What I don’t fail at though is folding paper stars:

I’ve made lots of these and will be selling them at the christmas fair. Speaking of which…

Click the image to enlarge

If the baking fails at least I’ll have something to sell lol.

So… I’ve been being industrious and I’m making many decorations, planning how my stall will look, planning what cakes and cookies/biscuits I will make. It’s frightening and exciting all at the same time.

I tried photographing my decorations but I just can’t do them justice. I’d have another go but they are all wrapped ready to be sold now. I have to be organised you know.

I must be mad to agree to do it at such short notice but it is Christmads!

All is not lost though! At work we’ve recent had a new shipment of XDA’s which come in rather spiffy magnetic lid boxes. As soon as I saw these boxes I knew there was an oppurtunity for crafting. I’ve taken home 9 already and currently have 2 decorated sets of boxes looking lovely on our cabinet. They are not quite finished but I will show you my progress soon. I also think they would make awesome gift boxes.

Blues abated!

NB.I wrote this yesterday but forgot to publish oops!

I’m back! For like the third day this month, go me! *Waves at Adele faithful commentor XD*

I am making this. It’s Bronwen by Dawn Toussaint (Isn’t that an awesome name?). Only thing is I’m stuck. From the instructions I can not for the life of me figure out where to put her arms. I put them on and they just did not look right. I’ve also used cotton so my doll will be a lot stiffer once finished.

I will persevere and maybe update later!

I then realised that because of the lighter weight fabric it’s not that sturdy. So, until I remedy this that tutorial is on hold. I still love the pirse though. It was going to be a giveaway but my baby sis stole asked if she could have it as soon as it was off the machine. Actually thinking about it now I’m pretty sure I hadn’t whip stitched it closed which explains the poor photo. The fabric there is a gorgeous Micheal Miller print and it’s lined with the wonderful cupcake print from my swap package.

I think they worked quite well together. What I do have for you is another really simple fat quarter project for the flower on the front of the purse. No photo’s as it really is that simple.

You’ll need:

• 1 pretty fat quarter or fabric scraps
• coordinating felt of similar size
• double side fusible (such as wonder-under)
• Scissors
• Iron

First find some suitable templates, you can use a cookie cutter like I did but nothing with fiddly bit’s you might cut off.

Cut a piece of fusible the same size as your fabric. Take your fusible and on the smooth side draw on your templates IN REVERSE, as many as can fit. Can’t stress that part enough…. Especially if you chose lettering.

Now iron to your fabrics wrong side.

Now you want to cut them all out and place them fusible side down on your felt. Iron on firmly.

Now all you do is cut them out and embelish with buttons, ribbons or what ever you like!

Now for the good part!

I’m giving away a little kit containing a 8×8″ piece of pellon 4 4×4″ pieces of fabric, felt and buttons so you can make your own! I’m also including an extra mystery gift.

All you have to do is comment here and then link back on your blog, if you don’t have a blog tell one other person and get them to comment saying so. Get it? Good! I haven’t yet put this bundle together because A I’m PMSing and B the lighting is pants! I will draw the names on Friday/Saturday, assuming there is more than one entry.

This giveaway is inspired by Grosgrain because I love seeing what she gives away and partly cos I have super cute new mailing bags that I just have to send something cute in. I’m hoping to do a small give away fortnightly so tell your friends XD!

I feel a bit less guilty now lol.

Apologies for the blurry pic…

So I spent most of the morning sorting through them and organising them into baggies, (I have a zip lock obsession…) they’re so pretty! I suddenly realised I need a new organisation method for storing buttons. Any ideas? I like to keep each sort seperate if I have a few of them so I don’t have to go hunting or I find the perfect button only to realise, after ransacking the button tub, that there isn’t another.

That said you may have noticed me MIA still. I was really sick, so instead of tempting fate and saying I will catch up I’m just going to say I will add them when I can. I make no promises of when but probably soon.

I am also pretty bad that Monnibo still does not have her prize from my give away. It’s not intentional honest! Just seems that knitting and crochet is beyond me at the moment. If I so much as look at my knitting my hands blister up. I have four legs and half a body done but I may have to give it up and send something else :(. I hope she won’t be too dissapointed

It was great fun! We went on a cupcake hunt in Greenwich, wandered around the shops in Canary Wharf and on the Sunday I went into London and was all touristy! Relaxed and had fun and the PC got fixed woohoo!

Greenwich Observatory

Aren’t those cakes gorgeous?

So then Monday I call pipex. They don’t know what is wrong but they tell me oh it will resolve in 24 to 48 hours. I just had this feeling that it would not get fixed so easy and I was right. A whole week without internet! Only reason I have net now is cos I am using the master tester account mwahahaha! To tide me over though at least I had my awesome swap package!

Check it out!

Had to make some cupcakes. The batter was a bit moist so note to self, when using foiled papers add more flour. Those sparklies are pretty cool huh! Don’t try and eat them alone though tastes like milk protein and your tongue goes funny :|. The most awesome part of my package was the Cup-A-Cake. What a great invention! Especially for people like me who take cupcakes to the movies hehe.

Thank you Hannah! You really got me down to a tee!

Also I know I’ve missed two more fridays but it was not my fault!. I am gonna post them during this week some time AND I will be giving away some of the things I make. So look out for that.

Also I got a blog award!

I think it’s my very first one, awww thank you Machelle of Chopped Tomatoes!!!

The I *heart* your blog award works like this: When awarded, you pick at least 7 other people to award. I haven’t chosen mine yet as I want to dedicate a whole post to it but just wanted to blog about it.

Aside from that I don’t have much to say other than I had an excellent bank holiday. Rearranged my living space (again) to make better use of the space I have with the new furniture. I moved the dining table to the kitchen. It fits, even though I didn’t think it would, in both open and closed sizes. Since I don’t actually eat at it much it’s more helpful in there. Then I organised my craft corner in the living room so most of the crap lovely crafty goodies are hidden behind the door and made a temporary curtain to hide more crap other crafty goodies there that I think are pretty but other people… not so much. I’m a bit anal about my craft supplies and baggy, um, pretty much everything so there’s just mounds of zip lock bags in boxes lol. I plan to make some pretty boxes to put them in when I can figure out how the best way to do that is hehe.

Ooh! and I got a moo cow postcard from my swap buddy! So cute! Almost forgot to blog about it but just looked up and saw it again hehe! Sort of inspired the fat quarter project for this friday (ooh). So this friday you get not one but TWO projects. Make up for missing last weeks. That said I may have to post it Saturday as I will be out and about on Friday :D.

Have a great week, those who started yesterday and those who started today!

I haven’t forgotten the fat quarter project just it’s been so gloomy the past week not much oppurtunity for taking photo’s but I will write it up soon.

For now a recipe…

Sunny cupcakes with chocolate syrup frosting

Yummy!

Cupcakes Ingredients:

• 175g S/R or all purpose Flour (buy super sifted or sift)
• 150g Caster/Superfine Sugar
• 150g Butter or Cake Marg (I use Stork SB)
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• few teaspoons of milk.
• vanilla to taste
• food colouring (I used yellow and red)

Icing Ingredients:

• 60g Milk Chocolate
• 130g butter (130g is about 1 cup)
• 130g icing sugar
• 60ml (1/3 of a cup) double or heavy cream
• just under a teaspoon Maple Syrup
• and I put in a cap of cognac because I’m a drunkard j/k

Method

1. Add the flour, sugar, butter then eggs to your mixer. Mix untill smooth. Add your vanilla and then milk till you have a nice dropping consistency. In hotter climates you will have a loose batter. Add the yellow colouring to the mix and blend well, not too much colouring though you don’t want it flourescent.
2. Now fill a prelined tray with one table spoon full of mix each liner.
3. Now add a little more yellow and a drop of red to get orange if like me you didn’t buy orange colouring… I went for a sunset orange kind of colour.
4. Add another table spoon to each liner. You can be neat and try and get them smooth but I didn’t bother just dumped it on top! The cups should be pretty full.
5. Bake for around 12-15 minutes at 180c gas mark 4 or until well risen and brown.
6. Remove and allow to cool a few minutes before putting on a rack.

Now for the icing.

1. Melt the chocolate and add to the mixer with the syrup. While it’s churning and a little of your sugar then add the softened butter. If your butter is unsalted add a touch of salt.
2. Add the rest of your sugar and mix well!
3. Add the cream bit by bit while the mixer is still on. If needed add a little more sugar to firm it up. I added a little yellow colouring to get the caramel colour.

Two toned!