14 days till Christmas -Edwardian evening

Last night we all went out to our towns Edwardian evening. I don't know if it's just our town that has one of these? Have you ever been to one?? Basically all the shops stay open late and everyone comes and does their Christmas shopping and sing 7 carols at 7 o'clock and everyone is giving away free mince pies (yuck). I would have a lot, a lot of pictures but I dropped my phone 10 minutes after we got there.... so.... I took some pictures on my mums phone but they are not very good.

Things of note that happened:

• At 7 carols, despite a lady saying over the speaker that she DIDN'T want any "other than traditional" versions, my 9 year old sister and co sang about shepherds watching TV....
• Me and my sister burst our brothers eardrums with a very loud rendition of Shakin' Stevens, Merry Christmas everyone. Well not literally, but we had a good go!
• We discovered that Santa hats are very good at soaking up rain water.
• We saw at least 20 people you hardly ever see except for at Edwardian evening and had to   stop to talk to them ALL.
• The college Jazz band played Uptown Funk. It sounded amazing.
• I drank orange juice in a wine glass (?) with a reindeer and an angel....
• I watched this little boys mouth, literally fall open at the street magicians tricks!

16 days till Christmas - Continuous as the stars that shine, and twinkle on the milky way....

 

You will need:

4oz butter or margarine

2oz sugar

6oz plain flour

Icing sugar

Water

Bowl

Spoons

Sieve

Measuring thing

Oven....

How to make:

Cream the butter and sugar then sieve in the flour. Bring together into a mix with or without your hands. Just remember not to handle the mixture too much as this will melt the fat and it will become all sticky and you won't be able to roll it out. I speak from experience. Roll out on a board dusted with flour, cut little star shapes. Stick in the oven and cook for 15 minutes. When they have cooled down, mix up a paste of icing sugar and water and pipe it on the top. Voila.

 

 

See you tomorrow x

17 days till Christmas - Silhouette's, donkeys and masterpieces

We are now starting making our Christmas cards! They are going to be a silhouette of a stable cut out of black card with a star above it on a background of blue? This was all going well drawing it out on a piece of paper until my siblings came in and a space ship, a wizard and a donkey entered the scene.... do not ask. I am currently typing this with the intention of adding photos and a little how to do it yourself later, after I have made the prototype.

Woah, fast-forward, I wrote that about an hour ago. It sounds so hopeful "hey guys I'm gonna produce a masterpiece"!! Yeah right.... this is the prototype I came up with.

It isn't exactly worthy of the Tate. But I will put on instructions on how I did it if anyone wants to have ago and make some proper ones.

To make one card, you will need:
Paper
White card
Pencil
Paintbrush
Scissors
Black paint
Some idea of how to draw

How to make:
On the piece of paper draw a stable outline. You could also draw a star, donkey, palm tree, camels....
Cut out the drawing around the top edge to make a silhouette. Arrange your templates on a piece of folded white card. Paint over the top with black paint. You could do this lightly to show the brush strokes or block out the entire thing in black. Simples.

I will probably never get round to making the 50 odd of these that we need.... but it was fun making this one and if any of you get the chance to have a go, then please tell me how it went!!

18 days till Christmas - Hey, opps, what's been happening and just a few photos....

Hello, hey, sorry *sheepish grin*. I forgot to post yesterday which means I have already failed at the everyday thing.... I kinda knew this would happen at some point! Yesterday I went to a Christingle service which took up most of the morning and then Martin Freeman and David Tenant took my time up (in Nativity 1 and 2) in the afternoon, followed by an early Christmas dinner with guests, the Strictly come dancing results show (Helens out *sad face :(*) and Girl Online the book (expect a review, I'm now on the second one) so can you let me off just this once??!!

Today we went to a National Trust property called Killerton. They had dresses up the house and gardens for Christmas in the theme of Narnia, which was pretty cool. The light was a bit funny and I was taking pictures on my phone so don't expect much, but here are the pictures I got:

 

 

 

A bit of a pathetic effort on my part, don't you agree? I didn't get many Narnia related photos but I promise there was stuff there. I did like the plastic lion though, I thought that was kind of funny!

 

 



 

I took these at a café we "happened across" afterwards!

 

 

Cafes, garden centers, the sky, plastic lions, the usual. See you tomorrow hopefully I will have a proper post for you. What did you do today? x

20 days till Christmas - Christmas trees

So, as you probably gathered from the title.... we got our Christmas tree!! We go to a farm nearby to get our REAL tree, every year and this year was no exception. It's tall, thick, smells gorgeous and most of all, it is now covered in beautiful, shiny, glittery decorations!! I will post a few "make your own decorations" soon as I can, but in the mean time I will finish off this little note of a post with some -even if I do say so myself- pretty cool pictures I took yesterday at the farm.

This was a really lucky photo, we were driving back and my brother was suddenly like "Millie, Millie, look, look, Millie, get your phone, Millie, are you even listening, get your phone!!", and then I had to lean out the window to get it, but I am glad I took it in the end!

Pictures of the tree decorated in all its splendor will follow soon along with some re-vamping decoration ideas and how to's!

21 days til Christmas

It seems obvious that within this lil' Christmas build-up there should be some recipes, so I'm kick starting it off, with an amazingly simple to make recipe. It also uses cheap ingredients and is perfect for a gift (plus you can sneak ingredients, whilst your making it - hey, it's not stealing if you call it chefs perks!). I'm calling them Chocolate ball, circles, round, spherical like puddles/splats. I had a bit of a problem with what to call them, as you can see, but basically they're a flat, chocolate, circle. It feels like a bit of a rubbish way to describe them after all the build-up, but hey ho, they taste nice.

You will need:

Milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate

Cranberries/Raisins

Almonds

-judge how much you use by how many you want to make

How to make:

Melt the milk chocolate in a pan on the hob.

 Pour onto a tray covered with baking paper. I am pouring it into little circles but I have also poured it into one big sheet before and smashed it up later.

Chop up the cranberries/raisins/almonds and sprinkle them on the top of the chocolate before it sets. Then put the tray into the fridge to set.

   When the milk chocolate is solid, melt the white chocolate in another pan and drizzle it in zig-zag's over the milk chocolate circles. When the white chocolate has set, repeat the process with the dark chocolate!

 If you did one big sheet when everything has set smash it up into shards.

 If you are going to give them away, put in a paper bag or glass jar and tie with some ribbon!

22 days till Christmas - Candle holders and Candy Cane nails

Another crafty gifts one today, but BONUS POINT, there’s a cute nail art idea at the bottom

Candle holders

  

You will need:

A jam jar or something of that sort

Candle stubs

Sweet wrappers or cellophane

Glue, scissors, stuff like that….

How to do:

Cut the sweet wrappers or cellophane into little shapes of strips. If you have cellophane, cool, I want your art cupboard, but if not, then, oh poor you, you’re going to have to break into the Christmas sweeties! Stick them around the jar in any pattern you want, just don’t layer it too much because the light won’t shine through as well. Stripes of different colours looks cool, or little hearts and stars in Christmassy colours! Put the candle stub inside the jar. When you light it, all the light will shine through the paper and throw pretty light shapes over the room.

Candy cane nails

So the idea of this is that it looks like the red and green stripes of a candy cane (hence the name).
They are also going to be slightly glittery to Christmasifie it even more!

You will need:
Sticky tape
A pencil
Red nail polish
Green nail polish
Clear polish
Glitter

How to do:
Cut some thin stripes of sticky tape - about a few mm wide - and stick them firmly in a diagonal line across your fingernails with a space in between each stripe. You should be able to fit about 3 on each nail. Paint your nails as you would normally with the red polish. When they have dried gently pull off the sticky tape and you should hopefully have perfect red stripes. Make sure the red stripes are completely dry before sticking more tape BACK OVER the red stripes. Press down as hard as you can so the next colour doesn't leak through. Paint 1 or 2 of the gaps with green nail polish, leaving a few blank to represent the white. Again when these have dried, carefully peel off the tape. You should know have a few red stripes a few green and a few blank/white. Now paint all your nails with clear polish and sprinkle glitter over the top before it dries. You might want to put another layer of clear over the top of the entire lot, to keep the glitter in place.

For my red nail polish I used Rimmel London Double Decker Red 60 Seconds Super Shine.
This comes out in a gorgeously bright and shiny red, that really captures the Christmassy feel!
This range comes in so many cool colours but this was my favourite. Also featured in the pictures is Colin/Roger the cuddly reindeer. We're not entirely sure which to call him, so for now he is both!
Of course this is my own opinions and pictures.

23 days till Christmas - Photo albums

Hello, seems like I only posted this morning.... Oh wait I did....Sorry about that....I honestly did forget to post it yesterday, Mr Darcy and Lizzie Bennet were just too distracting....

This afternoon I've got one of those "how to's" and true to what I said earlier, it is perfect for a Christmas gift. Photo albums. So simple, so effective. Great for relatives or fill one full of selfies of you and your friends!

You will need:

A plain notebook with a hard cover (no ring-binder because you’ll just make things difficult for yourself)

Glue

Scissors

Wrapping paper/pictures from magazines/tissue paper

Ribbon/buttons/stickers/glitter

Pictures of you, your friends or family

How to make:

Step 1: Lay your wrapping paper, or whatever you choose to use as your base pattern, pattern side down on a flat surface and put the notebook open on top of it. Make sure there is enough to cover the pad, then stick glue over both covers of the book. Lay it down on the paper, then open the pad making sure the paper sticks to the spine before you stick the front down.

Step 2: Either cut off the excess or fold it down on the inside. If you cut it off, then you could maybe stick the edges with pretty sticky tape.

Step 3: Now for the fun bit. Decorating! If you could hear me, then you would know I said that in a squeaky/excited/weird voice….yeah,I’m sad…. You could maybe use a favourite photo on the front, or stick strips of ribbon on the front. Cut pictures out of magazines and make a collage or use patterned paper to cut out shapes. You could outline the pictures with buttons or ribbons. Really go wild, make it special and totally unique!

Fill it with pictures of you, your family and friends. You could decorate each page especially with stickers, buttons, pretty, patterned tape or doodle silver stars and rainbow coloured hearts in the corners of the pages. You could make more than one and give them to grandparents or all your friends. Make them unique for each person, changing the pictures or amount of glitter.

I’m sure whoever you give them to, they will absolutely love it!

24 days till Christmas

Okay, so I do know that as of today there is 23 days till Christmas, but I forgot to post yesterday, because of a few things, namely; adventy excitement, pride and prejudice, biology, the great wall of China, dancing and a piano. Don't ask.
So anyway, lucky you guys, there is 2 Christmas posts coming your way today!! 

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Yay, it’s that time of the year again!! And to really get everyone into the spirit of things, I am starting a new series of posts, one on each day up until Christmas eve, each with a different Christmassy activity, to make, do, bake, or see. I might post a few normal posts as well to break things up a little, (don’t wait on it though, chances are I will be way busy – at least in my head -), but from now on expect to see mainly snowmen and snowflakes, jingle bells and jam tarts, winter woollies and wonderlands, I’ve run out of alliterations so I think I will leave it at that!

This first one is on gift giving. Sorting out who you’re going to give gifts to and which you’re going to buy and which you’re going to make.

Sorting out who you are going to give gifts to

It’s sometimes hard to buy gifts for all your friends and family, but if you sort out who you are going to BUY things for and who you are going to MAKE things for, then you can give everyone something lovely but not bust out your savings! It might be helpful to start a Christmas gifts savings pot, so you don’t “accidentally” spend your designated gift money on something that you don’t actually need (I am guilty of this). Here’s a link to a post I did an AGE ago, on making your own Pencil pots which could alternatively be used as a money pot!

Step 1: Write a list of all the people you want to give things to.

Step 2: Divide the list into two parts, BUY and MAKE. For example, say a sibling has asked for a CD. Well you can’t really make that, so put them under the buy heading. Another example, you have an auntie who you don’t know what to get, so put her under the make section and look out for my next posts, to decide what to make her. Keep going like this until all the people on your list are under one column or another.

Step 3: Now write next to each person, what you are going to buy or make them.

Step 4: Add prices or things you need to make the gifts. If you don’t have enough money, then move a few people off the buy list and away to the making party!!

Step 5: Go shopping – always a good plan

Step 6: Now all you have to do is make the homemade gifts and frankly that’s the fun bit!

And remember to always make the wrapping up look beautiful as well, just adding a ribbon or some of that curly wurly, sparkly, string stuff, can make all the difference!

Watch out for my next few posts, because they will be full of sparkly, Christmassy fun, glittery and most probably red, green and gold, homemade Christmas gifts, how to do’s!

Until then sing some “dreamin’ of a white Christmas” and hopefully it will come true!!

Children in Need - Pudsey bear cookies

Not donated yet? What are you waiting for, people, its tonight!! If you really want to donate, but haven't had the time to do your bake sale/sponsored silence/sponsored run/sponsored bathe in custard (bathing in custard, sounds soo fun, doesn't it!) then now's most defiantly the time

There are so many different things you can do to raise money for Children in Need and it is not only REALLY EASY it is also REALLY FUN and on top of that could there be a better cause??

Me and my family made some Pudsey cookies and some spotty cupcakes, which we sold to various friends and neighbours and I have to say, they were DELICIOUS and very, very CUTE!

We asked for donations and guess how much we got!!

Roughly £65!! All for Children in Need!!

A few years ago we did this and got about £40. We bought a special kit, with a Pudsey cutter and bunting and a tea towel and a recipe and what not.... So, we used the cutter again and these came out! The recipe is really simple, just, butter, sugar, flour and cornflour, in a bowl, turn into breadcrumbs, then squish together, roll out and cut out the shapes. The bandanna is ready roll icing with Smarties for the spots! Even if you don't have a bear cookie cutter you could print out a bear picture and cut around it, to make the shape. We made the cupcakes with just a simple plain cake mixture e.g. sugar, butter, flour and eggs with a icing sugar and water icing, again decorated with Smarties! The facial features, for the cookies are just black food dye applied with a cocktail stick or if you have a food pen, that's perfect.

Because children in need is tonight, you might have a bit of problem selling them if everyone has already donated, but you can only try!! Ask your neighbours for donations, you will hopefully get more than asking for a fixed price. Obviously make sure you know the people you are asking!!

Good luck with the cookies and remember even if you don't get much money from the cookies, donate something to children in need, which starts tonight at 7:30!!

Radio waves, kept me company....

Yep it's the next one in this series already! Told you it would be soon.

This is one of those where I tell you what I'm listening to, recommended stuff and general la di da.

Previous Music posts;

    Saw your face in a crowded place....

    Music to try out

Somewhere in Stockholm by Avicci

Awesome. Just love the chorus.

    I hear echos of a thousand screams

    as I lay me down to sleep

    there's a black hole deep inside of me

    reminding me

    I lost my backbone, Somewhere Stockholm

A must listen to. Does it remind you of The Script or is that just me?

When I Was Boy by ELO (Electric light orchestra)

One of the best comeback songs EVER.

Bad Day by Daniel Powter

So calming, feel good stuff. But if you're looking for a laugh, search up the Alvin and the Chipmunks (remember that film? ADORABLE) version and blast it over the entire house!!

Hello Seattle by Owl City

Immortals by Fall out Boy

Theme for Big Hero Six. That film was so sad. I mean seriously, did they have to kill off his brother? But good song, none the less.

Harry Potter jumper

I love this jumper. It says "Yay, I love Harry Potter!!" but in a subtle (ish) way.

I got it in Primark when I was shopping with a friend and I had a hard time deciding whether to buy this or a t-shirt that said on it

    "After all this time?"

"Always".

Only someone who had read the books/watched the films several dozen times would get that!

In the end I got the jumper (obviously) and I'm so glad I did, because not only does it look amazing, it is oversize on me so it is super snuggy as well!

You could wear with just jeans keeping the focus on the symbol or you could wear with a more stand out piece, like a patterned skirt with boots or coloured trousers possibly with a beanie hat.

 That was an fun shopping trip, because not only did I get an completely awesome new jumper, I also discovered Japanese pancakes filled with custard! Off the subject I know, but they were delicious!

Magnus Chase - Pro's and Con's + Trials of Apollo

Yes I know I'm late.... Sorry.... But Rick Riordan has a new book out (yee!!) Magnus Chase and the The Gods of Asgard Book 1: The Sword of Summer. I only got it last week and have been glued to it since to get it finished, but then I was too busy to write this review. But anyway here it is, finally.


Contains some spoilers (however small), so if you haven't read it yet (and are even later then me!)
then you might want to shut this page now. Just warning you.

I will now read through it properly and slowly and probably find tons of stuff that's vital to the story but I missed the first time! I do that kinda thing. I skim read it as quick as I can 'cause I need to know what happens and then I go back and -most of the time- find at least 5 hilarious/useful/generally awesome paragraphs I missed! At least that's what happened with his other books. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure if that will happen this time, cause I found it stop started in coolness.
That doesn't make sense does it! I guess what I mean is that I did like the Sword of Summer (don't get me wrong on that) it's just that I felt it didn't flow properly.I was expecting it to be as good as Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus and it wasn't, so I was disappointed.

I was also expecting to like Sam more, for her to be the next Annabeth and be all awesome and funny and she was, but more in a kinda action girl way.
    My favourite characters defiantly include Hearthstone, TG, Mallory, Blitzen, Magnus and of course Annabeth! I really liked how Magnus was a hero but not in a complete Action, swords, fight fight fight kind of way.

One more thing; I really wish that we could have read the conversation between Annabeth and Magnus at the end! Would have been so funny!

So over all it was cool, not quite awesome but I would definitely recommend. 

But on a even more exciting note, there is a new book set in the Percy Jackson world coming out next May!! I’m not giving spoilers, mainly ‘cause I don’t know any *awkward pause*.
    Though I do know this; it’s about Apollo, Zeus is sending him down to Camp Half Blood as a human and this series (yes, I know series!!) is about Apollo trying to regain his godliness!

There have also been a bucket load of hints about a few “well-known” characters making an appearance- I’m crossing my fingers for Leo to be one of those characters!

    Did anyone else nearly spontaneously combust with excitement when they heard this news??!! Please say yes, otherwise I just made myself sound seriously sad!!

Once again, sorry, I know most of this is old news, but I thought better late then never, hey?