Christmas 2008

Our first as a family of five! It was such a relaxed and funny day, I hope yours was as good.

Handmade Christmas

Now the day is done I can show them all!



I made art bags for some children relatives. And for Felix who carries a sketch pad and pencil EVERYWHERE, he loved the bag so much and wears it every single day. That makes me smile and feel all cosy since something I made makes him feel so good... what is that called anyway? A positive feedback loop? :) The bags were made from trousers of mine that I never wear (or rather am likely too anytime soon they are far far too small) - the bottom chunk of leg chopped off, turn upside down and inside out and sew where the upper calf/knee would be. Flip right side out and then sew on a strap/s. I made the straps on mine by cutting out the waist band strip and using that (I cut the loops off). I cut the back pockets off the trousers since they were pretty and embroidered and sewed them to the fronts of the bags. Inside I added artists sketch pads, I sewed little pencil cases with drawstring tops and put in sharpeners and pencils. Food colour fibre tipped pens, fancy stickers and in the front pockets I added the play dough we made.



We gave them already and they were well liked I think :)

More needle felted dolls



The fatal peppermint creams (fatal to me since I ate seven in one go and then suffered from sugar rush brain freeze and hyperactivity followed by huge headache) Great gift then hey! Parents everywhere will just adore us this year. Isaac really wanted to make them after reading in a new Christmas book about some pigs making 'peppermint candies' as gifts. We read up on how to make origami boxes to store the peppermints and then the two of us made LOADS. More than required. They were addictive and soothing to frazzled nerves (it also helped that the baby was asleep - otherwise it would have been fraught with a scissor and paper thief and many yells and screeches I am sure - probably from me rather than the baby). And the photo for these..... well I seem to have lost it, or maybe seeing the sweeties I put the camera down for another sample and then forgot to take one? Mmmmm probably that.



A gift arrived from Boho Mama - material! I knew just what to do with it and set straight to work (with the baby trying to step on the sewing machine pedal too) and ran up two new Christmas stockings for the boys on Christmas Eve. The cherished ones with embellished crocheted snowmen made by my mother have vanished this year and rather than use ugly rugby socks or carry on hunting (mice had laid waste to our Christmas decoration box and a little nest was found at the bottom along with chewed tree lights! So maybe they pilfered them for further nest making?) I decided I'd better whip up new ones. They were easy-peasy and well liked. Esmé has a stocking of her own that I think Santa will struggle to fill, I bought a pair of adult striped wool socks and sent one to my sister's baby girl so that she and Esmé could be partners with one each. I filled my nieces with goodies (wooden rattles and beads and felt blocks, jingle bell mice and bits that we all made here).

I made Esmé a new Christmasy pilot hat since the other was outgrown. The yarn is a Regia 6ply sock wool.



Finally - lots of felt broaches (birds for the boys) flower ones for women and girls I know and lots of lavender sachets from my bag of material scraps. I am loving making the broaches and have made a million more since the Christmas ones, I need more wool felt urgently so as to get on with them. I keep stealing away to my sewing machine which is crazy but there you go, it feels like a guilty pleasure, I grab five minutes and in that time I have ran back and forth to check on the super whizz fast crawler girl about seven times as she perilously lies on her belly and gazes down the un-gated stairwell at the deathly hard tiled floor below. Shudder. I so need a stair gate because the sewing distracts me. It seems the sort of thing I should get second hand, I mean what happened to ours from the boys? They get outgrown quick. I need to have a search before my nerves are torn to shreds as I am incapable of trapping her in any one room such are her squeals of disapproval in any of my attempts and she melts my already gooey heart so much so that she can literally walk all over any of us here, in fact we encourage her to. Will she become a demon child of multiple demands or a angel girl of love with these showers of attention from all sides? The grand experiment continues :) But she is so adorable I don't think any of us would care either way.

Quick Gifts

Bath Melts

Cocoa butter melted and poured into silicone ice cube trays already half filled with lavender flowers. Drip a drop or two of essential oil into each heart.



Play dough coloured with beetroot juice as mentioned on my blog alread;, friends have liked this so we made a few batches to give away.



And my favourite! Fudge! I seem to eat half of every batch I make and so need to make more. I made some with Green & Blacks Maya chocolate yesterday and it was all eaten rather than packaged - Is this family-fudge Felix asked? Ummmmm yes, my mouth was too full too answer but the teeny lone square left over would make a pretty paltry gift. Guess I just better make more....

My next post will be my not so quick gifts which are shaping up and I am so excited to be making them, lack of time as always but that's half the fun this time of year - in any case I am glad my 'rushing' is at home with my sewing machine and not in some high street in Town :)

Felt undone

First attempts at needle felting, I followed Julie's instructions and voilá. Not too complex and very exciting to see taking shape so I was instantly hooked and made three. But today the freakin cat shredded one of the blue ones (the teeny girly one and my favourite of the bunch) to airy fluffy nothingness and then attacked my lovely new hank of silky wool. Enraged I chased it downstairs where it jumped up on to the kitchen worktop and began to eat the banana cake I had left out. In another rage I grabbed the beast and flung it outside into the frost. It spent the next ten minutes purring at the window mournfully and then ran off to the sweet scented hay filled barn behind the house. Pah! Bah Humbug, not even for a second did I feel like letting it back in. Of course it is upstairs curled on a bed right now, and petted half to death by more forgiving family members. Desperate measures - in order to save the two remaining dolls one became the angel adorning the Christmas tree (early or what? I can easily wait until the week before The Big Day before wanting a tree but as usual I was outvoted) and the other is on a high shelf.

Bah, Pah and Grrrrr. Crazy half wit cat. If only it used it's bit of sense to be helpful yk, like helping me tidy up or guard Esmé from eating Lego, but no, it uses it's meagre brains to hunt out and shred my woolly creations. Christmas Cat instead of Goose anyone?



We used to have a lovely nature/season shelf and then it was lost in the way of busy life and so in the slowness of winter I have revived it. Play dough snail, felted robin, lanterns and a mini twig 'tree'. After this pic was taken we settled into a beeswax candle rolling session and now have some beehive shaped candles sitting there too and then I found a card with an angel flying over skies with a tree in her arms and it sits in it's place there also. Holly and pine cones; those are next to be hunted and brought in.....



Some random family photos - Esmé in her 9.5 month glory



Dh slinging the babe



Felix taking a break from decorating the tree and again (his insisting I put this on here, with his beloved storm trooper Lego men) as he loves to smooch at the camera so he does.

start as you mean to go on

The boys keep on convincing me to make deserts for breakfast. Not that I really need too much convincing if I am honest. I can eat desert anytime without much persuasion. Our favourites right now are so utterly delicious and warm and comforting that I just have to share them with you: Goat milk stove-top Rice Pudding and the easiest Fruit Crumble in the world, oh and today; banana loaf (but everyone has banana cake recipes so I'll leave that one).

Easy Peasy Fruit Crumble

One tub of raspberries
one tub of blueberries
two chopped bananas
one or two peeled and chopped apples
3/4 of a packet of wholemeal digestive biscuits
3/4 of a block of butter
3 lg TBSP of muscovado sugar

Add fruit to an oven proof dish. In another dish melt the butter and with a rolling pin smash up the biscuits to crumb (in a bag!). Add the crumbs and sugar to the butter and mix well. Spoon and smooth this over the fruit and pop into the oven until the top in golden and you can see the fruit bubbling at the edges.

Decadently eat with ice cream or custard or rich cream poured over, or just as it is, juicy and crunchy and sweet.


Rice Pud

Arborio or Sushi rice makes the creamiest rice pudding I think.
Use 2oz of rice to one pint or milk (goat, rice, almond, cow...)
BUT the trick to a good rice pudding is to have it full fat. So don't make it with skimmed milk. And add in there a good slosh of double cream if you have it.

Digression: I know most folk shudder and get squeemish about cream and anything 'full fat' and indeed the diet dictocrats of current food-thought would have us dropping dead of clogged arteries at every turn with this list of ingredients. But if you have read Weston Price or even Sally Fallon you will have seen that in days gone by people ate something like 10 times the amount of fat soluble vitamins (A and D) than we do now and they didn't all die of heart attacks. They ate lots of fish eggs and shell fish and organ meats and bird eggs and - yes full fat (unpasturised unhomogonised) animal milks. True they mostly cultured the milk to make it into yogurt types of drinks or rendered the butter into a easily digested Ghee, but they did consume these types of foods. They didn't just eat animal products (of course!!) And by 'they' I am meaning people from anywhere on the planet pre-industralisation. They ate vast quantities of greens and veg and roots and berries too.

So anyway, back to the fat-rich desert-breakfast :)

Put your rice and milk and cream into a heavy bottomed pan/casserole dish. I use a cast iron one. Sit it on medium heat and add an once or two of sugar or instead sweeten with maple or agave. Honey isn't so good with rice pudding. Just sweeten to taste.

That is it. Keep on stirring every time a skin forms. Stir this in and you end up with a very thick and creamy rice pudding. Depending on your cooker (I use the AGA) it can take 30-60 minutes or more. Just stir stir stir. Add in lime zest if you like. Or vanilla extract.

I find it needs nothing else at all to serve with, it is already so sweet and creamy.


I used goat milk (still searching for a local raw unpasturised source) so this was store bought. But I do like it with almond milk too.

Almond Milk

A really really creamy milk!

~2 cups of almonds to 3 cups of water
~Soak the almonds for 12-24 hours(drain off the water and add fresh if it stains brown - it's just the tannins but freshen it up)
~After soaking replace the water with fresh filtered water
~Blend the mixture with some vanilla extract a pinch of salt and a few dates tossed in. Add more water if you think you need it.
~Strain through a nut milk bag or piece of muslin in a sieve over another dish.
~Stores 2-3 days.