He asked...and I said yes!

I find this time of year really magical, maybe it's all the fairy lights, candles, pretty decorations and get togethers with family and friends that make me feel grateful for all that I have... I've been trying to write this post in my mind for the past few weeks and it has almost been too exciting for me to put it into words... but the time has arrived to write and to share some lovely news with you... Mr C and I are engaged!

He proposed over a delicious brunch on Saturday 12th December! He knew I wouldn't suspect anything would happen, especially as he asked me on his birthday! On the day Mr C proposed we had been together for 7 years 10 months and 2 days... I wasn't sure if the day would ever arrive! I knew that I wanted to spend my life with him (the day I met him...but enough with the soppy!) and I had hoped that one day he would decide it was time to take the next step. Each day it sinks in more and more and I realise we are about to embark on the next part of our journey of life together. I'm so incredibly excited.

We have had a wonderful few weeks of keeping the news to within our closest friends and family. Mr C seemed to time our engagement at a perfect moment when we had arranged to see almost all of our family and friends over the coming weeks. It really has been very special and we still have celebrating to do, tomorrow is the big annual Christmas gathering with the majority of Mr C's family (with family over from Australia this year too) and seeing friends on the run up to the end of the year.

The past few weeks have felt a little surreal... from the day we got engaged, to phoning our parents and telling them our news, to finding the perfect ring in a small family owned jewellers in Clifton that I've always dreamed of getting my engagement ring in. We've been flooded by cards and wonderful messages of congratulations. I've received some great advice from dear friends who have got married recently and know how I'm feeling right now. I'm still a little overwhelmed and a little shocked. I have moments of welling up with happy tears, as I read beautiful messages in cards from best friends and receive thoughtful gifts...I think that things are still very much sinking in. We are both really happy and getting engaged has created some irreplaceable and totally wonderful new memories of Christmas time and the month of December for us both. I'm enjoying the giddy feeling and trying to remember and capture the moments.

At the moment we are not too sure when we are getting married but hope to in the next year or so. I have started to think of a few ideas for the big day, pinning ideas on secret boards in Pinterest, and thinking about all things handmade that I can create for our day that symbolise the moments of our lives together so far. I'm sure that a few handmade wedding ideas will pop up over on here in time.

I hope that you are all having a restful Christmas break and wish you a fantastic 2016. See you in the new year!

Life at the moment

Well, December flew by didn't it! I can't believe that I have finally managed to sit down and write for the first time in over three weeks. It's been a busy month!

Life at the moment for me has been about...

Finishing...work and taking time off for two whole weeks, to say that this year has been a challenge feels like an under statement. It's been the busiest, most challenging and toughest year of my working career. A year of staying strong and just keeping going. I'm now enjoying a well earned break...

Singing...along to Christmas tunes each day

Preparing...our home for Christmas. We bought a real Christmas tree this year and love all of the red and white scandi style decorations I've collected over the years

Making...a few new Christmas additions to our decorations this year, a cushion and a draught excluder.

Watching...and admiring Mr C's woodworking skills. Mr C has been creating alcove shelving, a cupboard and kitchen shelving during December. I'm super proud and impressed, it's made our home feel so lovely just before the big day

Spending...quality time with our family during the Christmas week

Hosting...Christmas Day for friends! The day was brilliant with a delicious spread of food cooked by Mr C

Tidying...our spare room and corners of our home ready for our friends staying at Christmas and New Year

Receiving...parcels, lovely cards and gifts. I didn't have time or head space this year to do cards, we decided to donate to a charity very close to our hearts.

Relaxing...under a gorgeous new blue herringbone blanket, it has been on my wish list for quite a while.

Reflecting...on the past year

Planning...and thinking about what I hope for during 2015

Loving...the twinkling fairy lights and glow of candle light at dusk

Documenting...the month with Ali Edward's December Daily process and Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas

Updating...my Project Life album and catching up with the few missing weeks I haven't quite finished

Smelling...our tree each morning and lighting scented candles filling our home with delicious smells

Reading...blogs and magazines that have been piling up high over the past two months

Embracing...December for all that it brings

Kissing...Mr C under the mistletoe


I hope you have all had a lovely Christmas break and wishing you all a happy new year!

Personalised Homemade Filled Christmas Bauble :: a wedding gift

Last weekend Mr C and I attended the fabulous wedding of our special friends Chris and Clare. Congratulations to the both of you, it was a truly beautiful day! As part of the celebrations we were asked to bring a bauble for the Christmas tree at their wedding. Chris and Clare wanted to have a set of decorations to put on their own tree year after year to remind them of their special day. It's such a lovely idea!

I wanted to make something personalised and after a bit of thinking I decided to create a personalised filled glass bauble as our contribution to their Christmas tree decorations. I decided that a personalised Christmas bauble would be a lovely gift and that it would enable me to get a bit crafty too! I wanted to make something that was simple and quick to make and to use my Christmas crafty stash.

I asked Clare about what types of colours she would like on her tree and she said she was quite traditional, so I decided to make a filled bauble with a silver, gold and white theme.

I bought a clear glass bauble with a removable top so that I could fill it with whatever I wanted. The size of the top of the bauble is quite small and so it does limit what you can add to it, however it worked perfectly with what I had already planned.

I assembled my Christmas crafting supplies and pulled out a few things from my stash that I thought would work nicely. I found some table confetti in my crafty stash, and selected some gold sequins, silver hearts, gold stars, silver snowflakes and the all important 'Just Married' confetti. I loved the combination, it was super pretty and suited the event and the ongoing use of their bauble.

I added some of the confetti to the bauble and filled it up so the bottom of the bauble was covered.

I wanted the bauble to be personalised for Clare and Chris so that it felt even more of an original gift. I could've added something to the outside but decided to be adventurous and see how I could represent them and their wedding day inside the bauble.

I decided to stamp their names and the year onto card strips. I found some card in my stash, one side of the card was gold and the other white. I cut the card into two strips each were just under 1cm wide so that they could fit easily into the top of the bauble, and cut the length slightly longer than the circumference of the bauble.

Using my clear stamps and gold ink I stamped their names on the white side of the card strips. I stamped 'Chris & Clare 2014' twice on one strip and on the second strip I stamped 'Clare & Chris 2014' twice. I wanted to symbolise both of them equally in their marriage and wanted the strips to symbolise two interconnected rings.

I added a few heart stamps around the wording to add a bit of extra detail.

I let the strips dry and started to assemble the rest of the bauble. To add a bit of extra gold to the bauble I found a small piece of thin gold tinsel with stars on it in my supplies box and decided that it would make a nice feature of the bauble.

I added the tinsel to the bauble...

and then added in the card strips to the bauble one at a time so that they would form two interconnected rings. This part was quite fiddly to get them exactly in the right place and took a bit of patience and moving around. To help the strips fit into the bauble I curled the card a little so that it would fit into the sphere of the bauble and sit flush against the glass.

Before adding in the second card strip I added the remaining confetti so that some of it fell into the tinsel so it wouldn't all be at the bottom of the bauble.

Adding the second strip of card was quite tricky and after a bit of giggling around I managed to get both strips into place. You can see in the photo the two card strips criss crossing over each other just off centre of the bottom of the bauble.

Next I added the removable silver top back onto the bauble and replaced the silver hanging thread with a piece of gold ribbon from my craft stash. I cut the ends of the ribbon in a pretty v shape so that it finished it off. 

Tah dah! 

I really really loved creating a personalised wedding bauble for Chris and Clare and hope that love it too. To keep the bauble protected I bought a small box and added my own handwritten brown luggage label with gold pen and added a piece of gold ribbon and slipped it into the box so Chris and Clare will be able to remember who it was from for years to come.

I have a few ideas for a bauble that I am going to make for our tree this year. If you've followed my blog before you'll know I love to decorate using red and white. I am planning to make a filled bauble for our own tree this year and I'll show you the final bauble later on this month!

I hope you are all enjoying the first week of December!

Christmas Table Decorations

It's Christmas Eve and I've been busy pulling together a few simple table decorations for tomorrow. I've used empty jars and added a tea light, ribbon and a few star sprinkles in the bottom to provide some low level light on the table. I've made individual place settings using a few Christmas tree off cuts, artificial berries and some red and white gingham ribbon.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas. I hope you all have a fantastic day.

Making my own Christmas Cake

This year I decided to start a few new traditions and making a Christmas cake was one of them. At the end of November I told you about the start of the cake making process. I used Delia Smith's Classic Christmas Cake recipe found in one of my Mum's Delia cook books and also online at Delia Online.

I soaked the fruit for a few days in brandy and then made the cake, following Delia's instructions of lining the cake tin correctly and protecting the cake with brown paper. I decided to make the cake on a Monday evening and didn't realise how long it would take to prepare each step, especially the lining of the tin! With four hours cooking time let's just say it was a late night to bed that evening!

But the late night was worth it as this is what came out of the oven. The smell of Christmas!

The cake was then left in its baking parchment and wrapped up carefully in foil for a few weeks. Only being opened to feed the cake each week with brandy and then a little fresh orange juice at the end.

On Friday I unwrapped the cake for the big reveal. During the weeks previously I had collected together everything I needed to finish and ice the cake.

I decided that I wanted to ice the cake using Royal icing on top of a very thin layer of marzipan. To help me I followed this decorate a Christmas cake with royal icing how to video from Waitrose to see how to do it.

After leaving the icing to set a little I sprinkled the cake with pearly hundreds and thousands and some edible silver stardust. I was thinking about adding some silver balls but decided to leave it as it was.

I wanted the top of the cake to look a bit like little snow drifts...

I love how the stardust brings the cake to life, it looks just like twinkling snow!

I then added a thick ribbon I found in a local craft shop to surround the cake to give it more of a Christmassy feel.

I'm looking forward to testing out the cake and tucking in! This is definitely a tradition I want to keep going and perfecting for years to come. Let's hope it tastes good!

Our home at Christmas

During the month of December I have gradually added more Christmas decorations and touches to our home. Mr C and I are going to be at home for the majority of Christmas this year, and rather than being with family on Christmas day, we are spending it with friends. We are waking up on Christmas morning in our own home for the first time so I wanted to make things a little more special for us. I'm so used to seeing my parent's and Mr C's parent's gorgeous decorations and Christmas touches in their homes over Christmas that I wanted to make our home feel a little different. I wanted to start our own new traditions during December, and put a little bit of extra Christmas joy into our home. I've shown you our tree, so here are the other touches of Christmas round our home this year, a mix of old and new.

In early Autumn I bought these NOEL letters from poshgraffitti.com. I love the arrangement with my corkscrew hazel twigs that I sprayed white earlier this year. The wooden letters are a real investment piece that I will have forever and will always enjoy displaying. I've waited a long time to get them and they are really worth it.

This week I bought a small poinsettia to add a traditional Christmas plant to our home. I've never had one before, I've only seen large poinsettia plants and we don't have any where to display it in all it's glory. This small one from Waitrose is perfect and looks really pretty on our blanket box. I love the delicate leaves and elegant shapes they create.

I normally add this red snowflake decoration to our tree but this year I wanted to make more of a feature of it and remind myself of a project I wanted to make. One of my earliest memories of primary school was making paper snowflakes. I love the intricate shapes that you can cut from paper. This year I was planning to create white crochet snowflakes for our home that I could display every year in our window. However time has run away with itself and the project hasn't started. Hopefully by next Christmas I will have the crochet skills and confidence to tackle the project.   

This year I was kindly given some holly from a friend's garden that I have added to the top of our mirror. I love the natural textures from the wood and holly with the pretty white cotton lights.

This year I decided to invest in a wreath for our front door. I have always admired wreaths on doors, it sets the scene and welcomes you in from the cold. For a number of years I have wanted to make my own wreath but I decided to take the pressure off and invest in a beautiful Gisela Graham berry wreath with a reindeer wreath hook. I added the gingham bow myself. I love it and it makes me smile every time I enter and leave the flat. Next year I may add some little bits of ivy and a few sprigs of holly to make it a little different. It is something I will always display in our home, even if in a couple of years I decide to make my own.. 

This week I added my Christmas cross stitch to the wall above our tree. I finished stitching it last December and wrote about it in a blog post. I followed a pattern from CrossStitcher magazine (issue 244) and this is the second year I have displayed it in our home. I always had the intention to frame it in a white frame and mount, however have grown to love it being displayed in a plain embroidery hoop. This year I added a gingham ribbon bow to the top of the embroidery hoop. I love this handmade decoration, it reminds me that these special handmade projects really add an individual touch to our home.

This week I'm decorating my Christmas cake and have spent quite a bit of time this month looking for cake tins that will suitable to store and transport it in. I treated myself to these gorgeous Emma Bridgewater tins in the Starry Skies pattern, which is one of my favourite patterns (along with the Pink Hearts!). I wanted storage that I loved, that would match our home, and be really practical to store the cake, my home made mince pies and future baking projects for many years to come.

When I lived at home one of the traditions my Mum and Dad started was to use Christmas patterned plates. I decided earlier in the Autumn that I wanted Mr C and I to have some special Christmas themed plates of our own to start our own tradition for December. I wanted to have something that we could use throughout December and so after putting away money each month I invested in some more Emma Bridgewater pottery (I'm a little bit addicted!). I bought us two mugs, two plates and a Christmas tea towel in the Christmas Town pattern. I love them and use them everyday.

I love all of our touches that we have gradually added to our home over the past month. This year is a different Christmas for us so I wanted us to use this time to start making our own traditions and make even more of an effort around our home.

I've used my week off before Christmas to get organised. The cards are posted, the gifts are wrapped, mince pieces are made and the house is tidy. I'm planning to ice our Christmas cake today and thi is the last big job to complete. I hope to spend the run up to Christmas making a few handmade things for our home, preparing a few things for Christmas day and continuing with my December Daily album that I started as a new tradition this year.

I hope that you are having a good December and are enjoying your Christmas decorations and Christmas touches around your home.

Christmas Preparations

It really is beginning to feel like Christmas is almost here. Work is now finished for the year for me, I don't have to go back to the office until 2nd January! It will be the longest holiday I have had from work for some time so I'm hoping to make the most of it. I haven't had a week off since May so I really need the time to catch up on things, relax and reflect.

It has been a very busy December with lots of good, and sadly many not so good things happening. I've been trying to keep myself extra busy to take my mind off things and I am trying to stay positive and be my normal happy self. Being creative and having projects to focus on has been a great way to escape.

I started planning things a little earlier this year and have achieved almost everything I wanted to do. However there are a few projects that are not started or finished but I'm not going to get stressed about them. I have lots of lovely things planned for my time off to keep me occupied and busy. I'm hoping to dedicate some time to being creative, seeing friends and family, catching up on the blog posts I've been planning to share with you and planning for the new year.

I wanted to start some new traditions or bring back old traditions this year to make things a little different. Over the next week or so I will reveal these traditions for this years Christmas period including my advent calender, Christmas decorations, Christmas cards, how I'm documenting my Christmas, my Christmas cake and Christmas makes. I hope you'll join me on the run up to Christmas.

Making a Christmas Cake

This year I have decided to start a few new December traditions. I will tell you more about these in December but I wanted to share with you my first new tradition a little early so that you may join in on the fun too!

For very many years I have wanted to make my own Christmas Cake. Mr C doesn't like fruit cake so I have been reluctant to put the effort in. However this year I really wanted to try making one as a new tradition. I wanted something I could enjoy over a cup of tea and when my friends come to visit. I know I should have made this about a month ago, but things have been busy and suddenly the end of November has crept up on me!

After a lot of research of Christmas cake recipes I decided to use Delia Smith's Classic Christmas Cake recipe which you can find on Delia Online. This is the same recipe as the Traditional Christmas Cake recipe in Delia's Book of Cakes (1988). I have grown up with Delia and have always had good results with her recipes. I thought I should use this for my first Christmas cake and then maybe try a different recipe next year.

This week I started the first stage of making the Christmas cake, the overnight soaking of the ingredients in brandy. I've added the currants, sultanas, raisins, glacé cherries and mixed candied peel to my big Mason Pearson mixing bowl and poured over the brandy. I gave it a little stir and covered it. I'm going to give it a little stir each day to ensure the brandy is evenly absorbed. I'm planning to make the Christmas Cake this weekend so the ingredients have a few days to really absorb the alcohol.

I'm hoping that with a few weeks left before Christmas I can keep the cake moist by adding extra liquid and have a little time to plan how I'm going to ice it!

If you fancy starting a new tradition this Christmas a home made Christmas cake could be a great project to try.

Handmade Christmas gift tags

The presents are all wrapped and ready to go under the tree...Christmas day has almost arrived! The only thing missing are the gift tags. This year I decided to embark on a number of craft projects, one of these included making my own gift tags. I decided I didn't want to buy any this year as I had plenty of plain tags I could use and things I could use to embellish them. I wanted a handmade look but something that would coordinate with the gift wrap I had chosen and something that was quick to create.

Using a few simple items in my craft stash I added some Christmas style washi tape to plain white and kraft tags and used a little Happy Christmas stamp and red ink. On a few of the tags I replaced the existing twine with some festive red and white bakers twine. On a few of the white tags I punched a snowflake shape. Hopefully this will give you some inspiration to make your own tags!

After a few weeks of crafting I feel I've really caught the Christmas crafting bug!

Handmade Patchwork Christmas Stocking

A Christmas stocking was something I had when I was younger and was a real tradition. I've been lusting after having one for a few years now so I decided the make one with my new patchwork skills that I taught myself earlier this year. I decided to set myself a bit of a sewing Christmas challenge and make one if I had time. This weekend I've been tied to my sewing machine, determined to make the patchwork stockings in time for Christmas day. This morning I finished one for Mr C and one for myself, I cant tell you how delighted I am with them.

I used a variety of red and white fabrics, ribbon, red ric-rack and big green buttons to create added detail to the top. Both stockings are lined with red gingham fabric and finished off with some pretty decorative stitching at the top.

I'm so excited to fill the stocking up with a few things that I've bought Mr C and start our new Christmas stocking tradition together. I will bring you a 'how to make' post in a week or so. I'm off to chill out before the big day.

Have a very merry Christmas and enjoy the holidays.

Handmade Christmas Cards

Over the past few weeks I've been making my own Christmas cards. I sourced some lovely papers, embellishments and clear stamps to use. I had the chance to use all of my scrap booking and paper crafting supplies to create the cards. I used a scalloped paper punch, circle punch, some gorgeous Christmas stamps from Elle's Studio, buttons tied with red and white bakers twine and some wood veneer snowflakes from Studio Calico and a variety of washi tapes.