North Pole Snow

Another day ticked off our advent calendar… (Actually in our case it’s another chocolate for Shannon from her little “Advent house” and another tiny Lego goodie to build for Reece from his Star Wars Lego Advent calendar) :0)

I promised the recipe for the North Pole Snow (sherbet) I made to go along with the Reindeer lollipops yesterday.

North Pole Snow (sherbet Christmas treats)

• 1 cup of icing sugar
• around 1/4 teaspoon citric acid * (or to taste – a little at a time. I added the citric acid to taste when I made mine as I made a lot for the market)

Mix together well.

*Citric acid is available at supermarkets/ baking supply shops.

*Here’s the printable label I made:

click on label for downloadable A4 printable sheet

• Print out the label sheet onto A4 cardstock, cut out the labels.
• Glue each label onto the front of a small zip-lock bag with a glue gun.
• Fill the bag with the North Pole Snow and delight tiny people with a bag of snow and a reindeer lollipop. The kids love dipping the lollipops in the sherbet!

I also made a few Christmas trees with this design from the Silhouette Online store. They are really cute and easy to make – especially once my Silhouette had cut them out for me.

Each tree had a bag of the North Pole Snow inside and instead of gluing the label to the bag, I attached it as a tag to the top of the tree at the closure.

PS: I can’t guarantee your entire kitchen won’t be covered in fine sticky ‘snow’ – especially if there are little people involved in making these!

TIP : To assist in getting the snow into the bags, I used a small funnel – much easier (and less messy) than using a spoon.

My little entrepreneur selling at the Christmas market at school :

 

*I cannot recall where I got the little snowman image from. I coloured it myself, but the design is not my own. If it is yours , please do let me know so that I can provide credit to you. Or, if you would rather I do not use it here in my free label printable, please advise.

December!

I know, I haven’t blogged for ages, but November passed by in a flash!

This past month consisted of hot sunny days mixed together with a whole lot of school exams, a splash of school Christmas market day, and a good dollop of everyday life. Finished off beautifully with the thought that Reece’s school is now finally closed for the year and Shannon doesn’t have to go, except to get her report card next week.

In between the monotony of helping the kids studying for their exams, I also got to be a little creative! After the exams, Reece had a market day at school where they have to sell goodies – preferably with a Christmas theme.

Reece was (naturally) more interested in how much money he would make. I was all for the ‘making’ but not in his definition of ‘making’ - I saw it rather as an opportunity to be creative!

So here’s what I made:

Reindeer Lollipops

These turned out so well that I want to share how I made them:

Shopping list:

• lollipops (Fizz Pops) for the reindeers.
• brown paper
• raffia, string or ribbon
• wiggly eyes
• mini red pompoms
• darker brown cardstock for antlers

How to:

1. Cut squares of brown paper – big enough to cover a lollipop. (I’d say around 10-12cm square/ 4 inches square). I couldn’t find brown paper, so I had some brown paper packets lying around and used those.
2. Cover each lollipop in brown paper and tie at the base of the sucker with raffia.
3. Glue on the nose and eyes – I like to glue these all close together as it gives the reindeer a cute expression.
4. Cut out and glue on the antlers** 

Done!

Note: You can always draw on eyes and a nose with pens or paint if you don’t have wiggly eyes or pompoms. My pompoms were part of a package in a rainbow of colours- I just picked out all the red ones.

** I used a Silhouette die cut for the antlers from this cute Reindeer treat box from Pebbles in my Pocket , but you could easily draw similar ones out onto cardstock and cut them out by hand. They are about 1 1/2 inches high. You glue them on slightly to the back of the lollipop ‘head’ – almost like a headband.

I selected just the antlers and copied as many as I could onto an A4 sheet and cut them with my Silhouette.

How to separate the antlers from the treat box design:

Select the whole design, then click on “Object”, then select “ungroup”, then delete each of the other pieces of the design except the antlers. Move the image to the top left corner, then duplicate the antlers in rows.

PS: I’m certainly no expert at the Silhouette software, I just plod along on my own, occasionally using the ‘Help’ function and eventually figure it all out.

 

I’ll be back tomorrow with the recipe for making “North Pole Snow” which the kids could dunk their reindeer lollipops in. There’s also a free printable label…..

Season’s Greetings

Just a quick “Hi” from me! ‘Tis the season for craziness and lots of fun and family time, so I’ve not been around at my blog much of late. I thought I’d share a quick collage of Christmas 2010 in our house.

Hope you have all had a fabulous holiday season! We certainly have - and after all the tinsel, wrapping paper, food and fun, I can honestly say I’m ready for the New Year. Today I went and bought some plastic containers to pack away some old toys (which we want to keep), and I plan on sorting through my kids rooms… yip it’s my New Year “Spring Clean” time! So I’m off to do some sorting and storing…

Chat soon,

Cookie Mix Gift Jar and free printable labels

Hi there!

I have had internet problems of late- I ran out of bandwidth just before month-end and decided that buying another gig would be wasted as it would not be used by the end of the month – so hence no postings for a while from me!

I also have been running around buying new school clothes for next year as my kids are both changing schools. On top of that it’s been the end of the school year, so it’s been a run-around as well as shopping up a storm for shorts, t-shirts and swimming costumes as we’re off on a seaside holiday (more about that later).

Anyway…. I saw this gorgeous idea over at Skip to my Lou a while back and decided I simply had to make it.

Cookie Mix Gift Jar

Here’s my version of it. I used my own recipe which a friend of mine gave me around two years ago. These biscuits are yummy- very much like shortbread. The big “plus” is that they are so easy to make!

The jar all decorated and filled with the dry ingredients for the cookies:

A close-up of the instructions hanging from the jar:

I  crocheted flower for decoration:

The top of the jar…

You will need :

• Dry Ingredients (see the recipe below)
• 2 Ribbons for tying around the jar (I used 2 different ones- one for around the ‘tummy’ of the jar, the other for around the lid.
• A length of jute or string to tie the instructions label onto the jar.
• hole punch
• Glue gun (for gluing on the flower embellishment).
• Modge Podge – for gluing on the labels.
• Sponge brush applicator for the modge podge.

The Recipe:

Place the following ingredients in a 1 litre jar:

(In South Africa- you can buy a 1 litre Consol jar at pick n Pay)

• 2 cups cake flour
• 1/2 cup corn flour
• 165ml icing sugar
• 1/2  teaspoon salt

Close the lid.

• Now print out these printable labels onto an A4 sheet of lightweight cardstock (for 2 jars).

(click on image to enlarge)

* You can also access the printable sheet via my Google Docs account HERE

• Cut out the labels. I used a 2 1/2 inch round punch (Fiskars) for the round labels.
• Use the sponge brush applicator to apply a thin layer of modge podge to the “Santa’s Cooki Mix” circle label and apply to the lid of the jar.
• Measure ribbon for around the ‘tummy’ of the jar. I applied a little modge podge to the ends and adhered it to the jar to keep the ribbon in place before applying the front label. (The ends are hidden under the bracket label).
• Apply modge podge to the bracket label “A jar full of Christmas” and adhere to the front of the jar over the ribbon.
• Tie another length of ribbon around the jar lid.
• Punch a hole in the top of the instructions label and tie it to the jar with jute or string.
• Add a crochet flower, silk flower or any other embellishment you like using a hot glue gun.

I have halved the original recipe to be able to fit all the ingredients into the 1 litre jar. Here is the original recipe which is for a larger batch of cookies if you want to make some for yourself:

• 4 cups cake flour
• 1 cup corn flour
• 1 ^1/3 cup icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Mix all dry ingredients together.
• Add 500g butter and 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• combine well.
• Roll into a sausage shape, cover with cling film. Refrigerate for 15min-1/2 hour.
• Remove from fridge and slice into 5mm slices. (If too thin, they break easily).
• Bake at 180°c for 15 minutes

These make great hostess gifts, teacher gifts – or simply a little Christmas gift for friends and neighbours.

I will be away on holiday for the next week. We’re flying to the Seychelles tonight (at 23h55!!) for a week of summer sun, crystal clear turquoise sea and beautiful white beaches. It’s a 5 hour flight so tomorrow morning we arrive in Seychelles at 6am (local time- they are an hour ahead of South Africa). We’ve got our snorkelling gear and sunblock all packed and ready to go, so you won’t be hearing from me for a while.

 

 

 

Linking to :

Chat soon,

A little Christmas Spirit

I have been seeing lovely floating snowflakes drifting down in blogland of late. Don’t you think it’s cute? It’s a great way to add a little Christmas spirit to your blog.

Now we have HOT Summer here over Christmas, but I still love snowflake ornaments on my tree and love the idea of a white Christmas. So to get me as close to a white Christmas as I’m gonna get this year- I visited this site:

http://bloggerstop.net/2008/12/add-falling-snow-flakes-flowers-leaves.html

And followed the very simple instructions for adding the widget to my blog. LOVE these little hints of Christmas floating all over my blog. Don’t you/

It has been so cold here this week, one could almost imagine that you've been transported to the Northern Hemisphere! Since Tuesday the temp hasn't gone above around 15 degC! It has been raining and the wind has howled. Simply not the usual hot Summer weather we're used to!

So weird how the weather is so erratic.

With the advent of the cold weather, I have been getting in the mood for Christmas decorating. I love the coziness of Christmas and this weather makes me want to cozy-up the house with Christmas goodies. So I think this weekend we may just start hauling out the tree and ornaments.

Our annual neighbourhood Santa sleigh begins on Monday. We secretly drop off a gift for our kids at the office and then Santa drives around all the streets on a light-festooned sleigh (pulled by a pick up) delivering the gifts. They play Christmas Carols at full volume so you can hear the sleigh from all over the neighbourhood. The kids look forward to it every year and Reece has been asking when Santa's coming for the last month. (Shannon is old enough to know that this is all mom's doing, but boy she still wouldn't miss it for anything!)

I've also been digi scrapping a lot lately since I'm now a CT member for Weeds & Wildflowers. I SO love their products! They are just so unusual and doodly - so cute.

Here are a few of my latest ones...

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"

My favourite time of the year!

I really am starting to get the feeling of Christmas now. Even though our local hypermarket has been beautifully adorned for Christmas and has had Christmas goodies for sale since the beginning of October (can you believe that?), I haven't actually 'felt' that Christmassy feeling until now.

I'm already planning the decor for our Christmas table and am looking forward to all the preparations and anticipation of this wonderful time.

Most of the stores now have loads of sparkling, tinselling ornaments out for us to drool over. And what a choice! Some are elegant, others old-fashioned (love those!), others are just plain christmassy cute (love those too)!

There are even the most adorable adornments for our feline and canine friends at our local PicknPay - I am simply going to have to buy a couple for our furry friends at home! (mmm - wonder what a duck would look like with a Santa hat- now that's a thought!)

This year I want to make Christmas loads of fun for the kids. When we had a family Halloween get-together this year, I found a fantastic site that generates the cutest cards, bingo games etc etc. I printed out a Halloween Bingo game and played it with them on Halloween, they enjoyed it so much that I think this Christmas, I will print out a cute Christmas one. They'll love that.

Take a peek here for a free Christmas Bingo card generator.

Reece is really looking forward to Santa's sleigh arriving in our neighbourhood this year. Each year, in mid-November, Santa visits each street in our Estate. He rides on a Christmas light-festooned sleigh pulled along by a bakkie (pick-up). The kids love it as Santa's sleigh is accompanied by wonderful melodious Christmas carols which can be heard all over the Estate. So for a few weeks, the spirit of Christmas is sprinkled around our estate as santa drives around spreading christmas cheer and handing out much anticipated gifts (Note to self -drop kids' gifts off at the office by Wednesday!).

In our previous home, we used to go crazy with Christmas lights. I loved decorating the outside of the house with magical twinkling lights. The estate we lived in had a 'switch-on' day when we would all light up our homes for the first time that season. Even now, the tradition continues there.

I plan to decorate our home here with lights this year. The kids are getting older each year and I would love to inspire them to continue with our little family traditions, albeit how simple. I got out of the habit of decorating with lights outside purely because this house is SO much bigger and very spread out which makes it so much more difficult to decorate. This year will be different- I am determined to transform our home into a memorable magical place!

Do you like my title at the start of my post? Then I have a surprise FREEBIE for you!

You can grab some cute digital (& printable) Christmas clocks HERE. Hope you enjoy them!