In the Midst of It All....

hello all,

I hope you are taking the opportunity to enjoy the 'inbetweenie' bit we are now in the midst of...

at this point during the festivities the staple food source for me has been from the sugar group, the weather (being inclement to say the least) renders my outdoors experiences so far to the Christmas episodes of Countryfile and Countrywise...and exercise overall has been to either change channel or walk to the fridge....

however I'm managing to reduce the walking to an absolute minimum as I am constantly within a radius which encompasses chocolate of some form within arm reach...

food (as always) has played a huge part over the past week....

effort reduced somewhat during some baking sessions courtesy of Mary Berry and the pre-weighed/packaged cake kits....

these are the spiced fruit and brandy butter cupcakes fresh from the oven...I omitted the brandy from the frosting though in favour of orange juice as brandy butter is only favoured by one aunt and lovely nanna....

My hints were heeded and kind Santa/t'other half gave me this.....

I LOVE her cooking...any cook who incorporates a dairy load of butter into the majority of recipes is more than fine by me...

Christmas eve I was happily faffing making 'melted snowmen cookies' to be placed on the table on Christmas Day as little favours...They were then all packaged up with ribbon and tags once the icing was set...

They were easy enough to make (simple bero butter/sugar/flour/egg recipe) and to decorate as the overall intention is for them to appear melted and therefore not Peggy Porschen perfect....

I took a shine to snowmen this year as well as Christmas pudding themed decorations and I'd made these little tags from air dry clay to hang on the twig lights in the corner of the living room.

The textured snow effect was created by overlaying a piece of lace onto the rolled out clay then rolling gently over the lace to create the effect...a bit of orange card for the nose and draw on eyes with a black felt pen however not so easy with the textured surface) and add a happy smile too, add wire hanger loops and they're nice for the tree (or illuminated twig decoration as I did) or added to wrapped gifts with the recipients name on the back and the year....

the other thing that I've done over the bank holiday was to get together all the almost-at-their-end Christmas fragranced Yankee Candle jars which had been dotted about and burning merrily throughout the holidays, gather the remaining Christmas fragranced tarts and make something new out of them so that nothing wasted....

the almost empty jars were placed in a low simmering pan of water to melt the wax in them, then the wax was poured into a ready and waiting clean jar, which was then left to cool, then the next candle wax was poured in etc etc, until a new layered 'stripe' candle was created - easy as that. The only thing you need (apart from a spare empty jar to start with) is some candle wick...

the YC tarts were not going to be melted in a tart burner, not after the episode which involved a bright red wax molten tart, a light oak coffee table and a clumsy oaf (me), so the recently emptied YC jars were wiped of remaining wax, a tart was crumbled into each, and then melted and poured into a ready and waiting jar with a wick in as before...

'New' Christmas candles ready to be put away for next years festive season to start...!

I think I am ready for the decorations to come down now and to be put away, but the house always looks so empty and bare afterwards, so seeking inspiration from books and continuing a love of anything red, I'm going to make some bunting for the kitchen....

there will be polkas involved too...

Have a great New Years Eve all, see you in 2012!

BH x