Seasons greetings

Here's wishing you a very happy Christmas and a wonderful new year.

Gertie xx

December's bake of the month

OK, this technically isn't a bake but it does contain something that has been baked.

This recipe requires no cooking, only two ingredient and just 10 minutes preparation - how easy is that !!!!!!

It's Christmas pudding ice cream. Trust me, you have got to try it, it's fabulous.

I don't have any photos to show you at the moment (because I haven't made this years yet) but come Boxing Day I'll try and put some up.

Christmas pudding ice cream

Ingredients:

• 1 litre tub of vanilla ice cream
• 7oz/200g left over Christmas pudding, crumbled

Method:

• Put the tub of ice cream into a microwave (or leave it out of the freezer for half an hour) to soften slightly so you can get it out of the tub.
• Transfer the ice cream to a food processor and whiz until smooth. 
• Gently fold the crumbled Christmas pudding into the melted ice cream then pour into a freezer-proof container. Freeze for several hours (or it you can't wait, at least two.....).
• Bring the ice cream out of the freezer about twenty minutes before serving to allow it to soften slightly, otherwise you'll never get it out of the container!!!  If your container is microwaveable you can always pop it into the microwave for a few seconds to soften. 

Gertie xx

Deck the halls

Last week I showed you 'Rudolph'. This week I thought I'd show you a couple of other Christmas decorations in the Gertie household.

This is the fireplace in the living room. There used to be a gas fire in the centre. We inherited it when we bought the house but it got condemned several years ago !!!! Normally the large vase, which you can just make out on the right of the picture, sits in the centre, but during the festive season it gets replaces with a cross stitch wall hanger.

I bought the kit from a sewing shop in a beautiful place called Solvang in California. At the time (1991) it was the largest cross stitch project I'd ever done.

  

We go from the largest to the smallest project I've ever made. These are 'the 12 days of Christmas' cross stitched on 27 count fabric - that's 27 holes to the inch. Ouch !!!! I seem to remember setting myself a challenge to make one 'day' per month. I think I did it with one month to spare.

These cute little fella's are Waverly the snowman and Iggy and Mo the snowballs. They're all hand knitted and Waverly's sack contains twelve little knitted bags, each with a knitted present inside.... 

On either side of the mantelpiece are two cross stitch Christmas cards and above that is the 'jingle bells' bunting I made a couple of weeks ago. We had some baubles spare from the Christmas tree so I just put them in a glass vase, which is at the bottom of the main picture.

I decorated the dresser in the kitchen with paper snowflakes (so easy to make and surprisingly very therapeutic too). The 'falling' snowflakes are simply made by attaching them to a length of white sewing cotton.

Have a great week.

Love

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

How to make a Rudolph

Take one newel post (otherwise known as a handrail post).

Attach to the post the following.

You now have your very own Rudolph.....

Have a great week.

Love

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.

Christmas buntings

Here at last are my Christmas buntings. Last weekend was one of those where time just disappeared so we weren’t able to take some photos.  I was determined to get them done this weekend so there would be no lunch on Saturday until they were photographed....

I wanted to put a Christmas motif on the flags but not something that wasn’t too intricate, given that the maximum width of the flag is six inches, and it had to be instantly recognisable. I never make things easy for myself !!!

Having looked at all things Christmassy I decided on a snowman.  Why, I have no idea, but I somehow convinced myself that drawing the snowman using ‘Word’ would be better than using ‘Corel Draw’. The result was Mr Snowman ended up being a little misshapen....

There were lots of beautiful Christmas fabrics to choose from, however I wanted something that was festive, but not too shouty so the applique images would be drowned out. I eventually went for red and green fabric which had tiny stars printed on it.

 

I knew what kind of lettering I wanted for the flags - sort of rounded, bubble, kind of thing - so thought 'Word' or 'Open Office' would have a font suitable. Sadly they didn't so I did a search on the internet and found just what I was looking for.

As each letter was A4 size (they were meant for children's school posters) I printed the letters I needed, scanned each one, then using Coral Draw, I re-sized them to make the templates.

Both the letters and snowmen were cut from felt and attached using a machine blanket stitch. Normally I would have just stitched them by hand but as there were so many to do I thought it would be quicker to do it by machine.

For the top ribbon I simply used some red spotty dressmaking fabric.
 

Have a great week.

Love

Gertie xx

PS why not pop over to Handmade Monday to see what other fellow craft bloggers have been up to.