I’m just calling in briefly to wish you all a very happy New Year! Are you making lots of resolutions (which will be impossible to keep) like me, or have you learned your lesson? Here are mine: obviously I am going to get fit. I am going to knit a pair of socks and learn how to […]

                  So, finally here is this years’ cake! This was inspired by all those cute little villages I’ve seen everywhere (except on sale in a real shop anywhere near me…) The original plan was to buy some cute houses and simply scatter them over the cake. But, […]

Last Christmas I made an ice castle cake. I can’t claim it was an original idea of mine though.  I got the idea and the recipe from Delicious magazine and have happily just found the very same instructions for you on their website. And, as is so often the way with good ideas it was surprisingly simple to […]

I received a surprise parcel from Tif the Dottie Angel the other day. I love a surprise parcel! Inside were a couple of Anthropologie catalogues which are wonderful and impossible to get here, and a beautiful deep green knitted corsage.                               […]

So, I’ve been fabric shopping and eventually found this lovely deep red silky fabric for my 1940s dress. The print seemed right for the period without being old fashioned and I loved the colour.   The fabric can’t be silk though because it was only £7.50 a metre, so my long sleeved dress will cost just under £30 to make. Bargain. […]

We make our own Christmas cards every year. But we don’t make each one individually. I make one time consuming original picture, then Tony does things with scanners and Paintshop Pro, prints off hundreds and then I have the fun of writing them all.  Fair division of labour?! I’ve been thinking about this years card and thought you might […]

Today Joe woke us with a little poem he had made up and needed me to write down for him before he forgot it. I have to say this is probably the nicest way he has ever woken me up in his entire 6 years. I love that he composed a poem in bed all by himself […]

When I said last night that I wasn’t doing a handmade Christmas this year I really just meant I wasn’t making the gifts.  I am still making all the food.  So today was our Stir up Sunday, just a week late and we stir up the Christmas cake and not a pudding, but never mind. […]

I think I may have said this before but I’m going to say it again anyway: I like to finish as many WIPs as possible in November and December so I can enter the coming year with a clean (ish) slate. It also helps that the patchwork group I belong to have an exhibition every January! Nothing like a deadline to […]