It's christmas eve already.

Well I can't believe it. It's Christmas eve already. Where has this year gone, I feel like each year seems to go by quicker and quicker . Does anyone else get that same feeling. When you are a kid it always felt like forever for Christmas to come around but life as an adult feels like it passes by in no time.  And this year especially the month of December just seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye.

So I just wanted to come on here and wish all my readers a very merry Christmas  from my house to yours and hope you all stay safe over this holiday season. I hope you all get to have an awesome Christmas day filled with lots of love and laughter and surrounded by your family and friends. Eat plenty and be merry.

Take care all of my lovely people and I wish you all the best and safe travels.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Summer trifle

Every year for Christmas it's my job to make desserts. One of my desserts that I always love to make at Christmas time is summer trifle. It's so easy to make and with Christmas time in Australia usually being so hot a muggy it always goes down a treat. This is also one of those desserts that you can make up to a few days ahead and I think it tastes better.

INGREDIENTS:

1 packet mango jelly (made up to packet directions)

1 jam roll cake

1 litre of custard

2 - 3 passion fruits or 1 can passionfruit

mangoes ( you can use fresh but I just use a combination of frozen and canned mango)


METHOD:


1. Cut your  jam roll into thin slices and make one layer with the cake on the bottom of your trifle dish like so.

2. Add a layer of your mango's and passion fruit.

3. Then add a layer of your mango jelly ( use about 1/2 your made up jelly)

4. Then add about 1/2 your custard in the next layer.

5. Repeat those four steps again and top with drizzled passion fruit.

6. It does need to be made at least a day in advance


Wishing you all a happy 23rd day of Christmas and here's to beating the Christmas crowds  and rush.

Homestyle sweet mustard pickles

Canning your own foods and preserves has been around for many, many years but I feel like it has certainly made a come back over the last few years. This recipe for sweet mustard pickles is so good and is great for meats and sandwiches. I have also preserved up some jars for great Christmas gift idea's.

INGREDIENTS:

2 litres of water

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cauliflower

4 large onion's

1 cucumber

750 mls apple cider vinegar

2 cups white sugar

1 tbs mustard powder

1/2 tbs curry powder

1/2 tbs ground turmeric


METHOD:

1. Combine water and salt in a large saucepan.

2. Finely chop cauliflower, onions and cucumber and add to salt water. Stand overnight.

3. Heat mixture, cook vegetables until tender, then drain.

4. Put vegetables back into pot with the vinegar, sugar, mustard, curry and turmeric and bring to boil. Then simmer for approximately   20 mins.  Add cornflour mixed with a little water and simmer until thick.

5. Seal immediately in sterilised jars.

Hope everyone's  weeks is not too crazy so far. I know mine is with only 3 more sleeps until Christmas.

Take care and happy 22nd day of Christmas. XO

Boiled Fruit cake recipe

Today's fruit cake recipe is one that my mum has made for many years now. It's always so nice and moist and is pretty simple to make. I changed mine up a little bit though by adding a small amount of brandy and by making some as muffin sized cakes to give as gifts. I made a double batch of mine but I will give you the recipe for a single version.

INGREDIENTS:


500 grams of mixed fruit
1/4 cup brandy
1 teaspoon bi carb
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
225 grams butter
3 eggs pinch salt
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self raising flour


METHOD:


1. place fruit and brandy in a bowl, cover and soak overnight.

2. place fruit, spices, bi-carb, sugar, water, and butter into a saucepan and bring to boil over low heat. Stand aside to cool.

3. Once it has cooled add the well beaten eggs and mix well. Sift flour and salt twice and fold in to fruit mixture.

4. Bake in well greased 8 inch tin in slow oven (180-200 degree's) for 1 and a half hours.

*NOTE: for the muffin sized versions I only cooked for about 30 mins.

Happy 21st day of Christmas.

Chocolate peppermint candy cane fudge

This fudge recipe is such an easy recipe to make and would look perfect on your festive sweets table. The combination of the bright green with the crushed red and white cane's on top looks so Christmassy and tastes delicious too. But be warned it is very sweet and you only need the tiniest bit.

Ingredients:

For the chocolate fudge:

1. 375 grams chocolate chips

2. 395 gram condensed milk

3. 50 grams butter


Method:

1. Line a 8 by 8 inch cooking tin with baking paper or alfoil. (I skipped the step of lining it and just sprayed with cooking spray  but it was a little hard to get the fudge out afterwards)


2. Put condensed milk and butter in microwave safe bowl and cook on high for 2 mins. Then pour in your choc chips and stir until completely melted.

3. Pour your chocolate fudge into your prepared tin.

For the peppermint fudge:

1. 375 grams white chocolate chips

2. 395 grams condensed milk

3. 40 grams of butter

4. peppermint flavouring

5. green food colouring

6. crushed candy cane

Method:

1. Put condescended milk and butter in microwave safe bowl and cook on high for 2 mins. Then pour in the white chocolate chips and stir until melted completely. Then add some green food colouring to your desired colour and the same with the peppermint  flavouring to your desired taste.

2. Pour over the top of your chocolate fudge and straight away sprinkle on the crushed candy cane for decoration. (this needs to be done before it sets so that it sticks to the fudge).

3. Then refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Then cut into squares and serve. Keep refrigerated when not being served.

Hope you enjoy this yummy fudge recipe and happy 20th day of Christmas. XO

A handmade christmas

This year I decided early on that I wanted to try and make  mostly handmade Christmas presents. So knowing what I am like and how time gets away from me that last month before Christmas I decided to get an early start on making gifts so I started way back in May of this year with some of the quilting projects that I wanted to make. I have done pretty good this year with getting most of my Christmas list finished by the beginning of November. All I have left to make now are a few last minute presents and some baked goods.

Some great handmade gifts that I have worked on this year have been patchwork cushions, Patchwork table runner's, Polar fleece now sew blankets, key fobs, flower garlands, button bookmarks, pin cushions, table toppers , and baked goods like candy cane bark and cookie's. I still have some Christmas cakes, fudge and pickles to make as my baked goods yet too.

I have had so much fun this year in making Christmas presents for most of the year that I am already planning on working on what I am making for Christmas presents next year and plan to start working on them all year round. I love giving handmade gifts because it's like giving a little bit of myself to those special people in my life and something that hopefully they can treasure for a lot of years to come.

So with that being said and Christmas only 6 more days away I am off to make a few more pressies for some special someone's.

Happy 19th day of Christmas. XO

Confetti cookie's & Candy cane cookie's

Cookie's are such a fun activity at this time of year to make with your children or even for gift's for family and friends that drop by. Today I am going to give you a very simple and easy cookie base recipe that has only 4 ingredients that you can add any of your favourite combination's of flavouring's to. This recipe will also make approx. 100 cookie's (depending on how big you make them) for around $5  in Australia. But today I am going to show you how to make them into confetti cookie's and candy cane cookie's.

Base cookie dough ingredients:

500 grams of butter (softened)

1 cup of sugar

1 395 gram can of condensed milk

5 cups of  self raising flour



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Steps:

1. Cream butter and sugar either with a mixer or a spatula.

2. Add your can of condensed milk and stir through.

3. Then mix in you 5 cups of flour. I add mine 1 cup at a time and mix through.

4. Add whatever flavouring combination you like and roll approx. 1 tablespoon of mixture into a ball and place on your greased baking tray.

5. bake in moderate oven until golden brown.



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For the confetti cookie's:

I portion out how much of the cookie dough mixture that I want to make up and then add about a 1/4 cup of sprinkles and mix through. ( If you are making the whole batch up as these you may need to add more sprinkles).

Then bake as above in recipe steps.

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For the candy cane cookie's:

In these cookie's I used 5 candy canes and crushed them. I then mixed about half that through  a small portion of the cookie dough and then sprinkled the other half on top. Then bake them as the above base recipe.

Thanks for reading and I hope you are enjoy my Christmas blogs. This month seems to be flying by so quickly and I can't believe it's only 1 week left and Christmas day will almost be over.

Happy 18th day of Christmas. XO

Candy cane bark

Today I have a delightfully delicious , yummy quick and easy little treat  for you. Which  with some pretty packaging will also make for a nice Christmas gift.

Ingredients:

200 grams white chocolate

4 candy canes crushed



Method:

1. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

2. Melt chocolate ( I melted mine in the microwave and it took about 1 min 30 sec's) just stir every 30 seconds until it has completely melted.

3. Pour chocolate and spread evenly over baking sheet and sprinkle with the crushed candy cane.

4. Refrigerate for 1 hour until hardened. Then peel paper off and break into pieces.

You could also swap out the white chocolate for dark chocolate which I will also be making later on.



Hope you enjoy this quick and easy recipe.

Happy 17th day of Christmas. (I can't believe how quick these last few weeks are going.)

Aussie christmas swap part 2

The Aussie Christmas swap was a swap I joined in on a few months ago on Instagram. It wrapped up on the 8th of December and we were to either make , buy or bake something for our secret partner.

Now that my partner has received here goodies and I received mine from my partner I can reveal the extreme generosity that I received from my sweet partner Judith.

She made me this absolutely gorgeous Christmas mini quilt.

But her generosity went much, much further than that. She also made me this beautiful pouch and included so many extra's that I was gobsmacked when I opened this parcel. The extra's that were in this parcel were Christmas serviettes, 2 packets of Lindt  chocolate, a Christmas ornament, a very cute storage tin, some bohin  hand sewing needles, 3 spools of aurifil thread, fiskars fold up sissors, and several DMC embroidery flosses plus 1 cottage garden embroidery floss (which I am so excited to try). I really want to extend a huge thank you out to Judith for spoiling me so much.

For my partner Melissa I also made her a Christmas mini quilt. This cute little snowman one from Lori Holt.

I then included some extra's for Melissa as well as some little extra's for her 2 children and precious new baby and a little something for her husband.

I thoroughly enjoyed this swap. It was so much fun and getting to meet some awesome people along the way.



Hope everyone is travelling along well with this crazy time of year and especially those of you that live around Sydney Australia area with the wild storms we have been experiencing today.

Take care and happy 16th day of Christmas. XOXO

Meet Oscar

So this just happened.................

I have been umming and ahhing as to whether to get a little play mate for our cat  Jasper over the past few months. We had our other cat Tiger pass away in June of this year and Jasper is such a lively personality that I think he would love to have a play mate. So today my husband and I made the decision to add this little guy Oscar to our fur baby family.

We found him as a free kitten off of Gumtree which is where we also found Jasper from. And actually in the same area as Mr Jasper bear came from.


He is the sweetest little man and I think he will fit in very well with our family. But at the moment there is a little bit of tension in the air as they get used to each other. Lots of smelling going on and a bit of hissing at each other but they are very curious of each other so I don't think it will take to long for them to get used to each other.

He has already enjoyed his first meal with us and I am sure he is going to settle in just fine and before too long Jasper and Oscar will be best buddies and up to no good with each other.

Happy 15th day of Christmas.

LOVE JAPER & OSCAR