Merry and Bright: Home made Christmas

December bustled by in a flurry of crafting, baking and Christmas cooking. Evenings were spent making batches of biscotti, stamping labels, crocheting and making big batches of mincemeat. Instead of rushing our cooking, as we usually do, we spent time over it; planning meals, testing recipe's, taking time to enjoy the process, to allow flavours to properly mingle,  to taste as we go (lots), to experiment. Weekends were spent holed up in our flat with the sewing machine a-whirring and the oven a-pinging and lots of plan hatching over countless cups of tea. Some of the results of our crafting and baking below...

Corsages, which I learnt to make at a Craft class at Liberty for a Grazia article

Turban headbands (I combined a few different tutorials to make these, I can show you how if you like)

Friendship bracelets, thanks to this very useful tutorial

Button Necklace using this Martha tutorial

Leather iPhone cases made by my mister thanks to this Instructables tutorial .Made from the leather of a favourite pair of boots that salvaged before I had to throw them away! They were also stamped with the recipients names too, using the letters from my type writer. 

Home made mince Pies

Home made chocolates (recipe coming up)

Bags of biscotti

A hamper we gave to Ray and Phil to thank them for hosting Christmas (containing home made breadsticks, cinder toffee, biscotti, chocolates, and real hot chocolate etc)

A kitchen garland- part of the hamper

And our wrapping. This year I went with a 'Merry and Bright' theme. I used recycled tissue paper potato stamped with colourful tree shapes. I then used washi tape and ribbon to prettify the packages, and hand stamped some matching tags. I spent far too long on my wrapping but I happen to find these things thoroughly enjoyable, much to my families bemusement!

Busy? definitely, but very satisfying, and most importantly budget friendly too (big tick).   Between us, my mister and I can be pretty handy which I am very grateful for.  Presents were made using items I already had in the house (the benefits of being a hoarder) which was great for the pennies, and we love making stuff so really enjoyed it too. I find the more I bake, cook and craft the more confident in my skills I become and the more I am likely to experiment. My mister always says that creativity is like a muscle; the more you use it the stronger it becomes. So true.

Ok, that's it with the Christmas posts now! Hello 2012...

P.S This song was my Christmas crafting theme tune. "Pretty paper, pretty ribbons of blue, pretty pencils to write I love you..." Roy Orbison is a legend, no?!