WOYWW 234

Wednesday is here again and once more we are meeting under the auspices of head mistress Julia.
My desk today is slightly tidier than its was last week, I had to make room for making a card for DB whose birthday is Friday.

There on the left is the Mr Fixit card for my human doing of a hubby. On Sunday my daughter said her son wanted a dolls house for Christmas so by Tuesday morning he was buying paint for a fully handmade 1/6th size teddy house. Also the is a half made Christmas card and some bits of paper I found in my stash while I was looking for something else.

At the other of my worktop are some things that I am preparing for our interactive Advent Calendar at the Cathedral on Friday evening. 24 activities, with a Christian theme, for the children to do. Here you see baubles and camels and angels for them to colour and assemble.

And in advance at least 100 of each needs to be cut out, and the baubles taking 3 pieces each. Very sore hands.
Well that's all for now.
Chris

WOYWW 233

Late again. And not much of a post. that will please Julia who patrols this community of crafters and sends us to the naughty step if we write too much.

My worktop looks very much like it did last week and that is not busy but abandonned. I have not made a single card since last week. What I have been doing is preparing stuff for an interactive advent calender in the cathedral. We always do this at the same time as the Christmas shoping evening, try to put a little of Christ into the Christmas celebrations and it give people soemwhere warm and dry if the weather is not good outside. At the far end of the worktop you can see a pile of strips to make friendship bracelets and some crowns and other bits and pieces.

So I covered up the craft mat with a piece of card so that I could show you the wonderful prize I received from Twiglet last week, they are absolutely gorgeous. I haven't had time to do anymore than admire them at present, I keep getting a daily fix of lavender from that heart shaped beauty and the tissue bag is destined for my handbag, when I can bear to put it out of sight. I'll keep the pot in full view, probably with my crochet in it.

Piece of cardboard still in place, this is my giveaway. A couple of weeks ago I posted about making Christmas puddings and got several responses from folks across different bodies of water who said they had no idea what a Christmas pudding was, so I have a small one to giveaway to someone who needs to be educated about the joys of Christmas pud. I hope I won't be castigated for limiting this giveaway like this. I can see nothing on the Royal Mail site which suggests that I will have problems sending this to any country so I will choose a name by December 1st and get it in the post in time for Christmas.

Not such a short post after all, and I will do some snooping laterin the day or tomorrow.

Blessings

Chris

WOYWW 232

Oh dear! Why did I not get a single tidiness gene? I never seem able to keep my worktop tidy, but by Sunday afternoon I was struggling to create anything as it was such chaos. So I decided that I just had to something about the mess.

Actually this was about half way through the clearing up because I was so embarrassed by the mess at the beginning that I didn't dare take a pic of it. That was the second bin full of junk I put in the recycling.So by Monday morning this was the scene.Unbelievable.

The bits on the windowsill are bits of work in progress and odd scraps of glitter or mirri to die cut flowers out of.

So Monday afternoon I made a birthday card
for my brother in law and then started back to make more Christmas cards and by Tuesday evening.....

Guess what? It is just as bad as it was before.
Why do I bother?
And it is going to stay like that for several days because I have not got any card making or tidying up time until after the weekend. I might just fit in a bit of WOYWW visiting later, if I get other things done quickly.



For those who are wondering what WOYWW is about, pop over to Julia's, and you will encounter a wonderful 'ether'eal  community of crafters.
And it really is a wonderful community, I am  thrilled to have just received an email from another 'WOYWW'er saying I have won a wonderful giveaway from her blog. I am absolutely delighted and will show what it is when I have it proudly displayed on my worktop.
And finally, thank you to all those who commented on the Christmas pudding last week, I put up a full entry about the making of it here.
(I do hope that link works.)
Oh dear this post has got rather long, I never seem to manage a short one!!!
Blessing to you all, have a wonderful day
Chris

The adventure of the Christmas pudding

Following my comments on WOYWW I was prompted to put up pictures to show the progress of the Christmas puddings.
I'm not sure how interesting this will be, but here goes.

Picture in cookery book

 For those who are unfamiliar with the idea, a Christmas pudding is a mix of fruit, with a small amount of flour eggs and a fair amount of alcohol, for flavour only. It is cooked very slowly for a long time and produces a very dark rich pudding which is served with cream or custard or brandy/rum butter or demerara sugar; or all of the above.
It is very indulgent, very full of calories and by the far the best part of Christmas dinner for many people. Other people dislike it intensely and prefer something tame like trifle after their Christmas dinner.

The mixture in a washing up bowl,
The bananas are just to give some idea of size.

Usually it is made well in advance of Christmas as it improves with keeping, hence I am making it at the beginning of November. Some people would say that I am rather late making it as many think it should be made at the beginning of October.
It always seems to be large quantities too.
As a family we often find that we can't all be together on Christmas day so we make more than one pudding and have them available for second or even third 'Christmases'.
For that reason I doubled the mixture that Delia gave for one pudding, and mixed it in a washing up bowl.

And these are the five bowls filled

And of course it made far more than the two puddings I had planned. It made one large, three medium and one very small. I was rather limited by the bowls I had. Once cooked the puds will stay in the bowls until we are ready to eat them and I couldn't sacrifice all my standard pudding bowls for three months.

Ready to cook

 



And here they are all wrapped up ready to be steamed for 8 hours. I normally put them in the pressure cookers, but couldn't get 5 in two cookers, but had read on the web that I could steam them in a bain marie in the oven.

 

 So I loaded them all into the largest oven tin I possessed, half filled it with boiling water and then found that I couldn't lift it. Very dangerous with all that boiling water in it.
So then I had to transfer it all to two smaller baking tins, cover them all with foil and put them in the oven for eight hours, all except the tiny one which came out after 4 hours. Ooh the house smelled wonderful, I set the timer on the oven and went off to bed and lay there getting fat on the delicious smell.



Sorry the pics ran out at this point, because there wasn't really any more to show. when they came out of the oven this morning they looked very much like they had when they went in. Because they are wrapped up adn stay that way there is nothing more to see until Christmas day.





However for those who really have no idea about Christmas pud, I have included a picture from Google images, just to show you what one looks like when it is served. I've no guarantee that my pud will look like this, but it will be pretty similar, I hope.

And does anyone know where the title of my post comes from?

That's all for now
Chris

WOYWW 231

Well there I was, still in bed,  at 9am after a busy Tuesday during which I was out all day, earning money, until 10pm. Suddenly it dawned on me that it was now Wednesday and I hadn't done anything to show fellow deskers at Julia's , so you have got a hastily taken pic of my desk with the goodies I bought in The Range yesterday (before my meeting) and some stuff that came in the post.

There are a couple of dies from Dies to dies for, and some free die cuts she sent with the order.
The green die is a holly frame so i am looking forward to using that.
Then there are a couple of Tim Holtz embossing folders and some flower die cuts spilling out of the bag.
Further over are a couple of paper pads, from the Range, that 'I just had to have because they were only £1 each'!!! Well I couldn't leave them there, could I?
On the window sill behind are a butterfly die and some butterflies that I cut out for a card, and then didn't use and the poinsettia and holly dies that I have been using for many of my Christmas cards.
Well I have designated today to make my Christmas puddings and having been out all day yesterday I also have to pretend to be a housewife and do some washing and cleaning, if I can't remember how! I will try to visit when the puds are steaming away gently.
Have a great day
Chris

Sunday Afternoon

Well it is Sunday afternoon and I just felt like putting a few words on here or to be more precise, some pictures.
Yesterday we were invited to the 90th Birthday party of a lovely lady who is quite a character. She's seen off two husbands and now has got engaged to another very nice gentleman. So next year we will be going to her third wedding!!

Anyway I made her a card which she was thrilled with.

I have also been making lots of Christmas cards, I still have 11 birthdays to make cards for before Christmas, so I knew I had to get on top of the card makes, so here are just a few of them.

Unfortunately 5pm on a winter Sunday is not the best time to take pictures so they are not brilliant, though actually better than I thought they would be.
the left hand one I am particularly pleased with. Silver stamping pad rubbed over the inside of an embossing folder. emboss the card and just add the sentiment and the flowers. I've don't it in gold as well and it is amazing how classy they look.

 The red one with the Christmas tree sentiment is the same embossing folder without the addition of ink.

 And these two with very simple stamping just speak for themselves. The gold one I am particularly pleased with, I embossed the black card and then rubbed gold gilding wax over the surface.

 And this one was mounted on a small scrap of black and silver card, and I can't get any more of it which is a shame.








Well it is now dark and rather cold upstairs so I am going down to a nice warm fire and crumpets for tea.

Thank you for reading, if anyone does.
Chris