Headless chicken mode

Today has been crazy and not at all what we planned.

But sometimes, one has to go with the flow; be brave; accept all opportunities and take a deep, deep breath. 

7pm.  BBC1.  Tomorrow.

One more thing off the list

Usually, by now, the house is decorated and we are enjoying the build up rather more than we are this year.  With the company of the builders and the house completely upside down, it’s been pretty hard to bother about fripperies.  Instead, we’ve just tried to close the door and forget about the chaos that reigns behind it.

Not a single mince pie has been baked in the house, either, because our oven is still awaiting repair.  But rather than invite you to the pity party, let me instead, welcome you with the wreath I just made for our door.

With a few strands of some weed or other in the garden and a wrap of Christmas greenery from Asda the other day, Christmas is beginning to shape up in this neck of the woods at last.

If you’d like the details of how I made the wreath, they’ll be appearing shortly on the craft blog I write for the National Federation of Women’s Institutes website, I hope!

New! Smaller size!

I read a lot earlier in the year about the price of cocoa increasing and the lengths the chocolate bar manufacturers were going to make it go that bit further by creating bubbles in it, adding cheaper ingredients and fillings such as nuts, raisins, biscuit and caramel.  That discussion came to mind again this morning when I went to open a tin of sweets for our Christmas table.

I’d bought them sometime last month and stashed the tin away in our storeroom, on the same shelf as the (empty) tins from previous years*.  As I took the tin down from the shelf, I noticed it appeared rather smaller than before so stacked them together to see.  Last year’s tin is on top…this year’s at the bottom.

* I seem to have inherited the inability to throw away these tins from my Mum

Last year, I see that the tin contained 950g including the wrappings.

This year, just 800g!  that’s quite a reduction for more or less the same price.

OK, we don’t really need the extra 150g of calories, but I felt that somehow, the wool had been pulled over my eyes and that someone somewhere had got the better of me.  How observant we have to be when we are out shopping!

I finished Jessica Sprague’s lovely Christmas Project yesterday, too, and will be even more delighted when I can spare an hour or two to fathom out how to cut the box for it with my CraftRobo.

Who knew?

As always, my better ideas come from someone else – usually one or two favourite blog authors who generously share their projects.  In this case, an idea for a stocking filler, in the form of shoelaces.

Thinking about this and carefully considering the potential of this great idea before I dive in and make fifty pairs of laces, I read the comments and further ideas as well.  That’s where I discovered the word aglet.

Isn’t it fun to learn a new word?  I wonder if I can drop it into conversation sometime today?  ;-)

Resourceful

However many punches/tools/gizmos we have in our treasure chest, there’s always a time when we haven’t got just the right thing.

And of course, we want/need it NOW!

Such was the case yesterday when I was working on my journal and went to cut some shapes using my die cutter.  Though I don’t use it much since I got my CraftRobo, I fell for the interesting “festive greenery” die when getting something else from an online shop and only when it was too late did I realise that it needed more than just the ordinary cutting surface, because it’s over size.  Having bent my hero’s ear for a while, muttering that something which appears to be reasonably priced suddenly becomes hideously expensive because of the need for loads of add-ons, I decided to do something about it myself.

I made my own cutting surface/pad using a holiday brochure which arrived on Saturday morning.  It was made of good, thick, solid paper which didn’t give an inch when pressed.  Add a couple of sheets of old committee minutes from the recycling bin and run the die through a few times to get it right.

Even though it was completely level, I still had trouble getting the whole die to cut through.

One area in particular was giving me difficulty, so I spent ages building up particular areas with single sheets of paper at a time to get it to cut out well every time.  Eventually, after much jiggery-pokery, we got there and as I punched the air with success, my hero breathed a sigh of relief.

This morning, I’ve been to the dentist again and I’m working later - “The Twilight shift” as it were.  So, I thought I’d allow myself a bit of fun in between and started working on Jessica Sprague’s Free Project.  I got out the various paper punches, only to find that I didn’t have a star punch of the right size.  Good grief, I’ll have to resort to using scissors!  Fortunately Jessica had provided a sheet with the stars printed, so I could simply cut them out.

A dozen or so stars in (32 are needed!) my fingers were sore from the scissors and I remembered buying some new spring ones whilst in LA. 

Wow and double wow!  These spring scissors are brilliant.  Super sharp and so comfortable to use, I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of them to begin with.

I think that says “ionic” brand on the blade…highly recommended!