Strawberry Jam, Dec 2010, Made by Helen

I made Strawberry Jam in December which I gave as part of my Christmas boxes. I finally got round to taking a photo of one of the jars! The felt topper changed between jars depending on what I had at hand but they were all tied up twine and finished with jingle bells.

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.

ohhh Christmas is near, 37 days to go.

and before you say it is 38 days, I count down till the 24th, it’s the day we do Christmas.

I love Christmas. Without a doubt it is my favourite time of year. The last few days I’ve been working on some of my Christmas crafting and I’m doing my first batch of Christmas baking tomorrow. In saying all that though, this Christmas is going to be oh so very different to any Christmas past. There’s no Pabbi to dish out the rice pudding or to hand out presents from the tree. When we were in London on the way home from Iceland, we came up with the idea to go to New Zealand for Christmas to hang out with Mum’s sister and her family. Mum, Grandad and I are going (Matthew was not interested in the idea and is staying home) on the night of the 23rd and return on the night of the 31st. Will be great to catch up with my cousins and get to see the first great-grandchild.

I’m so tempted to start putting up decorations in my room but I’ll wait till Dec 1… though I’m going to hang a few porcelain snow flakes in the next few hours. They are white, you’ll hardly be able to see them hanging from the white shelf against the white wall …

This Saturday is the Christmas BBQ for the Icelandic Club -> hence the Christmas baking tomorrow. Really looking forward to the BBQ especially to catch up with one of my good friends who I’ve not seen in an obscene amount of time. I’m going to take along a big container of Loftkökur … mmmm. A funny note to mention, google Loftkökur and my recipe is normally the first or the second result to appear :). When I was in Iceland a few months ago, one of my sister’s told me that someone she knew had been raving about this Loftkökur recipe that she had found on the net and how great it was. She sent the link to my sister and my sister replied – that recipe is from my sister 🙂 so funny.

Loftkökur, ready to eat

In order to make Loftkökur, though I need the secret ingredient so I made a trip over to Mum’s today to pick up the Hartshorn salt, I also “borrowed” two of her biscuit trays … and I brought home some of my Christmas decorations.

mmm Hartshorn salt, there’s nothing quite like a sniff of Ammonium bicarbonate.
Smelly goodness

In other news, I go back to work tomorrow! yikes. I’ve got some crutches which make getting around easier. The first thing on the agenda for me to do tomorrow at work will be finish organising the Christmas Party – it’s next Saturday night. It’s themed, the 20th Century. There was too much debate amongst my two other planners between doing a 20’s theme or a Mad Men theme. I ended up suggesting let’s do the 20th Century instead. People can come dressed from whichever era they wish and if they don’t want to put much effort in they can just come as the 90’s.

I’m doing an early 60’s/late 50’s theme. I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of a few essential packages to arrive early next week for my outfit. All I have left to do is figure out my jewellery (will probably try to find some “pearls” at diva or the like) and practice my hair. I’m going to have to do some op-shopping before then though to find a shirt for N to wear. I’m so excited, can’t wait to see what outfits people put together.

The time is near

You might have gathered that I have done a lot of baking over the last week or so. Tonight it all came together to look like this.
Packed and ready to go, 156/365

25 boxes full of Christmas sweets. I’ll take more photos tomorrow in better light of the boxes as all I have done since I got home from work round 5 is bag up goodies, pack and wrap the boxes. Ready for bed now!