up with.....

What do you think?

I used Betty Crocker strawberry and vanilla cake mixes (to save time!) and I attempted to make some vanilla icing but unfortunately it doesn't appear as white as I would hope... I'll hope for a better attempt another time!

It's a pretty big cake for a 3 year old but I certainly think the adults will enjoy it!

I made some ginger muffins decorated with some cute Gingerbread men,

The last thing on my list were the teddy cupcakes... as you can see from the sloppily applied icing I was getting very tired!

I also made some festive cookies in the shape of Christmas trees and decorated some number '3's

Some Christmas jellies & an ice cream cake (essentially just vanilla flavour mixed with lot's of yummy goodies!) are waiting to be removed from the fridge and freezer.

Here is some of the spread, I should be able to share some more photos with you tomorrow,

In between all that I was able to do some online shopping and treat myself to this,

I couldn't resist Grumpy as he is the character we best attribute to my dad! I thought he was the perfect Christmas tree decoration to put away in my bottom draw.

Well I'm blogging from work today and should probably stop! Do you know if I didn't have to work over the Christmas weeks I would get so much more done!

All Wrapped Up!

Ok the title is slightly misleading... It's not exactly "all" wrapped up but I've started....

I had to make a start last night as a friend and I our exchanging gifts tomorrow. I started with a box (I'm such a perfectionist and much prefer wrapping boxes!), wrapped the present in tissue paper but I felt it need something more....

I remembered a cd of vintage Christmas images I'd brought off eBay and hadn't used yet and this was the perfect opportunity. I printed an image of 2 friends... tied inside the box and added a wish ticket... much better.

The box I was using wasn't "Christmassy" so I decided i needed to add a bit more decor so printed off some more images and stuck them to the lid....if I'd had more time and thought about it more I probably would've covered the whole box in the images!

I then simply wrapped in brown paper and tied red ribbon around it, a Santa tag and it was complete... Voila!

I have wanted to use brown paper and red ribbons for my Christmas wrapping for some time but worry that those who don't share my "vintage" love won't quite understand it but seeing it put together I don't see how anyone could fail to not love how it looks.

Next up with my brother and his wife's stocking gifts. They both love gingerbread men (and ladies!) and when I saw this stocking on a shopping trip back in August (!) I saw a themed gift coming on.

I started with the gingerbread men candles which I found in a shop in the sale! Perfect start. Next was an eBay search "vintage + gingerbread" and I found the little fella you can just see in the picture, a Wade Whimsy.

More eBay searches led me to the story book my brother and I had as a child. A christmas tree decoration and some shaped playing cards and I was almost there. I finished up with some gingerbread gentlemen & ladies to enjoy with seasonal tea.

Unfortunately I was slightly ambitious thinking this would all get inside the stocking so I pulled out one of my red giftbags.... begun a google image search (ladies where do you find your images from?). I managed to find the perfect one and stuck it on the bag, a complimenting gift tag and it was complete....

Another successful experiment was white paper. I was inspired whilst walking round IKEA last week and spotted a roll of white drawing paper for an artists table. I already had the ribbon (brought in anticipation of Christmas) from a car boot sale. Due to the thickness of the ribbon I couldn't tie a proper bow but I quite like how the knot looks.

Next was some DVDs for my parents. I don't know about you but I love the surprise on peoples faces when they don't know what something is and unfortunately anyone can recognise a DVD shaped gift. It is a running joke with my father especially whenever the gift is handed over to say "and I wonder what this is"!

To tackle this problem I thought I'd wrap them seperately but hide inside a giftbag to at least leave guessing till the moment of opening.

I printed an image from my Christmas cd and stuck to another red giftbag, you can also see the tag I made for my mum in the picture.

More brown paper and red ribbon,

As I was going along I thought that the bag just didn't look finished... I picked up the green ribbon and trimmed along the edges of the bag... now it's finished.

Here are the final gifts for my parents,

I was really pleased with my efforts, as always I have an idea in my head and until I start I'm never quite sure how I want something to look or exactly how I'm going to do it but isn't that the fun of crafting?

If you could've seen the mess I created along the way, I wrapped on the landing.... I was printing of pictures and picking giftbags from one room.....cutting and pasting on my bed in my bedroom but it was definitely worth the effort and now I know where I'm going with my giftwrap I can't wait to tackle some more tomorrow, I'll be sure to share any new ideas I come up with.

What Do You Love About Your Holiday Home?

Well the sniffles finally caught up with me so I'm a bit late joining the "What do you love about your holiday home" party but don't they say better late than never??

Welcome to my home,

won't you step inside....

There's something to me about the "smell" of Christmas. A friend came round a few weeks ago and as we sat chatting she suddently exclaimed "It smells of Christmas" and I love that. Every room has some sort of Christmas inspired scent,

Come upstairs and I'll show you the tree in my room,

This year I have found a tree for my bedroom... it's pink! How could I resist?

How could I resist these vintage inspired ornaments to decorate it?

I also seem to have found a love for frog princes. It started when my mum brought me a small pill box and when I saw the ornaments when buying my tree I felt a theme coming on. I love the way Christmas gives you the opportunity to add small touches which just change something to being festive.... these cushions for one,

Mum has had these fairy lights for some time but never used them so we decided my bed was the perfect place this year,

Mum loves snow globes and we just love Santa carrying his Bloomingdales bag brought on one of our New York trips,

and a couple on top of the TV,

No Holiday home is complete without Santa,

We always have a real Christmas tree, I love the smell of it and the fun of trying to get it standing straight in its base,Here's some of my favourite ornaments,

The small touches appear in the kitchen like our tartan dinner set,

and Christmas cupcakes,And here are some corners of the home where reindeers comes to play,

holly, ferns and other greenery from the garden decorate picture frames,

I hope you enjoyed looking round my home, as I visit other friends homes I will add photos of their holiday decor, thank you for visiting and please come again,

Happy Holidays!