Christmas comes but once a year.

Hello!

I hope you've had a lovely Christmas celebration. I had a wonderful time with family and friends and I thought I would just pop in quickly to show you some photos.

I made this framed scrap page for my sister-in-law. The wedding was only a few months ago and my girls were the flower girls. The wedding was in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. I love this photo with the fig tree in the background and all the girls admiring the bride just before they all walk down the aisle. Next time I'll remember to photograph the page before I frame it! It was very difficult to get a nice photo - and you can see a bit of the mess my workspace gets into when I'm creating!

With a crawler in the house, all our presents were 'behind bars' this year!

My lovely neighbour Megan brought us this gorgeous package filled with shortbread. I do love coordinating packaging! And the shortbread was so yummy it didn't last until Christmas! Thanks Megan!

I had all the family to stay over Christmas. This is the only photo I have of our tree - we had a real one this year. Those are my parents on Christmas morning - we can never get a photo of Mum with her eyes open.....!

Here we are at Christmas lunch.

We ate button squash, zucchini and cucumber from our vegie garden,

 my Dad always cooks his amazing Honey Mustard Glazed Ham,

and this year I used Maggie Beer's Turkey with Pistachio and Cumquat Stuffing recipe. It was SO good! The turkey really was juicy and flavoursome and this year I won't be throwing out any leftovers - they're too yummy! The recipe calls for candied cumquats. I couldn't find any of these but did find some cumquat marmalade made locally by Tambea Jams. It had big pieces of cumquat in it and worked really well. I didn't glaze the skin with marmalade as Maggie suggests (there was too much present opening fun going on!) but I found that it had crisped up nicely without it anyway.

I suppose that just leaves one thing......guess what I got for Christmas??

A Big Shot die-cutting machine!

I've been having some fun with it and will be back with some photos soon.

Christmas present sneak-peek!

Just popping in because I couldn't resist showing you this little gift I just finished for a special persons Christmas stocking.

I hope she enjoys giving them as much as I do!

Luminaires and Gift Tags

My last workshop for the year is this Thursday night. We'll be making a lovely little boxed set of Christmas gift tags.....

These are from a design by Madonna Dunn on the We Stamp for Lara forum.

And a Luminaire......

My "tea-light" cover has turned into a "big candle" cover!! I love the way the Dazzling Diamonds makes the Medallion glisten. It looks so beautiful with a candle behind it but will still look gorgeous sitting on the shelf in the daytime.

See you there!

The Library Ladies

On Friday night I had a really fun night with Amy's workmates - the Library Ladies. If you've been watching the news lately you'll have heard that Wagga is a bit wet at the moment - so wet that the Lagoon made it's way into the Library last Thursday night! Most of the ladies I met on Friday night had spent much of the afternoon ripping up carpet at the Library and trying to salvage things - I was glad that we had a fun and relaxing night planned after that!

The ladies all had a go at making some cards and then everyone made one of these Apple Blossom boxes.

Not many were actually decorated with the Apple Blossom stamps - originality reigned supreme on Friday night! - but nevertheless I decided to photograph it in my Gala apple tree. Both of my apple trees are looking a bit moth-eaten at the moment as the Leaf Cutter Bees have been making good use of them. I think the scallop circle punch cut out at the top reflects a bit of how they look!