Our first gingerbread house

This year I have decided to be brave and make a gingerbread house. I followed the recipe in my fvourite baking book, Rachel Allen Bake. The project was split into three stages:baking, assembling, decorating. On Sunday we baked the gingerbread, it looked like quite a lot but we used the rest of the dough for little gingerbread men, trees and hearts. The recipe came with templates (the template for the roof was wrong, but I only noticed that in stage two), you had to cut out the pieces from paper and the from dough, bake them and then give them a trim before cooling. This left us with lovely cut of pieces of gingerbread which had to be tried, we called this quality controle. Monday morning I assembled the house. I used 250g icing sugar and 1egg white, it worked really well. Just before I picked up the big one from school, I got all the decorations out in little jars so that we could get going straight away. Oh the excitement when we got home. We spent an hour decorating, well the little one helped by quality testing the sweets. It was "such fun" (too much Miranda).
I can see that this is going to be a new Christmas tradition. Over the last two weeks, my girls have secretly removed quite a lot of the chocolate buttons and I have caught my husband as well, but I think that is part of the fun of having a gingerbread house.

Crochet is the cure

I had lost my making mojo a little after the disastrous shopping evening...lets just say, it wasn't an evening for handmade...people bought cheap tacky looking plastic jewellery, pandora style jewelery and bath stuff from Avon...it wasn't only me, there was this beautiful stall with wooden elks and bears, so cheap and so cute, hardly any sales...I had made up my mind that I was only going to buy something, if I had sold something...I just made enough to cover the costs for the table but I had to buy two wooden bear decorations for my girls, I could not leave them there for £1 each. I would have bought more if I had sold more, the next day I was really upset that I didn't get that gorgeous elk.
Anyway, I had lost my making mojo. Just felt that my stuff wasn't good enough and looked rubbish. Quite a down sort of day. I had lots of Lebkuchen and hot chocolate, used my unsold cards for my Christmas post to my family, talked to a friend and slowly felt better.
I needed a pick me up and so I got my crochet stuff out and made a hat from drops design. I crocheted (?) until midnight, I just had to finish the hat. My girls both liked it, well it is pink. The funny thing is that I made it for myself but it fits all of us, 35, 4 and almost 2 years.
My poor girl has fever and is not well but managed to smile anyway.

Love the snow but...

I was planning to go and sell at a school shopping evening tomorrow. It is snowing here at the moment and this means chaos on the roads. I don't know what it is with England, but people never seem to be prepared. We have about 5cm on the road and schools are already sending children home earlier because mums might not be able to get through with their cars. My friends at home in Germany always laugh in disbelieve when they hear these stories.
I love snow and was really looking forward to it until I realised that this shopping evening tomorrow is not going to happen or is going to be really badly attended...all my work for nothing. Well, I will have lots of homemade gifts this year. And the cards I have made will just be send to family and friends, which will free up some time for some home baked Christmas cookies...there is always a silver lining.
I will dress up warm now, get the sledge out of the garage and pick my girl up from school. After warming up, we will have to build the Micky Mouse Club House gang (no ordinary snowmen in our house), at least that was K's plan this morning.
By he way, there is nothing better than decorating the house for Christmas while the snow is falling, so peaceful, I even put a Christmas CD on. I love this time of year.

To buy an ATG gun or not to buy one?

I am trying to be sensible here... for the last week I have been looking at pink ATG guns and various blog posts about them. I have found one for £23 with two refills which I think is a good price but do I really need one? Am I making enough cards and will I get enough use out of it or will a small tape roller do?

Help

Ok I just go ahead and get it, my last small tape roller has just run out and cutting tape off a roll and then sticking it on just takes far to long. And anyway, my friend just bought some jewelery from me and I will just reinvest my earnings.
Update: It arrived today, it is so pink and wonderful. I am glad I bought it, cutting double sided tape off the roll just took far too long and I am not the most patient crafter.

Sure Cuts a Lot

I have just purchased the Sure Cuts a Lot software and it is brilliant. What I love most about it, is that you can position your images and this way, you have a lot less waste. My husband had the right USB cable for me and I could start cutting within seconds of my purchase. I only bought the downloadable version and was sent the license via e-mail, it took less than a minute! The best thing is, that I found a voucher on the internet by putting "craft edge voucher" into google, which saved me 10% of a product that is good value anyway. Don't get me wrong, I love my cricut cartridges and I have great fun using all the lovely images but on days like today, when all I needed was a tall, thin triangle that I could not find on any of my cartridges, this software comes in so handy. If you want to try it, they offer a free demo, which cuts horizontal lines through your images but gives you an idea on how it works go to craft edge it is worth a look.
I am probably the last one to have found this but just in case there is someone else who is looking for svg files, this page is brilliant and every image on there is for free. It takes you to the designers pages and there you can find oodles of images for not a lot of money. I love Treasure box Design, their images are so cute. Every Tuesday they are giving away a new freebie and isn't this bear just the cutest?

Vinyl

I made some vinyl stickers for my daughter's room. The machine cut through the vinyl like butter. I can see lots of other projects coming along.

Embossing on BigShot with Texture plates

Oh I have been so naughty and have already used my Christmas present, but I have a good reason for it, I am making Christmas cards and wanted to emboss them. I have been looking at the internet before I ordered my Big Shot and found this tutorial on youtube on how to get your plates to emboss deeper. I have tried it out today and I love it. The embossing seems deeper and crisper.