We’ve been beavering away in the kitchen this week, whipping up festive treats to give as gifts. Harry is just old enough to begin to take pleasure in gift-giving, so making things together for him to give to godparents, grandparents, grown-up siblings and teachers is a source of great pleasure and pride. Our best and most explosive offering is our proprietary Christmas Cookie mix (proprietary simply because with such flamboyant measuring of ingredients and dosing of spices, no-one could ever hope to accurately replicate our secret recipe…).
We’ve measured and stirred together all of the basic dry ingredients for our cookies and packaged them up into pretty take-out boxes which I’ve customised with labels and simple instructions for how to bake the cookies. We of course road-tested these kits ourselves, to excess – so I’m about 6lb heavier and will be unable to look a cinnamon and nutmeg scented raisin cookie in the eye for at least a day month.
The photo I used of Harry is actually of him playing with his toy BBQ back in the summer, and is one which always makes me smile. If you want to try these, download my recipe and details of how to mix and combine the dry ingredients below; it’s very simple, as you’d expect by now!
Dry ingredients for Bag 1: 80g caster sugar, 80g soft brown sugar
Dry Ingredients for Bag 2: 180g plain / all purpose flour, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp, nutmeg, 60g rolled oats
Dry ingredients for Bag 3: 150g of raisins or currants.
Christmas Cookie Mix Instructions
Another of Harry’s gifts are these jars of retro sweets – all current favourites of Harry’s, and designed to transport his recipients nostalgically back to their childhood and to provide them with a dippable stash of the kind of illicit, high-sugar treats that they wouldn’t dream of going into a shop and actually buying for themselves.
I added a gingham fabric top, glass candy cane and festive bell, and then pondered how much they look like shepherds (it’s the nativity week thing; I have a one-track mind at the moment…). So now they are branded as Shepherds’ Midnight Feasts; an energy-packed snack for those wintery nights tending sheep and waiting for virgin births, which is doubtless a long and chilly old business. Or perhaps just to accompany a night slumped in front of the TV, which is a tad more likely.
Remember those hyacinths and paperwhites I planted a few weeks ago? They’ve sprung into life and are at the promising, budding stage, so I’ve popped a few into inexpensive but pretty mugs, and will be taking them along to decorate the kitchen windowsills of my nearest and dearest later this month – something both beautiful to look at and useful afterwards; I do hope that William Morris would approve.
I’ve also made a couple more batches of pinecone firelighters, bagged in cellophane and tied up with ribbon. Our central heating blew up yesterday so I confess I have already delved into one of these and raided supplies to keep our own fires burning whilst we attempt to dress in every piece of clothing that we own.
I’ve wrapped red evening candles with ribbon to accompany the bottles of wine we’ll be taking to friends for dinner; another very simple project whose results outweigh the effort involved (my perfect formula for the attractiveness of a craft..)
And finally, because the holiday season is often as much about indigestion and ill-advised consumption as it is about anticipation, I’ve sourced some luxuriously highbrow peppermint teabags and added my own bauble tags before piling into pretty china cups; useful to have on hand for Christmas Day night, and then for those first few weeks in January when one’s body is a temple and your resolve to never let caffeine pass your lips again has not yet faltered (well alright; the first few days then…)
And now I must leave you; I have a feisty toddler who needs to be wrestled into his Joseph costume before we wend our chilly way through the gloaming to the church hall where his nativity play is to be held. I already have a small head wound from being accidentally bashed with his biblical wooden staff; I have impounded it until the moment critique when Joseph needs to make his entrance, and have warned Mary’s mother that Mary needs to keep her wits about her in case there’s any flamboyant gesticulating from her husband in the stable, stick in hand.
Back at the weekend; stay warm!
AMAZING!!!!!!!
So lovely presents!:) Merry Christmas!:) And imaginitive New Year!:)
Thanks Inese; Happy Christmas to you too!
simply lovely- I’ve been after pinecones since you’d originally posted them (now I must do this). And love those budding mugs. The cookie mix with custom label so precious. And the fancy peppermint tea simply brilliant. Those china cups and bauble tags are very cute.
Wonderful ideas for gift-giving. Thank you, I was in need of a bit of creative inspiration.
Love these! So creative, and your labels are so wonderful and personalized!
Kenley
You have been very busy! Hope all goes well and Joseph doesn’t wound anyone before the night is over.
How absolutely wonderful ! Im sorry if I might sound pretentious or naive… but you must have your own shoppe somewhere, or featured in a magazine…?
Well thank you for the very lovely question (and no, it’s not at all pretentious or naive; it’s very flattering!) and actually no, I don’t… crafting is just a quiet passion I do in the hours between work and sleep, with Harry joining in whenever I can persuade him that it will be more exciting than Lego
. No plans for a business or for world domination therefore, but enough just to get the lovely reactions and comments I do here, so thank you again!
Those pine cones warm my cold heart. I say cold heart b/c it’s cold and there is no snow here and I’m wondering how many years in a row we have to have a snowless Christmas. It’s Canada for God’s sakes. But honestly it’s all so lovely. But the pine cones are my fav! I need a real fireplace.
Hi Alex, we’ve been feeling very Canadian this week as we’ve had temperatures in the minuses all week with not a hint of snow; the kind of cold that penetrates to your bones and requires an hour in the bathtub to restore warmth to your core!
Kate, how do you find the time to do all this ?!? Everything looks lovely, and makes me want to stop working and do them all (because there’s no way i could do that right now… ) !
Thanks for all the great ideas, and for the little window your blog opens up in my mind, a window of beauty, creativity and simple things …
Audrey
Ah thank you Audrey – and my secret is very much ‘little and often’; a bit of craftiness every day to gradually build up our hoard of gifts! If only I could apply the same discipline to exercise
I feel a New Year’s Resolution coming on…. Have a wonderful Christmas!
Love it, love it, love it. I am fairly new to your blog and I am loving every post so far. There are some very lucky people in for some lovely treats. I have to ask though, do you have a secret for getting a few extra hours in the day? You seem to achieve so much!
Really enjoying reading about all your christmas preparations!
Helen xx
Thank you so much Helen, and welcome!! It’s lovely to hear from new visitors, and to know that you’re enjoying it. I’ve just finished work for Christmas (hooray!) so brace yourself for more news of Christmas projects next week! x
wow amazing stuff, how busy r you! xxxxxx
I am in love with that sleigh, it’s amazing! And the beautiful fur throw in it too. And all the contents. I can only imagine how long it take judging by how long it takes me to go from starting a project to getting it on my blog. I’m sure Harry’s friends, teachers, grandparents etc will be delighted to receive these, they easily rival what’s in the shops!
Ah, thank you! The sleigh was an amazing find at an open-air antiques/junk market this year – one of those ones they hold in a field and you can find everything from a vintage tea strainer to a 20ft tall barn door… it came from Eastern Europe, I think, and is an ancient childrens’ one complete with seat and handle – not something we should road-test, probably, but gorgeous for piling presents on next to our tree!
Such LOVELY ideas and beautifully photographed as well…oh, how I must learn label making…and what great writing too – your descriptives of everyday life, entwined with the how-to’s and why’s always make me smile (and laugh out loud!) – thank you. Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Kate, what I just LOVE about you and you blog is how you take a very simple idea and turn it into something special. Your styling and attention to detail with labels and decorations is superb and really elevates your homemade gifts to something else.
I bought 3 Emma Bridgewater mugs for 50p each (I know!!) at a car boot sale on holiday in the Cotswold over the summer. I’d intended to use them as gifts but couldn’t decide what to put in them until I saw your post. It was going to be fudge, but I think hyacinths are the way forward.
Hope you got your heating fixed! Gillian x