Hello all. I'm moving house in less than a week. And of course, that means I simply HAVE to post an update on here rather than do any packing, sorting, cleaning, etc.

Its been a long while since I last updated. I had a lovely Christmas time and was thoroughly spoiled by everyone. My lovely other half bought me a candle-making set and whilst I haven't use it yet I'm really looking forward to trying it out! it came with one fragrance and some colours and there's 2KG of wax so that'll keep me busy when I get round to it!

We enjoyed making some Christmas decorations as well this year. We bought a really cheap Argos value tree, but we tried to liven it up as best as we could by making some of our own decorations and by buying a value pack of baubles from Argos which we sat down and decorated with pens and glitter paint and various things. And I bought some felt and made a couple of felt decorations. I'd post pictures but really, Christmas is well and truly over!

What I would like to share with you is the present I made for my OH's sister and her fiance. I really struggled to think of something for them, when I decided I'd like to get them monogrammed mugs with their intials on them. I looked at a few websites but I was low on time (and money), and needed something immediately. Then I stumbled upon a tutorial for making your own and I thought 'hmmm, hobbycraft isn't far away!' so I took a stroll down there and picked up everything I needed for very little money:


The first mistake I made was buying white transfer paper rather than black or graphite coloured transfer paper. So I used that old fashioned pencil tracing trick and made a square of graphite transfer paper by rubbing an artists graphite stick that I may have liberated from my GCSE art days and using that to get the fronts to transfer. I scoured the internet for various free fonts and chose a few and tested them out in word before choosing my favourite, which I printed out and transferred onto the mug:



This took a little while and I had to wash it off and do it again for one of them, but once I had these marks, it was time to use the special porcelaine pen to fill in the design! For a first attempt, it didn't come out too badly. A little wobbly, in future I will buy the thinner nib as this one was thick and a little hard to control:



These then went into the oven on a low heat for about 20 minutes which sets the paint and makes the mugs dishwasher safe. And looking entirely identical to the last pictures, here they are:


I then filled each one with some lindor truffles and wrapped them. They were apparently very well received by my 'sister-in-law' and her fiance so I'm glad about that! I'd definitely do it again, it was fun!

I made my own wrapping paper this year as well which everyone was really impressed by. Its funny how the simplest easiest things can really look impressive to others isn't it? I just bought a big pack of brown paper and a set of 4 Christmas-themed stamps off ebay and a pack of ink pads and got to it! And I bought some traditional brown luggage labels to make the gift tags, which worked nicely:


I got into a habit before Christmas of baking something for my co-workers for our Monday team meeting. They LOVED it, they especially loved it when I took cupcakes in in bakery boxes (again, it never fails to amaze me, what people are impressed by! I just bought them from a bakery for 20p each!). The carrot ones and black bottom ones when down a real treat!

Black bottomed cupcakes in their box!

Carrot cupcakes fresh out the oven. Such a delicious, moist receipe!


As I said at the start of the post, we're moving house. I've loved the flat, but some people at work have found out where I live, which is not that great for me. We're moving into a 2 bed terraced house with a garden, which is a huge step up from a 1 bed flat! Its a small house, but still. It needs a little bit of work, it needs to be redecorated and I need to make some curtains and things. Its a rental property but the estate agent thinks that not only will we be allowed to redecorate but the landlord might actually give us some money towards doing so. I am SO excited and have been picking colour schemes for days now. The only thing getting in the way is the dark blue carpet in the front room and my wish to have some pale green on the walls (all our front room furnishings such as cushions, throws, rug etc are green), but that will clash horribly with the carpet, which we can't do anything about. I guess I'll have to move the green rug to another room and start again with our front room furnishings. maybe a nice pale soft blue? Don't want anything to make it look too cold though!

Last thing I want to talk about is the fact that I've taken up knitting again. I found a local knitting group that hasn't been going for too long and first started going a couple of weeks ago and I love it. Its a small group but I've been having a lovely time, the ladies I've met there are really nice and its been great fun. I haven't done a lot of knitting outside of knitting club, but I haven't really been doing any crafting at all lately, been too busy!

This has been the most slap-dash post I've ever made, but really, I've been meaning to post up this stuff for weeks and weeks and I am aware that I can't pretend I don't have a LOT to crack on with today! Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!