See you in January!

I am so looking forward to starting a new year... 2012 is going to be grand! Stay safe, enjoy your holidays and I'll see you in early January.

love, Lisa
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New Roxy Longsocks Faces

I've just added some new Roxy Longsocks face panels to my shop. I named Roxy Longsocks after my Roxy, so it seems fitting that one of the faces looks like her.

There doesn't seem to be much choice around if you're looking for a doll with an Asian face, so at least now you have the option to make one... or some. The other new face has green eyes, so now you can choose to make your own Roxy Longsocks with dark Asian eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, or brown eyes.

The Pattern Kits, and individual faces are all available in my shop now. Some crafting for the holidays perhaps?
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Roxy's quilt

I managed to put together another block for Roxy's quilt on the weekend. At this rate I'll have it finished by 2020.

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Our Gingerbread House

Roxy has been obsessed with two things this Christmas: singing Deck the Halls over and over again, and making a gingerbread house.

There was much excitement and singing as we looked for a recipe, drew the templates, planned the decoration and shopped for the ingredients.

So yesterday, while we sang Deck the Halls we baked the gingerbread, and this morning - while we sang Deck the Halls - we put it together and decorated it. For a first ever attempt it turned out OK. Roxy was in charge of deciding how we decorated it (I had to let go and breath deeply and let her do it!) and I was in charge of applying the icing "glue" so she could attach the sweets.

I think she did a pretty excellent job. I love the little gate! All that is left to do is sift icing sugar snow over the top.

Half way through we had a bit of an engineering disaster when half of one side of the roof fell off! (you can see in the photos that the roof is shorter on the left hand side) It seems like it was too laden with freckle shingles and icing glue. So we now have a house with eaves on one side but not on the other.

Things I have learnt:
- you can never have too much icing or too many sweets (according to Roxy)
- make the roof pieces smaller next time
- buy a CD of Christmas songs. variation is good.
- for the base, cover a chopping board with foil instead of using cardboard which isn't so sturdy and can cause the equivalent of an earthquake when you try to move it.

We've decided to make it a new tradition and make a gingerbread house each year. Do you make them? I have a question... Christmas day is still nearly a week away, how do you store it? I've wrapped ours up in cellophane, but I'm unsure whether it's going to stay fresh. Have we made it too early? Should we have a pre-Christmas gingerbread tea party instead of waiting until "the day'?

Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Fa la la la la la la la la...


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Christmas is coming

The weeks leading up to Christmas are mad aren't they? I've been at the post office sending orders every day for the past few weeks and the queue is out the door no matter what time or what day I go. I did most of my gift buying online and now I'm waiting on the postie and couriers every day hoping that things will arrive in time for Christmas. But of course there are always more to things buy and I'll have to brave the shops - and the car parks - sometime soon. School broke up today for the 6 week summer holidays. So many things are being left undone...

I'm doing a spot of late night web browsing and I've just had a look at my Google Reader and got a bit ruthless and deleted 86 of the 190 blogs that were in there. I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by the 1000+ unread posts that seemed to be always waiting for me. I remember some time ago Pip deleted everything in her Reader and started again. Inspiring. Scary. I don't think that I'm brave enough to do that just yet! How's your Reader looking?

I just saw these lovely photos on Sania Pell's blog and the pops of fluro caught my eye. And because I haven't done anything terribly creative in terms of Christmas yet I thought I'd share this inspiration with you.

I love the idea of painting baubles, and especially swirling paint inside them (like in the photo below). So simple and stunning. I'm a sucker for Christmas decorations and usually go a bit nuts each year after Christmas when they are seriously marked down. I'm going to buy some clear glass baubles this time with a view to trying the swirly paint idea for next year.

... And fluro pops on berries and flowers. Gorgeous.

All images via Sania Pell.
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