gingerbread house

Today was my first day of Christmas holidays, and after a lazy start where Holly and I read our books in bed we had lots of fun making our gingerbread house. The house was bought from Ikea as a kit, so we didn't make the gingerbread, but we did melt boiled sweets to make stained glass windows and had lots of fun with icing and sweets! Oh, and the eyes on our strawberry santas were chocolate strands, have fun if you make some! Merry Christmas! : )

strawberry santas

What do you think of our strawberry santas? I've had these in my head for a while since I saw them in the background of picture in a magazine, (I can't for the life of me remember where!) and Holly and I finally got round to making them yesterday as we had some friends coming round. Holly had great fun putting their eyes on, although they didn't last very long! : )

a hedgehog!

I found a great free tutorial here a little while ago, and have just finished making my first hedgehog, which is going to be a Christmas present for my 9 month old niece. I am pleased with how he turned out, and so is Holly - she has requested one now! So I’m going to try and squeeze in sewing another one in time for Christmas. I’m looking forward to deciding which fabric to use this time, this one was done in the cutest little print I got from here.  I’m also itching to start on our first ever gingerbread house, I’m trying to hold off until the weekend so it doesn’t all get eaten before Christmas! : )

paris for the day

Today I am very very tired after spending yesterday in Paris with work. We went on Eurostar which meant getting up at 5am, and getting home again at midnight. But how wonderful that you can do such a trip in a day, and we all had fun seeing the sights and having a lovely dinner. And a lovely surprise today was discovering a set of my soft stars as a folksy top pick! : )

custom boxes

Stuck for a present for someone? How about choosing a custom box for them? I have just finished this listing in my etsy shop, you can choose from 19 colours, and four different motifs to be handpainted on the front. So lots and lots of combinations to choose from! : )

snowflakes made of straw?

I've had half an idea going round in my head for the last week or so about how I could add some christmas decorations to our kitchen/dining room. This is what I came up with, I found these lovely super-light straw snowflakes in Heals at the weekend and they are just perfect for what I had in mind. There are 36, to each of which I attached some sparkly thread (a present from my sister last christmas!) and then hung them all from our skylight. I was too impatient to wait for better photos and the light was already going when I took these but you get the idea. I love the colour of the straw, it goes perfectly with the kitchen and they even move in the air so it looks like it could be snowing! I know I put these up quite early, but once I had bought them I couldn't wait! : )