christmas making

I love the week leading up to Christmas. I love the excitement that thrums the air between my children. Taut with dashing hither and dither, secrets and mostly doing. Doing and making and then more making.





I arrived home last week with my great MIL's old Singer sewing machine. It's old. It's loud, but it's great. It actually sews, which is a big improvement on my last machine. I sewed the two little skirts in super quick time. The fabric is one of my favourites; Westfallenstoffe.



Then not yet ready to get away from the machine, I zipped up two little patchwork quilts from my scraps. They are sort of baby/knee sized. The backing is a super soft organic hemp fleece (which I bought years ago to make something or other and then never did). They have an layer of cotton flannel rather than wadding which makes them quite heavy and warm. I didn't follow a pattern, I just felt my way.





I have already parceled up and sent off the little pink and apple green one for a sweet mama and babe, but the red and blue one I'll keep, my lot like it when they are lounging on the sofas. Isaac wants me to make him a full sized bed one. Ohh, it daunts me, I'll have to think about it for a while and gather materials.







We made paper chains, for the tree and ceilings.









Isaac turned his into a different sort of tree decoration.



And Esmé went wild with beads and made a shed load of happy decorations too.







This was my gift from Esmé this year and even though I tell her it may be bad luck, she insists on hanging it anyway. She made it at her little play-school, those are her own foot and hand prints.



I made yet more mincemeat - and I wouldn't have had to if I hadn't scoffed the first lot. Yup.



Christmas kitchen time seems to mean SUGAR.



So we made peppermint creams. They turned out sort of golden coloured because we used unrefined icing sugar.



We took the pretty peppermint candy canes from the tree, bashed them to smithereens and then used them.





To make the fabulous and addictive and blog-popular Peppermint Bark. In case you fancy trying and can't be bothered to look up and read the recipe. You basically melt a load of good white chocolate. Spread it on to greaseproof paper in a sort of rectangle shape. And sprinkle on a handful of the bashed up peppermint candy canes. Then while it sets whip up a batch of dark chocolate ganache by melting lots of dark chocolate with a few spoonfuls of cream. Mix over a low heat until thick and leave to cool a bit. Spread over the set white chocolate and leave again in the fridge to set. Melt the same again of white chocolate and repeat, sprinkle on the last of your peppermints. When it's all nice and set, trim off the edges and gobble them. You will be surprised as I was that it's not as tooth numbingly sweet as you expect. It's sort of cool and rich. And moreish. You may have noticed my lack of exact quantities here. I find precision in the kitchen to be a very American thing. I always have a little smile when I read American recipes (a nice amused smile, not smirking). They are soooo exact! Like '1/4 of a tsp of sea salt'. Really? I mean I always thought recipes were guide-lines of the vaguest sort, and you just sort of use your initiative and what you have on hand to spin something similar (maybe better?) out. Some even tell you how to chop things up! Ho ho ho. Like maybe you were planning on I don't know, using an axe. So funny. I think maybe it's more European or something. To just do as you fancy. So for measuring sake I used about three bars of white Green and Blacks altogether, or maybe it was 4? (see!) and about two of dark. I only used about 7 candy canes because I was not allowed to pilfer more from the tree. I see the original recipe calls for about 20 or 30. Jesus. That would be *sweet*. Swoon and headache. And an awful lot of buzzy jitter-bugging around.



If like me you have not eaten much in the way of sugar, and not at all of cows dairy in three years you may find you end up feeling weird. But I have to say. Yes it was WORTH IT. It really is that good. I would never have thought to put those confections all together like that. But it works. Chop the rest of it up any old way you like and keep refrigerated, really. Because it melts quick. I doubt ours will last until Christmas day. And goodbye gift giving. I think I am going to be shopping for white chocolate again today. Whoops. I managed to resist eating a piece until 10.30am today. Pretty good I thought. I was up before 7, so take that into account. I did. I'll be very glad when it's all eaten up and can stop tempting me constantly.



Felix's bedroom this year is his own 'winter wonderland' (said just like the Abominable snow does in Monsters Inc). He has lights and paper chains and little candles. I painted him a very quick winter scene yesterday and he was very pleased with me for doing so.



I also made the winter village that has been on my mind for a while (yes, you are finding out what keeps me awake at night, and it's not important stuff, I tell ya). Only, er, yeah, I made three houses. It's a pretty paltry village. More like a hamlet. Or a place you don't notice driving through. Just like where we live! Felix, piped, genuinely happily! I also didn't use liquid starch, because that stuff STINKS! And I like to enjoy my crafting. So it's a floppy village.


~yes, that's me at my uni graduation with tiny baby Isaac, many many moons ago....

My hens are laying 28 eggs a week! I am very happy with them, and let them know by pampering them, feeding them meal worms and insects suet pellets and throwing into their run whole cabbages and bunches of kale from my garden. They love me. It's a mutual thing. The cockerel still avoids us all and perishes I feel on the perimeters of life in the garden. But it's up to him. I must leave him to his own devices. Perhaps he has a plan (no, just kidding, he's a chicken after all). In any case, I can't catch him.



My favourite bit of making so far this week was a wreath for the door. I set out looking for berries and vines and returned with hazel twigs, heather and pine. It was what was to hand and so reflects the garden (or my own lack of ability to forage further).















It is splendid and bushy and big. Esmé (for once, it must be said) was a true help. She held it all in place constantly and was vigilant whilst I tied the starting twisted hoop together.



We are reading Dickens again, third year in a row. I read it out loud in the evenings (yes, by the fire) and for once in our modern hustle life it feels like a big pause and respite. I am sure the flowery language just washes over Felix and Esmé but they get the jist of Scrooge and I feel fuller and richer for the reading of it. Despite not much liking any other Charles Dickens novels (shoot me) this Christmas ritual is soothing.

she sews

Not I. Noooo, that would be nice, but my machine has broken and the cost to fix it is pretty much the same as was bought new. So I have no machine. But my MIL has promised me her mother's old Singer (yes, it probably is that ancient), so perhaps I can zip up a Christmas skirt or two for The Beauty after-all. I already purchased material from here. And ribbon for the trim from here. So um, I am ready to go. Except for the machine.





The Beauty's sewing requires nothing but card and wool and a needle. The boys and I have made these present labels before, but this is the first time she has. She insisted on writing the labels too.





I made a chocolate tart as insisted on by Felix. The base is a soaked nut and date, cocoa crust. The topping is made from avocados, cocoa, virgin coconut oil and coconut nectar. We ate it for breakfast. As insisted on too.



I brought in a branch from a pine tree in the garden for us to decorate in the hall with the tiny nativity scene (I knew those hundreds of conkers we collected would come in handy). The Man made the shed/stable from wood scraps for us and the animals get rotated and dismissed hourly.



Currently there is a crocodile a wolf and a lawyer figure in there. Remember when Felix made this lawyer? Well it's having a new lease of life, as a lawyer-wise man. An oxymoron I am sure. No crib or baby, but that's beside the point. They'll get there, eventually.



I keep finding little strings of fairy lights and hurling them up, any old place. At 7am in the winter darkness Felix, Isaac The Beauty and I admire them, while licking chocolate tart from our breakfast spoons.

feel free to eye roll

There is clearly something really wrong with me. Really. What sort of person declares never to do something and then goes right ahead and does it all over again? Well, I do (actually I think I have said I will never eat chocolate again about five hundred times and gone ahead and eaten it, clearly a ridiculous thing to promise one's self anyway).

But the cardigan thing, well I just don't know seriously why I had to knit another. It went something along the lines of my scrabbling through my big tub of woolly-yarns and realising that I had about fifty of so half or quarter balls and not enough of any one thing to use. So I thought I'd make a big old scrap rainbow yarn cardigan for The Beauty, with long sleeves. Then I sat and began to knit, I don't even need to look at the pattern for this cardigan any longer, it's etched on my brain. I can't even say it will be my final-FINAL one, because my words clearly have lost all purpose and meaning. So there we have it, Coffee Bean Number Five. Or is it Six? Lost count.





I totally am in love with dove grey wool for tiny people, especially babies. It's just so soft and gentle looking. And not obvious the way blue or pink can be. I feel like I will be knitting lots more from the monochrome spectrum. Not because I have to knit for babies, just because the colour is really pleasing, just in case you were wondering.





This is so not a harmonious cardigan. It just isn't, but then neither is the girl wearing it. The buttons are all mismatched scrap ones too, because that's what I had on hand, I didn't have enough of any one to use, just like the yarn. It feels quite good though, to fashion a garment from things on hand, rather than go out an buy more with a specific idea in mind. The continuous colour changes kept me busy. I had a grand total of 110 ends to sew in. Two for every colour, every two rows of knitting. I counted. It was that sort of weird project.



Speaking of 'fashioning' things I have a little article out in the current issue of The Green Parent Magazine, in the Ethical Fashion section. Which sort of makes me laugh a bit, since fashion and I long since parted ways. But there you go, life can be quite amusing.





Other people in the house this week made other things. Letters were drafted to Father Christmas, the boys were essentially lists. Nice. But Esmé's was a long long chit-chat and extreame weather conditions and implications of featured highly; she hoped it wouldn't rain on his long journey, or be windy, she would leave a little treat on the doorstep (so as not to get wet), did he too hope for no rain? Or wind, because it might be tricky to ride in rain or wind. She plans on getting up very very early but not so early that he would still be there. I had to dictate and did so exactly. Because it was really a very good letter. Then she said, right at the end, an afterthought, oh and don't forget to bring me a pink scooter and a dolly! Right on girl.





I love the little details in Felix's drawings, as usual he is my hero when it comes to drawing, I admire him greatly.







We made a princess bed with our trusty glue gun and some pom-poms. From a shoe box. There are some good box ideas here. I am a bit in love with the whole kitchen set, and would make it all except that we have a pretty nice wood kitchen I bought for Isaac when he was 2 and really into play-kitchens. That kitchen has had so much use, even bigger kids over the years come in and play with it. Boys as much as girls, maybe more so. A little boy cousin played with ours so much his parents (reluctantly I think) bought him one too. In blue. Of course. It didn't matter to Esmé that she has two fancy basket dolly beds, she likes this one a whole lot.