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!

Saturday

Well, the news on the street is that the sinister chap with the snowball catapult is looking anxious now the policeman has arrived with two sets of handcuffs…

I spotted the Lego Advent Calendars this year and whilst getting a StarWars version for Edward and Alex to enjoy, I fell for the simple Lego Town advent calendar for us too.  Yes, there is still a child in us all – well in me, anyway.  Behind the door on day one was the snowballer – it took me a while to realise that the white bricks were snowballs, I’ll admit.  Yesterday, constructing the catapult was no easy task – these little kits come with no instructions and it’s quite some time since I passed my Lego training.  After that, today’s policeman was a cinch.  Very cute, but I can see why the commenters on the Lego site are disappointed at the non-Christmas theme and would share their disappointment had I been with a small child opening up the doors each day.

The Journal is now underway and taking shape.  Fortunately, the ArtFund magazine arrived just when I needed a curtain and the cover was cut up before we’d even opened the thing!  Nothing is sacred in this house.  The Manifesto is from Shimelle’s class notes this year.

The first spread tells the tale of my two Christmas dinners on Thursday – one very traditional and the other at Jamie’s Italian.  I’m still working on these pages, adding bits and pieces as the whim takes me.  The red twinkle was an appropriate choice as we drivers were foregoing the wine in favour of the Glitterberry J2O the other night.  Fun!

Day 2 is about the Swedish bits and pieces which are here and there in the house following our recent trip.  For this, I used one of Ali Edwards’ overlays – so easy and rather slick, it made me wonder if I might continue in more of a digital style and stop faffing about with glue and scissors.  But my hero agreed that part of the charm of these journals is the three dimensional, quirky character and so the faffing will continue, in this journal at least.

But around here, one question continues to preoccupy the pair of us.

Where are we going to put the Christmas Tree?

Getting started

There has been so much going on around here that I’ve found it really hard to focus, to settle down and actually DO something.  I need no motivation to begin – simply gathering previous Christmas journals reminds me of how precious these things are.  But trying to cut that first page, to decide the dimensions and the theme of this year’s book was just proving incredibly difficult.

I began the day well before 8am, emptying my wardrobe of everything so that James, the builder, could begin work on taking up that part of the floor and removing the architrave and so on.  The easiest part was putting everything into boxes; the hardest part bringing everything down to the garage, where it will be stored for the time being.  That’s when living in a three storey house loses some of its appeal, I can tell you.  Fortunately, I had a hero’s help and by meeting at the bend on each flight of stairs, we managed to get all fifteen plastic boxes down there in fairly good time.

In the midst of all of this, I was having two fairly important conversations with colleagues, soon to develop into three intense discussions needing careful thought and more than a little referencing.

All whilst James was drilling bits of the floor away upstairs.  Nice.

One thing we didn’t have to worry about was cooking.  We have the most amazing Steam Oven in our kitchen which is used without fail every day and which has never given us any trouble for the ten years since it was installed.  But just before we left for Boston, it developed a leak and we discovered a puddle on the floor.  Not only that, but the leak dripped through into the conventional oven beneath it and shorted the circuit board, we think.  So, for the time being, we have no cooker – just a hob and a microwave, which certainly concentrates the mind when the question “what’s for supper?” springs to mind!  (Spaghetti Bolognese today…)

So, feeling relaxed about that, late in the afternoon I finally found my mojo – or rather, I decided to just dive in and get going, even if I decided to scrap the first few goes and rethink it after a page or two.  I picked up the key piece I’d selected for the first page and sighed.

I think a proofreader is needed at Lost and Found, don’t you?

(I just googled “December Spelling error” and discovered the company are shipping replacements, which is a generous response, don’t you think?)