Our biscuit barrel was sadly empty so I knew it was time to fill it up. I chose one of Tate & Lyle Sugar’s gorgeous Christmas recipes and made the biscuits last night. Much as my children love helping sometimes it’s really nice to concentrate and enjoy doing something on my own. I followed the recipe for the sparkly Christmas biscuits, mainly as it used cinnamon and ginger, which I just love. I adapted the recipe slightly as I forgot to buy an orange 🙂 The recipe made a lot of dough so I cut out star shapes as the…
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There’s something about this time of year that makes me want to close the shutters and hibernate until spring. I love all seasons but the stormy weather which is being forecast over Christmas fills me with dread! I much prefer clear blue skies to wind and rain. We’ve now been in our house a few months but have spent most of our savings on furniture. We’ll be saving for a while until we can re-decorate, which unfortunately every room needs. With great timing, HomeServe has come up with a bit of a challenge. They invited me to tackle a cold-looking…
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I had big ambitions for making lots of handmade gifts this year. Time seems to have run out on me though and although I made a couple of hand stencilled gifts, I have made far fewer than I would have liked. We’re giving lots of gift cards this year so I have come up with a great way of making them a little more interesting to open. By placing them in lovely hand decorated boxes! I enjoy decopatch and have been spending my evenings covering stars and hearts for our Christmas tree. It’s nice and simple which ticks all my…
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Have you ever crafted with a light bulb before? I was set a challenge from LightBulbs-Direct to redecorate an old and plain light bulb into an exciting new Christmas ‘light bulble’ bauble! Easy. I turned to Pinterest and found tons of inspiration, so much in fact it took me a while to decide exactly what to make. Lightbulbs are always burning out in our house so there was actually a couple by the back door waiting to go out with the recycling. I chose the largest one I could and gave it a light spray with a white acrylic primer to…
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I have a wonderful giveaway to share with you today – a lovely storybook and soft toy. This story tells the tale of two toys and how one of the toys (Cleo the horse) is afraid of the dark and thinks that there are monsters in the bedroom. The other toy (Daphne the duck) shows that everything is not as it seems and in fact the monsters are just objects in the room! Cleo’s wonderful adventures with her new friend are brought to life in this book and soft toy gift set. Cuddle up with your little one and read…
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What a week we’ve had. Coughs, cold, the flu, Christmas plays and parties. Christmas cards written and sent. Christmas gifts almost all wrapped. Mulled wine made and drunk. Christmas tree bought and decorated. This weekend was lovely and quiet (on purpose) and the only things we really wanted to do was get out to our local farmers market and take a ride on the Santa Shuttle. First stop of the day was the Ruislip Artisan Food and Craft Market. We’re so lucky to have this on our doorstep and the children love it. It’s held around the Manor Farm complex…
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I may have mentioned my addiction to a well-known fizzy drink. I’m hoping that will all change as we’ve recently been trying out SodaStream Source. Using water direct from the tap, Source creates an array of fizzy drinks, from classic colas and ginger beers through to custom flavours. SodaStream has always been simple to use and the new Sodastream Source is no different. Source is a slick and elegant addition to your kitchen, bringing you within a button-press of cheaper and healthier soda. I don’t give my children any kind of soda yet but that hasn’t stopped my son helping…
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A couple of weeks ago I bought a lovely book called Winter Wonderland Stencils which contains 20 reuseable festive stencils. I had grand plans of using them on the windows to make our house look really festive. The only fail was that I’ve been unable to find any cans of fake snow. Instead I started Plan B – homemade gifts! The stencils are really fun with a great vintage vibe, perfect for making a wintry wonderland with sparkly snowflakes, a smiling Santa, snowy trees, reindeer and more (window space permitting!). Whoever designed the book has been clever as each stencil…
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Over the last couple of days my children have been trying out the new Woolly and Tig app featuring Woolly, the loveable cuddly spider from the hit CBeebies show. They love all things Woolly and Tig and the app is a welcome respite from Christmas right now 🙂 My 3½ year old is very app savvy so whenever he hears we have a new app to test will grab my iPad and happily sit and play with it. He loves the app and this has really kept his attention. It’s not difficult to see why. There are multiple ways to…