Mulled Cranberry and Apple Jelly

Good evening everyone. I've spent a busy afternoon making some 'Mulled Cranberry and Apple Jelly'. I've never made jam or jelly before but when I found this recipe I decided to give making a few jars a go.

I halved the ingredient quantities as I only wanted to make a few jars as Christmas gifts, and having never made it or anything like it before I was doubtful of if it would work.

The kitchen is very messy now but I think it was worth it. I enjoyed the process, the smells and the delight when it looked like it was doing the right thing!

Here is one of the jars with its Christmassy hat on, ready to give as a gift when I go home for the festive time. I tried some on toast just now and it was really very nice. I had worried it was perhaps too sweet when I tasted after I put it in the jars, but on toast I did enjoy it and really didn't need much at all.

So.. what should I try making next? Once this creation has been eaten and I have all the posh jars back that is.. :]

Happy Creative Christmas!

Homemade tree decorations including
Harris Tweed stocking, by mother, for me, with love ♥

This year's addition to the Creative Christmas Collection - my garland.
Felt, gold thread, seed beads, red embroidery thread, blanket stitch, ribbon ♥

Getting Creative in the Kitchen

I've been away from Glasgow recently staying with Gregor as his folks are away for a month. I think it has been good for us both, I certainly am enjoying having his company :) On days when Gregor is working its been my job to make lunches and dinner. The other day I made some Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato and Chilli soup - yuuuummmy! It really was delicious. I used a recipe from the Covent Garden A Soup For Every Day of the Year book, only making one substitution which was using dried chilli flakes instead of fresh chilli.

The finished soup looked scrummy in the green bowls! It didn't last long. I'll have to make some more next week.

My favourite soup has always been (chunky!) leek and potato, but maybe I'll be converted to something else if I practice more recipes from the soup book. What's your favourite soup and how do you make it?

'Thank you' cards

Last night I made some thank-you cards to send to the lovely people who gave me such lovely presents for my birthday. The original idea I'd had was to use some material in the middle of the card then stamp 'Thank you' over the top of it. This didn't happen, simply because my potato-cutting-to-make-a-stamp skills are utterly non-existent. Does anyone make stamps out of potatoes or similar at home? If so how?! :) I will have a look for a ready made stamp for future use online today but it would still be nice to be able to make my own if need be. So, due to lack of stamp I decided to use one I already had - I felt the leaves, particularly in the orange ink, were rather seasonal so it didn't matter it was un-birthday related. On each card I glittered around one stamp and then glued some wee buttons over the acorns on another. The gluing was tricky for the glittery stamp as I used glue then glittered over the top as I didn't have any glitter glue. I used Uhu but it came out rather thick and made it look messy - can you think of a better glue I could use next time? I popped the cards in the post this morning but I still wish I'd managed to get them in earlier. Perhaps for Christmas I'll make cards before present opening then can just fill them all in at once later.. or I could just buy some nice cards I suppose but that defeats the purpose for me really - it's so much nicer to make my own!

Crafty birthday presents

After a good feel of this particular parcel ('it's squishy.. oh no! not another scarf! .. phew, I can feel a hard bit - it isn't a scarf after all..') I finally opened it to discover a pretty bag filled with lots of lovely crafty things from mums own collections. Its bits and pieces like this - trimmings and cuttings and odds and ends that one collects over time - that I really rather wanted for making cards and other things. Thank you mummy :o) I had a lovely time back home for my birthday (we had a bonfire and lots of yummy things to eat and drink!).

When I got back to my flat I had some more parcels to open - an absolutely scrummy big button keyring that went straight on my keys, a matching button purse, and the new Hummingbird Bakery cook book. I cannot wait to try some of the recipes - there is one called 'Grasshopper Pie' and the filling is made from melted marshmallows flavoured with peppermint - ooo its a dream come true. Maybe I'd better save it for dreaming about just now though or a little tubby will soon become a big tubby what with all the other sweets and chocolate I was given at the weekend! Has anyone made anything from this book? Do you have a favourite you'd like to recommend?

Feeling girly

I went window shopping this evening on the way home from uni. Below are links to some of the books I had a flick through. It would be nice to have them on my bookshelf one day. They had lots of colourful pictures, ideas, instructions etc in and although I'm sure it would be easy to find a lot of the content online, nothing beats sitting and flicking through a real book.

Queen of Crafts by Jazz Domino Holly

Sew It Up by Ruth Singer

The Girl's Guide to DIY by Jo Behari and Alison Winfield-Chislett

Life takes over..

It seems like I won't be able to cultivate my many Christmassy gifty ideas this year as I continue to struggle to keep up with uni work and to motivate myself to do it. Is this life taking over? Or is this life being taken over? It's hard right now to stick at it when I feel like I'd much rather be out there, living, but I know that if I don't try hard at uni now I'll regret it if I don't get the degree I want at the end of the year. It's less than a year now in fact - after my January exams I will only have half of my final year left to do! I guess I must just concentrate on that for now, even though I'm determined not to let go or forget about all the other things I want to do. I want to make so many things, read so many books, go so many places! I wonder if keeping a tally of months, weeks, days till I graduate would help.. hmm.. maybe not.. it might just make me a bit obsessive. Perhaps a giant computerized scrapbook/folder for all my future projects would help - something I can keep adding to, then when I'm all done with uni I can have a lovely big selection of things to choose from :) Yes, I find that thought encouraging. I think its a good thought to go to bed on. Goodnight.

Present-buying

Just how lovely are these sequiny keyrings?! I bought one today for my cousins birthday. I'm not sure how long it would take to make something like this by hand but I'm sure it would be rather fiddly and probably quite time consuming.

I hope she likes it.. if she doesn't I wouldn't mind having it myself for my house keys! If I pass the shop I bought it in enough times I may just have to go back in and buy one of my own!

From T-Shirt to Cushion Cover!

Here is the cushion cover I made a few weeks after moving into my new flat. The middle piece is from an old t-shirt that I had grown out of but liked so much I couldn't throw it away. The flowery fabric panels around the outside and the material used for the envelope back were, for once, bought specifically for this project!

I'd happily make a similar cover again, for my other spare cushion inner perhaps, but must remember in the future to make the pattern a tad smaller than the actual measurements of the cushion to avoid the cover being too baggy - a tip from Grandma which came a little too late for this project.

Homemade Owl

I was over visiting my boyfriend today so took a pic of the wee owl I made for him a while back so you could see. The pattern and instructions I used came from this tutowlrial which I found when browsing for crafty things online. I decided to go with some more .. interesting fabric than used in the tutowlrial, not only because I thought it was more cheerful but because, as in previous projects, I already had it!

I found the pattern reasonably easy to follow but did encounter some problems in matching up the seams - it just didn't want to fit in some bits and I was worried the owl was going to turn out wonky. Luckily he didn't but when I made a second owl later on I re-shaped the pattern a bit in the hope it would be easier to sew. This was not the case - I simply ended up with a much smaller owl! Nonetheless, I think my mum was please with it.

If any one else has tried/is going to try making this owl I would love to see pics! I was wondering if it could be modified in some way to make a different creature .. and ideas?

Here's a photo of my Singer to finish, with Bagpuss who also joined in the fun and gave me a wee hand .. paw .. with the initial stitching of the owl. He also helped choose some of the fabric, can you tell? :]

Mr Snakey

I said last night that I knew what I was going to blog about next, and here he is! Mr Snakey, who now keeps my bedroom window draft-free. I made him out of an old home made skirt, the material of which I loved too much give to the charity shop along with the rest of my clear out. Also, it saves buying new stuff! Why bother buying new fabric when I have plenty of old clothes to cut up and recycle? The ribbon for his tongue I had already too, as with the buttons .. I thought he rather suited odd eyes .. and I didn't have matching big buttons and wasn't going to buy any when I'd had all the rest of his 'body parts' already.


As I made him rather thin to fit on the ledge it made stuffing him a rather laborious task as I'd almost completely sewn him up already. I stuffed the snake with cotton wool - I usually have a large pleat of it somewhere, I find it useful for so many things - and the help of the handle of a broken fish slice to poke it down with. I made him a little longer than my measurements on purpose as I knew once sewn up he would've shrunk a bit. As you can see, the fit is perfect! I had thought that perhaps I should've made him a bit .. taller/fatter? but he covers the gap fine which is the main thing :]

Threads to make with and threads to mend

Well, my lovely new threads are rather photogenic if I do say so myself :] I was given a beautiful old Singer sewing machine a few months ago and am still getting to grips with it (pictures to follow soon!) but I thought I should treat it to some new threads of its own as I'd only had, and used up, the one spool I could use on it. I haven't had a sewing machine of my own before this one but had always found the hand/foot coordination of the modern ones I'd used previously rather tricky, so when I was told I could keep it or sell it if I wanted a more modern one I of course said nooo - keeep!! (and gave Brigid lots and lots of hugs!) The Singer I have, I must explain, is a hand crank machine, not a treadle, meaning no foot action is necessary, woohoo! So far I've made a few things on it, but then I ran out of thread, time and immediately do-able ideas so haven't made anything for a few weeks. I still have a cushion inner collecting dust somewhere so I think I may try a patchwork cover next out of some flowery fabric I bought recently. One day I'd love to make my own massive quilt for the bed using lots of different, brightly coloured squares, so a smaller cushiony version would be good practice I think.

To tide me over until I get round to the Giant Quilt project, as it may one day become, I've been searching the charity and vintage shops as well as online for some traditional wool blankets to keep me warm this winter. I bought this one in a charity shop for a pound (!!) and now after a wash and dry it smells lovely and is keeping me toasty here on the sofa. It had been blanket stitched, but as you can see from the photo it has come undone in

places and needs some tlc. I will, dear blanket, do it one day I promise, but at least you're clean and smell ok now! I have another lovely blanket, orange this time (it'll so not match but eventually I plan on having a pick and choose type pile of blankets anyway so its ok), on its way from somewhere via ebay, but according to the website it still hasn't been dispatched yet.. and I paid for it on the 12th.. perhaps they've forgotten, and if so will feel rather bad when they remember, and then throw in another blanket for free :] Besides blanket mending, I'm hoping to get some more cards made to put up on etsy but I've been rather busy with Uni work recently (I'm in my final year and it seems I've only just realised..) so I might be posting on projects past, rather than present or future, for the time being. Ooo I know what I'll post next.. hehee.

Too tired to think straight!

Well after forgetting more than once I finally managed to get some cards made for the wee twins this evening. I would've taken a better picture as this was just to show them to my boyfriend but I completely forgot before putting them in their envelopes. Note for next time - must try harder. I think I need to get some coloured card as sometimes I can think of the image ok but then lack the ideas for layers (e.g. I feel the teddies would look better if they had a square of pink, say, as their background) to give it that bit more oomph. Excuse is tiredness.. as well as having one eye and most of my brain focussing on tonights Doc Martin episode.

Hello blog-world!

Hello and welcome to my new blog. I'm going to be using this blog to write about my creations and ideas in relation to card making and other crafts, as well as maybe jotting down a few kitchen related creativities. Hopefully it will inspire me to keep making things (even if they don't sell on etsy!) as I can write about cards and gifts I've made for friends too.. which reminds me, its the twins (something(1st?)-possibly removed-cousins..?) birthday this Thursday so I'd better get making some cards for kiddies! Brown felt teddies with pink blanket stitch springs to mind.. we'll see.