Garden Center Reindeer

The Christmas fair is driving me mad....soooooo much to do for it! Still got the plates of cakes and flowerpots filled with goodies handed in this morning....just the pineapples to cut up a swimming lesson to attend, get back to the school to set up and somewhere in there feed the kids! Yikes. I got asked to do reindeer food as well for the fair, I think I did it last year for them too.

I seem to have developed a 'thing' for Reindeer this year! Yesterday, despite being busy,I went to the local garden center in Ditchling as they have all their Christmas bits and pieces out and I absolutely fell in love with this wonderful reindeer,

It is silver metal (again my love of silver with everythings turning silver!) and stands about 30cm high. He sits wonderfully on the kitchen window sill at the minute....may have to move him to the hearth when it gets colder and I am in the front room more. I think he will look splendid with all the flames dancing off his mirrored skin!

The children love him too, hubbie just looked at it and said it's another girl thing.

Chocolate covered Marshmallows!

I had 4 of the reception mums around this morning as our class has the Chocolate fountain stall at the fair! We thought we would get together and make up some marshmallow sticks pre-coated with chocolate and sprinkles...apparently they sold really well last year. It was a sticky business putting the marshmallows onto the sticks, then came the fun of covering them in chocolate and sprinkles. We used all the sprinkles that I had brought plus most of my at home sprinkles....think I need to get some more in!

We made up just under 100 once we had taken some of the sticks out that were starting to come apart! So at 75p each on Saturday hopefully they will turn us a pretty penny. 

The school have a chocolate fountain that we are able to use and we are going to be putting fruit into a cupa and drizzling with the chocolate. I just hope we sell out and have enough to keep us going from 12 till at least 2 on the day!!!!! Will post more pics next week to show you what happened.

I am also class rep for one of the year 4 classes and we have the Grotto....no pressure then!

Jolly Juice

I cannot believe that I have missed 2 posts.....my excuse is how rubbish I was feeling. We are not used to any type of weather in England so when it gets a bit chilly my nose knows it and has a full blown horrid cold and sore throat. Not fair. However, despite the ice on the car this am it is warming up nicely now and I am even comtemplating getting in the garden and putting the garlic and onion sets in for the winter! Go me!!! However, I did do this a couple of weeks ago before my Open House....

 I found some inspiration on Pinterest for these wonderfully jolly Jolly Juice glasses! They were very simple to paint. I use Pebeo 360 Vitrail paints so that they can be cooked in the oven and made dishwasher safe. I painted the stems one evening, then the following day when the stems had dried, I wrote with an outliner and did the wires of the lights too, and after about half an hour this had dried and I was able to use a cotton wool bud dipped in the paint to create the lightbulbs! 

I can think of a few people that this might bring a smile to at Christmas! At my Open House Day I sold 3 of these so will have to get some more wine glasses to make for gifts too! 

Holly Sweetie Bowls

I am really doing this Holly theme to death! I have done the same pattern on wine glasses, these cute bowls, some other square shaped bowls and tealight holders too! It is really simple to do and I do it all by hand and I love it!

I managed to sell half of my stock of them at my Open House the other week, and they are incrediably cheap at only £3.50 per bowl. I find that pricing my bowls and wine glasses individually like that more people consider the purchase, rather than having to buy the whole collection, when they might not have space for the whole lot! I figure if I love them then there are bound to be lots of people that will also love them!

More reindeer pictures

Am still so tired from all the makes and cooking I have been doing this last week, but as always I managed to find a bit of time to do some quick crafting!

As the other half really liked my reindeer pictures I decided to go all out and make some more with the rest of the frames that I got cheaply. It took about 15 minutes to cut each reindeer out with an Exacto knife, then it was simply choosing a paper to put behind and gluing the reindeer in place.

Not entirely sure why all my pictures have a slightly yellow tinge but that is my camera for you! Not the best and 9 years old at that!

I like these bottom ones best I think..especially the squares in red and white, very nordic! That I think is all my cheap frames used up! One more fair to go, so lets hope that they sell out!

Open House Day!

Oh my gosh...it has finally arrived....we are on a break at the moment, but this morning was really busy.After the initial 45 minutes with me and my helper sitting doing our shopping lists and wondering if anyone will come at all, suddenly the doorbell rang, and again, and again and again.... at least we did not run out of tea cups this time as I managed to borrow a further 20 from a friend!

All my bits and bobs laid out and ready for the stampede!

And my glassware....and reindeer pictures!

And all the scrummy yummies:

I am shattered and we still have this evening to go! Hopefully there will be a few people popping in who could not make it during the day.... 

Have done a count up and we have already raised a fair amount for the chosen charity, St Peter and St James Hospice! I must say that I am not sure that I would have coped very well this morning if my helper/coffee and tea maker had not been able to help out!

Decorating update

You may remember a while ago the state of my hallway was a lot worse for wear, mainly due to little fingers all the way along at about waist height and below, but also due to a bit of a leak we had from the upstairs bathroom. Now though as yo can see, I managed to make it look a whole lot better! The big grey marks are finally gone and I can relax! Just as well really as I have my Open House on Wednesday this week!

It took an undercoat of Stain Away and then a couple of coats of the Ivory Lace colour coat. 

Even where the paint had come away totally with the old kids stairgate I managed to make it look nicer. Admittedly, I only did a quick coat of emulsion over most of it, but with a fractured wrist that was all I could actually do. As I had said to husband, you have to look a whole lot closer now to see the imperfections, but I will redo it properly after Christmas now.

Everything is going to turn silver!!!!

 I have seen a few pictures of things that have been spray painted, toys etc and think they look quite effective. so I decided to go out and buy myself a can of spray paint. I landed up simply going to B&Q and getting their Valspar silver metallic paint...yippee..I love silver.

I laid out a lot of newspaper on top of the freezer in the garage and found some lids that I had off old gerkin glass jars. The lids were gold and had patterns all over them so if I wanted to use them for anything the lids needed to be changed. SILVER! 

It was quite simple to spray them, but I did go and check to see if they were set a little too quickly and ruined one of them with a lovely finger print. However the rest I left overnight and redid them with a second coat just to make sure and left for the day again. 

 I am absolutely sold with the idea.....if I had the money I would go and buy every colour they had! However, I have got to be restrained and use this up first and hopefully use the jars for something....maybe paint them then put the silver lid on to sell them!!!

Nappy cakes .... a day late...sorry!

I had an order a week ago for 2 pink Baby Cakes, one 3 tier one and a single tier one too...Now you can see the true mess I work in when I make things on the kitchen table... 

Peppa Pig always goes down well on Baby Cakes as I think most people have heard of it as a product. So a Peppa fairy went on top and a couple of fleece blankets, one expensive one and a cheaper one to the second tier. Lots included eg. bottle,soap, talc, washcloths, bodysuits, weaning spoons etc and obviously all the nappies!

And the single tier one as well..... 

All I then do is wrap in cellophane and there they are.....very nice lady even came to my house to collect them! I always buy the plush toys when I see them on offer and the lovely giraffe was from WHSmiths of all places! It was reduced from £9.99 to £2.50 so I duly purchased 5 of them and this is my last one!

Pets!

So, at the beginning of the summer holidays we had ZERO 0 pets...now we have 8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok....so 7 of them are fish! Does that count? Kids are so happy, they kept pestering their father and he finally gave in. The fish were the first purchase and we got 7 of them...quit why 7 I do not know but thre we go....

can you tell the kiddies chose all the tank fixtures....what a collection. 

Then one day my husband came home and suggested that we get a cat...not being a big cat fan himself this was very strange....but a week later we had this little ball of fluff that we got at the age of 10 weeks...

She loves playing with shoes. We had a pool of names for her suggested by the kids with a little help from me and I picked 2 and they had the final say....Tipsy it is!

Very cute, very loving and Very MAD!! She bolts around the house as soon as the kids get home from school. However eve hubbie seems to like her!