Love Aunty Jemima...

You know when you get a letter in your Christmas card from your Aunty telling you about Uncle Toms toe operation and how big the tomatoes grew this year.

This is sorta like a geeked up 2009 version of that....

Our 2009 from MikeandNeen on Vimeo.

I just made this with Microsoft Movie Maker and a tune downloaded from Digirama... ready to be emailed to all the Auntys, Uncles and Mum and Dads... lucky them ;)

Last minute cake...

...and trust me if I can do this ANYONE can... and I mean anyone... like you, your kid... you cat, dog or goldfish even....

Last Minute Pineapple Christmas Cake
150g butter, coarsely cubed
1 cup brown sugar
440g can crushed pineapple
500g mixed dried fruit
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp rum
1 cup flour
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 150°C fan bake. Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with nonstick baking paper.
Place butter, sugar, pineapple and juice in a saucepan, then stir until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Stir in dried fruit and simmer gently for 3 minutes. Remove to a bowl to cool.
Stir in the beaten eggs and rum. Then stir in the flours, baking soda and spices, sifted together. Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth the surface.
Bake for 1½ hours or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool cake in the tin before turning out. Spread with butter icing once cake is cooled completely.

Also filled the baking tin with these.....

Recipe is the one from the gingerbread men in a jar gifts that I made for friends last year and they are SO good and the recipe makes HEAPS!

Flowery Toilety Stars ;)

As soon as I saw these I know they'd be all over our tree this year....
Add a loop of ribbon gluing it between 2 of the petals and holding it there with a peg or clip til it's dried... pop a bit of bling in the middle then hang them on your tree!

Weekend inspo...

More fun stuff to try....

Hand knitting
Funny...
Cute cookies
Dollie bag
Time for a Christmas drink mmmm

No sew skirt

Seeing as my sewing machine measures about 10x8inches I have to get a bit creative...
So here my no sew tree skirt I made.

Halls Decked

Mikes words were...

"It's a very girly tree"
"It looks like a cake"
"Why can't we stick some of the China made decorations on it"

Weekend inspo

This is both a super busy and laid back weekend... translation I have HEAPS to do and no energy to do it after a massive working week.

Here's just a little list of some fun stuff ideas I've found on my journey through the web this week:
A cool personalised letter from Santa
Felt baubles
Super cute felt ornaments
Cookies for Santa in a jar
Awesome for Christmas at the beach

Oh and you could argue it's not Christmasy but hey IT'S CHOCOLATE!
...here is a recipe for this cake...
which,
was,
AWESOME!
Seriously I am a baker but not a baking eater... but we ate this in like 2 days between us. By the time I went to take the photo this was all that was left!
Dana's Chocolate Cake
1 2/3C flour
1 1/2tsp baking soda
1 1/2C sugar
2/3C cocoa
1tsp salt
1 1/2C trim milk
100g butter
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla essence

Icing/Filling
100g butter
250g icing sugar
1/3C cocoa
milk to mix
1tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180'C. Grease 20cm loose bottom cake tin. Put all main ingredients in the processor and mix. Pour into the tin.
Bake for at least 50minutes. The cake will rise a lot when cooked the center will bounce back and a skewer will come out clean.
To make the filling and icing place the butter and dry ingredients in the processor. Pulse to combine any small amounts of milk til the mix is thickish soft and spreadable. Add the vanilla essence.
Slice the cake in half horizontally and spread on the filling. Place the top on and ice the cake.
(Source: Waikato Times Nov 11 '09)

Cut it up and then EAT IT ALLLLL!

Melty crayons

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this one around the world wide web. I'd seen it and was itching to try it as a 'homemade' gift. I actually gave these ones to a friends little boy for his birthday but they will make a great pressie for any lil ones.

First things first, a lesson learnt the hard way....
I used Artworx plastic crayons... $3.99 a pack of 12, x2... plus $2.50 for my pad.

Now, I didn't actually get a photo of them melting away but honestly it's this easy:

Break up your crayons into a non stick muffin tray. The more you put into each cup the bigger the crayons will be.

I mixed my colours up so when they're using them the can get some funky mixed colours coming out but you could keep them one colour if you like.

I put the oven on 180 and just keep a constant eye on them. It only took about 3-5minutes for them to go nice and runny. Pull them out and set aside for them to cool. If there's any poking outty bits you want to flatten just push it down with a skewer or a cold knife.

As they cooled they shrunk just a little pulling away from the sides of the tin so when they were cool they just fell out. Use a knife to round off any edges that aren't quiet right and...Then I tried getting clever. I lined a tray with tin foil, sat some cookie cutters on it and filled those puppies up...

Stuffy Trees

OK I'm sure that they have a better name but stuffy trees works for me...
First seen on Gigi Kennedys blog HERE.

I'd love to make like a whole Christmas forest. Even have one or two clusters in different places throughout the house.

Decorating these is totally you. As I say I sewed the ribbon first before sewing the sides closed just to make sure they'd stay on. Everything else was just glued in place using my favourite glue. I used pages from an old teen romance to cover the bases. Also I found that the smaller the paper you use to stuff them the better. Great project using nothing I had to buy new! Whoop whoop!

Christmas Test Dummy

So I've been coming across lots and lots of Christmas decorations, craft, cooking and gift ideas and flaggin them as I've been trawling through the internet in my personal crusade to have a 'cheap as chips' Christmas. And as I was sitting there thinking ''I could try out a heap of these and share them with you guys''.

So here we go... consider me your Christmas test dummy.

I've done a few projects so far and while not all of them will be for you - hey maybe you'll get some sort of inspiration from something.

Most are from other sources so I'll link you to the original home of the idea and some are just things that come to me in the moment...

I'm gonna endeavor to post something 3 times a week in the lead up to Christmas: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays... and maybe the odd bonus weekend something :)

So stay tuned for tomorrow!!!

PS: I've made a fun Christmas playlist on the sidebar for you to enjoy too :)

Happy Sunday?

OK so in my defense I didn't say which sunday right? ;)

I have to tell you why I've been so busy...
well tell you that I'm gonna tell you closer to Christmas...

December 1st in fact...
hang on what day of the week is that....
a tuesday...
that should be ok....
no wait...
scratch that...

I will be telling you about this...

...on November 30th!

It's gonna be a full December!

Anyway back to the matter at hand...
Thanks SO much for the inpso (it's all a part of what I'm up to in that photo).

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That's you Jane (AKA Tilly)!

Watch your mailbox... it'll be on it's way in the AM.

Remember to pop back soon or better yet add me to your alerts or bloglines or googlereader... and join me in some fun stuffs next week.

Mean while have a GREAT rest of the week! And think of my Mike this weekend, he is cycling round lake Taupo... 160km!

GIVEAWAY!

OK so this may look a little dejavu to some people...Last year with all the best intentions I made a December Daily journal... that I only filled in 2 pages of and then that was it.

So I though "I'll just replace those pages and use it this year" so I replaced the pages, fixed the dates and tweeked a couple of little things on it... but realllllly.... I just KNOW I'm NOT gonna do it.

As much as I'd LOVE to fill this is the fact is that I work full time and we have so much on in December that is just not photo worthy. I'd have a an album full of "Today I worked frin 8.30 til 9pm, 8.30 til 7pm, 8.30 til 6pm..." *yawn!*

Soooo I'm gonna give it away instead... to someone with interesting moments that they can fill it with :)

Post in the comments and link me to a fun holiday project (cause there's gotta be something in it for me) you've seen around or can find esp for me :) and I will draw a name on Sunday :)

Layouts....

A while back I was a lucky lucky girl and won a wee cookbook and some other goodies from this awesome lady...
She sent me a packet of butterflies she had punched and diecut from all sorts of paper... I quickly decided they were too rad to use on pages and did this instead...
Thanks so much Lolly <3....
And now some pages.......more soon... I've finished another mini travel album I've gotta take pics of and theres some more pages here needing last minute touches...
Oh and KITS!!!!!!

Chillaxing

OK...
So I've been doing this...







AKA chilling with friends... it's been great. :)

BUT I have also been SCRAPPING!
So I PROMISE I will come back later and post what I've made :) xx