Late Christmas....

For various reasons we had our Christmas day on Sunday and it was a day worth waiting for.  Such fun.  My son cooked a wonderful rib of beef and I used this recipe  from the Ree, Pioneer Woman for the all important Mashed Potatoes.I don't usually do cooking on this blog but I found a recipe some time ago and I wanted to test it out before I shared it here.  It saves that nuisance moment of stopping production and finding  the potato masher, a bowl etc. when you are trying to bring the big meal to fruition and best of all it makes delicious, fluffy mashed potatoes. The seasoning she uses is obviously an american brand but I found this which explained what it consists of, made some up in an empty spice jar, worked a treat. Incidentally I made the mashed carrot and turnip the day before as well and that worked too.
This is Ree's picture

 So here we are the last day of the year, my mind is making resolutions but I will be suprised but happy if all (or any) actually bring results.If you look at my Pinterest Tutorials page you will see some of my dreams.

Thank to all who have visited and commented this year.. My very Best Wishes for the New Year to all..

Christmas came early......

Yesterday it was the monthly meeting of The Girls and we were to have our pre-Christmas meeting. Unfortunately, one friend had the current cold but bless she did send us a little gift. It is now on the tree.

The little tin contain threads. 

 

The other gifts I received were this tool which I never seen before.. We will be playing with this next time we meet.

 and this wonderful ornament of my initial in mosaic it stands about 9 inches high.. Clever girl.

My present to them was this

 

which I hope will give them some fun.

Our hostess for the day had gone to great pains to create the right atmosphere right on the doorstep.

 

As you can imagine, we fell through the door in fits of laughter.  

Lots of chatter, some lovely food and not to over tax ourselves we

made one of these. Tutorial here

Great day with a very special little group who have given me so much pleasure.

i......

So here my last page for the Craft Barn Alphabet challenge. I spent a long time trying to find a word .....then the light bulb, of course...INSPIRATION......that is what this challenge has done all year.  You start with the letter prompt and than a browse through the dictionary and then suddenly an idea.Then the fun of working out how you are going to interpret it. But where did it come from, who knows?.  Nature?  Memory?  Media?.....it is a wonderful mystery.
 I painted a background, using Fresco paints, which I hope represents air.  I made a digital collage from my photographs and then cut out the question mark.  I had been going to add other words but liked the suggestion of mystery. So

with tag

Finally, I have been mounting the pages in an A4 Landscape spiral bound book. A couple of months into the challenge I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like. Every time I die cut letters for the word I saved the leftovers.  I started about a month ago, adding layer on layer, so this is the result. Quietly pleased.

I have really enjoyed this challenge.  I found the two week interval was just enough to give you a slight deadline pressure but gave you  time to think and was not so long as to make you forget, which has happened to me in the past with monthly challenges. The other thing I liked was the uncertainty of which letter would be next or what restriction would be put on it.  So well done and thank you to the team at The Craft Barn

x......

Last two letters of the  Craft Barn Alphabet Challenge i and x. " i" had so many entries in my old dictionary so I went with x first(only one page).  A word I didn't know (there were quite a few) "xylograph" which means a wood engraving,  I have two Indian wood block so I used them on he background and then I copied the wood engraving from the wikipedia entry. Found some paper that looked a bit woodlike for the word.  That has been one of the things I have loved about this challenge is finding a use for things that I have had for years.

and with tag

December..part 2

The John Lewis windows. A hair hare..

A towel turkey..

A dyson donkey

and

a polar bear

amd penguins

and of course and owl

all very ingenious.

Another bit of a disappointment at Liberty

and finally to Fortnums where there was this domestic goddess

some carol singers

and finally Father Christmas

I really hope I have the chance to go up again after dark as the street lights looked as though they would be quite a sight.

December...

..now it is time to think about Christmas.  With dire warnings of freezing weather for later in the week I decided to pop up to London and have a look at the Christmas windows.  I had heard that Harrods had gone to town this year.  The windows represent the carriages of a very luxurious train.

 

 

 

Not camp at all.  One end of the store had a woodland scene. With Golden Owls...well it is Harrods.

 and these  for my friend who would have wanted to take them home

I found Selfridges, though in a worthy cause a little disappointing so we will move on down to John Lewis which I found highly entertaining. Blogger having a bit of a fit so I will add later.