What's this? Bake Off?

 Pinterest will be my downfall. Have you seen all these posts showing photos of beautiful cakes, and the hilarious fails as people try to copy them?

Well there could be a whole album of my Pinterest fails. So I was intrigued to see a recipe for salt dough Christmas ornaments. Now I need more Christmas ornaments like a hole in the head - over the years I have collected enough to light up a small town, but hey, homemade sounds good, right? Something else for the kids to say one day 'but we can't throw these away, mum spent a whole day making them.......'

So out came the ingredients

and two hours of my life I will never get back again....

and after all that effort, I don't even have a photo to show you of the fail. They were so horribly out of shape they went straight in the bin. But because I am an idiot, stupid, deluded,  determined, tomorrow has been earmarked as salt dough day take two......this is my Pinterest inspiration photo -

 - but you must understand that this second time around, I am not aiming for such perfection, anything that doesn't look like a blob of raw pastry hanging on a bit of string would be considered a success. Watch this space, or if you have a nervous disposition you may be wise to stay away for a few days... 

Autumn Leaves

Here's one I had fun making, I punched the Fiskars intricate shape leaf out of card, and used the negative space as a stencil.....

I cut three layers of card, each one 1/2" smaller than the one below and stacked these together with some repositionable glue, then temporarily stuck the stack to my card front. Then, using my home made stencil. I inked some leaves all around the edges, making sure I inked over all the layers...

I separated the layers by adding a mat of orange card behind each layer. The sentiment is by Woodware

Today saw me chase around trying to match up a navy blue paint, a dozen tester pots later and I think I have finally hit on the right colour. Who knew there could be so many shades of navy. Some looked purple, others had a definite teal hue and some dried looking more like a cornflower blue. I do find the process of getting paints mixed fascinating though - you know the drill, they take a can of white paint, the machine squirts random blobs of red, black etc etc into this, and another machine shakes it all about while you have a nice chat with the very helpful fellow who is helping you. Then voila, like magic, out comes a tin of navy blue paint. I wonder if the computer that doles out the colour additives ever crashes/freezes/acts like every other computer in the world by throwing a wobbly - knowing my luck with computers, I'm surprised my navy blue didn't come out as a hot pink. But the decorator comes tomorrow to paint a couple of external doors, so we shall see...

We have friends from Yorkshire coming to stay for a few days, so time to spruce up the house and do a bit of food shopping, see you tomorrow x 

It's creeping up.....

Christmas is coming....rather more quickly than I thought, time to get a bit serious now about these Christmas cards

Here is one I made using simple punched circles, some punched stars and the Fiskars bird lever punch that I punched in kraft card, then dabbed with a bit of red ink to turn him into a robin - I really like this little bird, expect to see more...

 We have been down in Surrey looking after Max and Milo for a few days while their parents flew out to Rome for a break. After two days, the running total was a scraped elbow, bruised forehead, grazed knee, shredded nerves (mine), then Milo decided to go for the big time. He took a spectacular tumble from a hoverboard, taking a chunk out of his knee in the process. 'I'm damaged' he howled as I failed to find any more plasters (band aids) having used them up on the less dramatic injuries. So Mike and Max were despatched to the chemist to buy industrial quantities of wound dressings, and arrived back in a scratched and dented car where some idiot had pulled out as they were passing!

So I cuddled the wounded soldier, mopped up the tears, dirt and blood, and settled him down on the sofa covered with a cuddly blanket. After ten minutes I went to check on my patient. He announced that he felt fine, but was feeling very left out because the other kids were playing, could he join them please? So out he bounced, leaving me shattered and shaken and with about a dozen grey hairs that hadn't been there an hour earlier

Boys will be boys I guess...we are back home now, it seems very dull here! xx