Christmas is near

Well, I’m sitting at my Mum’s house as I type this as in a few hours we’ll be heading to the airport to go to NZ for 10 days to hang out with my Aunt and her family. It’s funny, at work people have been asking why I’m going to NZ for Christmas to which I reply I have family there and the response is always the same or similar “Helen, you have family everywhere” (in matter of fact not really, just Iceland, London, NZ and Tassie but it does seem like everywhere).

All my baking and creating has now come to an end for a year as I handed out presents and parcels to friends and co-workers over the last few days.

All the staff in my section received a little goodie bag, which consisted of 2 Christmas Tree sugar cookies, 1 Lebkuchen Man and 2 little chocolates.

The front.
Biscuit parcels for co-workers

The back.
Biscuit parcels for co-workers

My girls all received a double stack of decadent goodies. Which was filled with a jar of my Strawberry Jam (which reminds me I must take a photo of one of my jars – they looked so pretty), sugar cookies, vanilla rings, rum balls, sunshine/apricot balls, 3 types of nut brittle (hazelnut, peanut and almond), loftkökur and lebkuchen. That also reminds me, I’ll have to take a picture of of what the little bags inside the boxes look like -that will have to happen next year.

The boxes.
Boxes of baked goodness tied up with twineBoxes of baked goodness tied up with twineBoxes of baked goodness tied up with twine

oh so pretty. They are all tied up with bakers twine from Bespoke Letterpress. To continue in my theme of using my Figgjo Flint Lotte collection to hold assorted bits and pieces, here is what I am using as a dispenser for my twine – a milk jug. 🙂 At work I have a butter dish holding my staple remover, paper clips, white-out etc, at home I have a soufflé dish that holds my jewellery tree, a jam container that holds teabags, a little serving skillet that holds a candle and coins etc etc.

A very nice twine dispenser

I leave you with two pictures from the “Hard Crack Factory”
Welcome to the Hard Crack Factory

Hazelnut Brittle

mmm brittle.

Continuing on with posts on Christmas Baking

I sat on the deck earlier this evening as I expected it to start bucketing and re-drafted my Christmas countdown plan. From tomorrow morning till when I fly out to Kiwi Land on Thursday everything that I need to do is written down; what I have left to buy, when I need to do, which days I’m delivering gifts to people etc. It’s all there.

It’s this time of year that I am thankful for having an oodle of Tupperware cake/biscuit/slice containers. Tomorrow afternoon is going to see the return of Operation Icing for this year. Which will see all available flat surfaces in this house covered with iced biscuits. 😀 so much sugar but oh so good.

I’m doing things slightly different from last year instead of doing the 25 cake boxes of I’m going to make little packages similar to what I did for “Super Hornet Day” for most people and continue to provide some morning tea each day and a few very close people will get a box like last year. I’m very proud of what I did last year but it was a mission and a half and I want my sleep this year.

Less of this.
Packed and ready to go, 156/365

More like this.
Super Hornet Biscuits, 251/365

This is the morning tea “basket” that I took to work on Wednesday.
treats for morning tea

I found the Pyrex dish at one of my favourite op shops a couple of weeks ago and with that festive gold trim, I knew it would get a work out over Christmas. I put an old glass jelly mould in the middle of the dish and filled that with white chocolate drizzled Lebkuchen men and filled the dish with Rum Balls and Sunshine Balls.

Everything of course went down a treat and the last two days I’ve taken Vanilla Rings and Loftkökur which have equally gone down a treat. One of the ladies I work with reckons my Lebkuchen men are the best “gingerbread men” she’s ever had, that was really nice to hear.

mmmm Loftkökur
Loftkokur

December 8, a yarn wreath

Yarn Wreath

I started this wreath when I was off work with my foot. It was something “easy” to do though I’ll say it now, if I ever make one of these again, I’m using thicker wool! I used some Patons Bluebell 5ply that I found in my stash (originally from the Salvos store at Bundamba). I’ve been looking at the wreath the last few days deciding what it needs. Wanting to keep with a pretty clean and muted palette, I added a doily which is a few shades darker than the cream wool and an old Christmas decoration thing that I picked up in a mixed lot from the Juicy Junk Shop in Pomona at the start of the year. (Look at that I’ve just mentioned two of my favourite second hand stores in the one paragraph). Wrapped some gold thread round the rest of the wreath to carry on the gold from the decoration thing and there she is. It makes me smile.

Up Close
Yarn Wreath

On my bedroom door
You can just see my Christmas apron peeking out from behind the back door, a early Christmas present from Mum – to wear when doing Christmas baking.
Yarn Wreath

December 2

Advent Calender

This is the advent garland/calendar that I made last night. I picked up these little pegs from Tiger (I liked Tiger, I wish we had Tiger here) when I was in Iceland, threaded a length of ribbon through the spring on the pegs, hung it beneath my shelves with the trusty 3M decorating clips and there it is. I’m using the little santa card to mark the day. This morning when I woke up, I moved the card to peg 2. It felt so good. I have a chocolate advent calendar at work. 🙂

I put up my little tree last night and was most distraught to realise that I left my box of miniature tree ornaments at Mum’s. I’ll be picking that box up pronto. I do have some suitable ornaments to place on each day till I pick that box up so not all is lost. I haven’t put the ornament for today on yet. Still a little while to pick the one that suits today.

The lights on my tree.
Oh Christmas Tree

I was having a little browse through the Tiger catalogue and I came across this hat … yep, this hat has so much more class and style than your run of the mill Santa hat.