Happy Hogmanay!!

It's Hogmanay. That's what we, in Scotland, call the last day of the year.

I thought it might be interesting to see how well I did with the "intentions" I set up for myself back on the 1st of January. Here's the list of 11 for 2011:

1. Use up lots of the fabric that is piled in my sewing room.
2. Use up lots of the knitting wool that is in various baskets in various rooms.
3. Take a photo of our back garden every Sunday.
4. Eat less and move more.
5. Read lots.
6. Sew more. (This will help with intention number 1!)
7. Crochet and knit more. (This will help with intention number 2!)
8. Use my cook books more - for baking and main meals. (This won't help with intention number 4!)
9. Blog more.
10. Go for more walks.
11. Take more photos.

So, how did I do? Let's see:

1. Use of lots of the fabric that is piled in my sewing room.
Well I did use up lots ... but I also bought more. :oD

2. Use up lots of the knitting wool that is in various baskets in various rooms.
See the answer to number 1! :oD

3. Take a photo of our back garden every Sunday.
I did it every Monday - or sometimes later - but I did it for all the weeks we were here.

4. Eat less and move more.
I'm not sure about this one but I just checked and I'm 3kg lighter than I was on the 1st of January. That's 6.6 lbs. Go me!!

5. Read lots.
I've read 105 books this year and might even get number 106 done before the bells! Last year I read 99 so, I've done this one. Go me!!

6. Sew more.
I haven't counted anything here but I certainly feel like I've sewn more so I'm counting this one as done. :o)

7. Crochet and knit more.
Same answer as number 6.

8. Use my cook books more - for baking and main meals.
Mmmm. I don't know if I did this one or not.

9. Blog more.
I posted 124 posts in 2010 and 184 in 2011 so this one is definitely done. Yep, I am a blether! :oD

10. Go for more walks.
No idea if I did this or not!

11. Take more photos.
Well, counting photos shown on my blog alone, there were 306 photos posted in 2010. This year it's been a staggering 518 plus the 51 from the sewing room window which makes 569 in total. Wow! That's incredible!

So, what's next for 2012? Who knows? I think we should just wait and see!

Happy New Year to all of my friends all over the world. See you next year! :o)

Let me just end the year with one more photo - here's what the sunrise looked like yesterday morning. Glorious!

from the sewing room window - all of them!

It's a H-U-G-E file but it shows the changes in the back garden throughout the year. Enjoy! :o)

my Christmas books

As I said the other day, I got a lot of fabulous presents for Christmas. Here are the books I got. I love each and every one of them. :o)

And here are just a teeny tiny sample of some of the things I love inside these books. They're on my "Oh, I *have* to make that" list. Whether they'll all get done, who knows? But I've made a start. I've already got one of the "spokes" of the round cushions knitted. Go me! :oD

from the sewing room window - 29th December

This will be the last photo from the sewing room window for this year. I need to try and put them all together into an animation so we can watch the seasons change. I hope I get that done before the year is over.

By the way, those white circles on the grass are (yucky) apples. The blackbirds *love* them!

I must have been really good!

I must have been really good this year because Santa left me some amazing stuff for my Christmas! I'll gather the rest of them into another post another day but I just wanted to show this one.

If you don't know what that is, it's a Kindle. Wow! I spent a lot of time yesterday putting books on it. And, the most I paid for those books was £1.99. Most of the ones I downloaded were free! Free books? Who's going to say no to that? Not me!

I smiled to myself when I realised that the first book I loaded in was a Nora Roberts book - Taming Natasha! It cost me all of 99p! I'd read it before but that didn't stop me getting it or reading it again! :o)

I can see myself spending lots of time in the Kindle store looking for more free books. I don't think the 24 I have on there already are nearly enough to keep me going! :oD

he's very close!

We've been following Santa's progress on norad (noradsanta.org) all day and he's very close to us so it's time I went to bed. Before I go, let me wish everyone reading this a very merry Christmas.

Auntie Mary's orange juice et al

First of all, I cut the Christmas cake this morning so Douglas could take part of it over to his mum. It was a relief that it looked so good inside! :o)

Next, I made some orange juice today. This is a standard in our house and has been ever since the girls were wee. We don't drink a lot of it in the winter time but we go through masses of it in the summer.

This is it sitting in the bowl ready to be covered and left to steep overnight. Tomorrow I'll strain it and put it in a bottle or covered jug - whichever there's room for in the fridge!

Here's the recipe:

AUNTIE MARY’S ORANGE JUICE

4 large or 6 medium oranges
1⅔ cups sugar
1 tbsp citric acid **editing to say: you can use the juice of 2 lemons in place of 1 tbsp of citric acid**
1 pint boiling water

Wipe the oranges and grate the rind into a bowl.
Cut fruit in half and squeeze juice and pips into the bowl.
Add sugar and citric acid and mix.
Pour on boiling water.
Stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar is all dissolved.
Cover and allow to stand overnight.
Strain and bottle.
Dilute to taste.

The reason it's called Auntie Mary's orange juice is my Auntie Mary always had it for us to drink when we went to her house as children. I got the recipe from her when we got married and have used it ever since.

Oh, and Zanna - I have to reply to you here because I don't know how to get in touch with you! The fondant icing I used on the cake was in a packet, already in a block. All I had to do was manipulate it a bit and then roll it out. No mixing involved at all. :o)

the cake, the marmalade, the card and Pinterest!

I decorated the cake today and I have to say I am ex-treeeeeeeme-ly happy with it. I didn't use the icing sugar that came with the pack but instead used a packet of fondant icing I had in the cupboard. Here it is with the cover of fondant icing. (Please ignore the mess around the cake. I'm not a tidy cook/baker but I do tidy it all up well when I'm done! :oD)

And here it is with a few wee trees around the edge. I LOVE it!! :o)

I thought I had silver dragees in the cupboard but apparently not so the trees don't have any silver balls at the tops pretending they're stars but, actually, if the truth were told, I don't think it needs them. Let's just hope the cake tastes good! Oh and please ignore the tatty old cake board. I might need to get a new one sometime soon.

Here's what I did with 2 of the jars of marmalade I made yesterday - put fancy tops on them ready to go into the grannies' boxes. Even if I do say so myself, I think they look fab! (Ugh, photos taken under room lights are so yellow!)

I spent some time this afternoon making the cards for the grannies. The circle isn't perfect but, if you've ever tried cutting a circle out using a craft knife, you'll know it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. I'm also no artist so the very fact that I drew the top of the bauble myself and it actually looks remotely like the top of a bauble is a miracle! :oD

So that's the cake, the marmalade and the card in the title so what about Pinterest? Well, I'm not one to look at the stats on my blog. In fact, I can't remember when I last looked - I'd guess 2 weeks ago or more. I clicked on the link today and found that one of the referring URLs was Pinterest. Huh? Naturally, I clicked on the link to see what it was and someone has pinned the photo of my flirty frilly pinny. And, on her page, someone else liked it and someone else re-pinned it! How cool is that? I also see other people have pinned 2 of my recipes. I might be famous soon! Maybe? :oD

oven gloves, cake and a few Christmas sweets

Here are the oven gloves that I made for the grannies to match the pinnies I showed yesterday. The fabric was a remnant I got a few weeks ago. 2 pinnies, 2 pairs of oven gloves and still some left over? Bargain!

I spent the afternoon in the kitchen making marmalade. I didn't take any photos of it today but you can see a past version here.

I then put the marzipan on the cake.

I'll ice it tomorrow. :o)

I made tablet - recipe here. It's messy but it tastes delicious. (Don't ask how I know! :oD)

And fudge.

I didn't realise I didn't have the recipe for this fudge on my blog so here it is now:

Fudge

1 tin condensed milk - 397g
420g Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate (I expect other makes will work too!)
1½ tsp vanilla essence

Put condensed milk and chocolate into a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir until the chocolate has melted and mixture is smooth and thick. Remove from the heat and blend in the vanilla essence. Pour into a tin approximately 8"x8" and chill until firm. You can use a bigger tin which will make the fudge thinner - then you would just cut the pieces bigger! :oD

Jo's dress, a pinny, labels and birds

I finished Jo's dress at the weekend and persuaded her to try it on. Doesn't she look FAB-U-LOUS?? I think so! :o)

And what does a girl do in a dress with a floaty hem? She burls!! :oD

Next is one of a pair of pinnies I made today for each of the grannies. (Yes, my dress is still on the dummy but that's okay. Yes, it is! :oP

I've also made matching oven gloves but the light had gone by the time I'd finished them so I'll take photos tomorrow.

I got a delivery today that I was excited about. New labels to sew into the things I make for other people.

They didn't have the same reel of thread as a logo like the ones I'm nearly finished (on the left in this photo) so I ordered the ones with the ball of wool, measuring tape and reel of thread. Pretty cool, I think. :o)

And, when I was taking the photo from the sewing room window, I zoomed in on the coconut shells hanging on the bird feeding station. Both were occupied by little birds at the time - I think they're blue tits but they're a bit far away to be 100% sure. They're pretty cool too! :o)