Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a lovely day.

Here are my gorgeous children wearing their Christmas shirts - unfortunately I didn't manage to get them all in a photo together!







The Bumbo seat was Evelyn's Christmas present from us :)

And here's the last of the Christmas food:



Christmas cake with marzipan (only imitation though, next year I WILL make my own) and royal icing, which didn't set properly hard. But it was still yummy!



Chocolate truffles.



Coffee truffles.

These are the things that were on the old camera; the second & third batch of truffles, and another batch of gingerbread, are on the new one.

Christmas shirts:



(The elastic on Emma's sleeves ended up being a bit tight, so I chopped them a bit shorter and loosened the elastic.)

My mum's present, my first effort at quilting, a bit messy but she's my mum so she can't complain, hah. It's a wall hanging for the kitchen.



Mini steamed puddings. I made 12 to give as gifts.



A doll sling for my little cousin:

I do have things to post, but I've yet to work out how to get photos from the new camera, so I keep forgetting.

Nearly ready for Christmas - I've made my mum's gift, made and packaged the truffles and mini puddings that everyone's getting, made all the children's Christmas shirts, iced the cake (although my royal icing is refusing to set hard, bah), wrapped some of the gifts.

I've run out of wrapping paper, but I have some as-yet-unused Christmas fabric that I'll use for the rest and just make sure I reclaim it from the chaos. I refuse to go to the shops and buy more, not through any anti-consumption principle but simply because the shops are way too busy and I can't be bothered.

Being productive

TiKKi dress for Evelyn's Christmas present:



Chocolate truffles for Emma's teachers:



Gingerbread cookies for playgroup (cut and decorated by Emma):



Lesley's vanilla cupcakes for Emma's last day of school shared lunch tomorrow:



The icing is tinted with beetroot - no artificial colours - and you wouldn't know it from the taste. Yum! I am always keen to find more natural ways of doing things, and I know at least one mum in the class avoids artificial colours entirely for her daughter.



And just to freak out any non-Aussies reading (and maybe some Aussies too), this was a spider on our wall last night. My knight in shining armour a.k.a. my partner Garry killed it.

Hand puppets

A present for a friend's little boy who is turning three. Hopefully he likes them, I know my son loves to play pretend at the moment.

A month already?

Whoops, it's been a month since I posted. I just haven't had time to get much done lately. Evelyn's knitted dress for Christmas is coming along, only about 6cm to do now.

Tonight I made Christmas shirts. A peasant blouse for Evie, from this tute, which was SO easy, and I painted a red T-shirt for Alastair. Remember it's summer here, if you're reading this from the Northern Hemisphere! I'm not happy with the paint - it was my first try at fabric painting - but I'll see what it looks like when dry. If I still don't like it I'll applique some Christmas fabric over the top. I'm making Emma a blouse in a co-ordinating fabric.