Making table decorations for my pre-Christmas lunch

 
I enjoyed myself, this past week, doing a little craft project. I decided to make Christmas cracker boxes for my pre-Christmas lunch table. Ones that I could fill with little treats and Christmas jokes for each of our guests.

I had thought of buying Christmas crackers from the shops, but the contents are never much good. So, instead I searched through hundreds of ideas on Pinterest, my go-to website for ideas on things to make. 

This little template appealed to me. It didn't link to a webpage, there was only the template with no instructions. But I managed to follow instructions from other pins for Christmas crackers to assemble it.

I re-sized the image and printed it onto glossy photopaper, one cracker box per page. 

It was easy to cut out with scissors, but I used a craft knife to cut out the internal diamond shapes. Then I folded the paper along the dotted lines and glued the tabs to the opposite side to form a tube.

I bought some thin red ribbon and tied a bow around the diamond ended parts which made it look like a Christmas cracker.

I left the bottom ends open so that I could fill each Christmas cracker box with Christmas chocolates and also Christmas jokes, which I printed from the internet. 

Then I closed the ends with a tiny dab of glue, so that the cracker boxes could be easily opened up to get the treats out.

Now I still need to iron my newly washed white tablecloths and napkins. And sort out my placemats, cutlery and dishes that I will be using. There is no hurry to do this as I still have 11 days to get ready.

The menu and the shopping list have been sorted, presents all wrapped and Christmas cards written. 

I have assembled the large Christmas tree, which needs the lights and decorations to be put on. For some reason it feels like a bit of an effort to do this year. Maybe it's just because it is so hot at the moment.

But I have decorated my little Christmas tree on my bedside table with vintage ornaments and some of the little paper house decorations that I made for the dining table last year.

And I have tidied up my desk and made it look Christmassy 🎄

I hope that you are enjoying yourself during the run up to Christmas this year, 

and that things are not too hectic.

See you again soon,

Hugs, Rose xxx

Flowers in my garden mid-Spring

This Spring the amaryllis flowers are amazing. There are 19 stems of flowers in-all and they have grown really tall. Their red trumpets are huge and look like rich velvet. I have never seen them do this well before. Maybe the mild Winter had something to do with their success. 

This is the gravel pathway between the house and garage where we grow plants in pots and tubs and also raise new cuttings.

The clematis is also doing well, it is absolutely full of pretty blue flowers. We love it so much that we have bought 3 more in different colours. One has buds on and the other 2 are madly climbing up their stakes. I will take some photos of them when they flower.

We also bought a red mandevilla plant, it has lots of new growth on it and quite a few buds.

We're not sure where we're going to plant the mandevilla. It may look good growing up the fence at the front of the house. Or we may put it in a large plant pot and keep it where it is.

This yellow snapdragon plant has been growing and successfully flowering for over 3 years.

We didn't know that snapdragons could be grown as perennials. We trim each stem, when it has finished flowering, to just below the seedheads, and leave the plant alone through Winter.

Dad has created a new flowerbed at the side of the water tanks. We are planting hydrangeas, foxgloves and aquilegia here as it is quite shady under the fruit trees.

This flower bed now joins the existing bed where the arctotis and cineraria grow.

And the flowerbed continues around one of the lime trees to where we have planted white irises and phlomis. 

Dad is going to widen the iris bed and I have ordered more irises in different colours to go here. They will be arriving in late January, so there is plenty of time to prepare.

The abutilons that we planted at the far corner of the garden are growing well, and the self-seeded white foxgloves are much taller than me now!

The orange clivia put on a good show this year. I am thinking of maybe getting a yellow-flowered one to put in another shady spot, next to the garden shed, under the plum tree.

I hope that this post finds you well. Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Hugs, Rose xxx

Fright Night was so much fun!

 

It was officially Fright Night in our village on Saturday evening from 5pm to 7pm. I decorated our entrance with the paper spiral ghosts and pumpkins that I had made earlier, plus plastic spiders and bats. Nothing too scary as our house was registered as a safe house as opposed to a scare house.

We bought about 3 kg of Halloween-themed sweets which I put in a large wicker basket covered with black netting with a bat pattern on. Then I hung orange and black balloons on our mailbox at the front of the drive.

This year we kept our door closed so that the children had to knock and say trick-or-treat when we opened it. Last year we just kept the door open which wasn't as exciting for the kids. The children started arriving at 4.45pm and finished at 7.30pm. 

My 92-year-old mum sat on a chair in the hallway, excited to see all the costumes and watch the children's reactions. Mum kept a tally of how many children visited. She counted 167 in all 👀👻🦇

I had a great time handing out the sweets. The children were all very polite, asking how many sweets they were allowed to take and saying thank you. I loved seeing their costumes and how excited they were. One dad brought his baby (less than a year old), dressed up for Halloween, and took a sweet lol. Some of the children had made their costumes themselves, but the majority had been bought or made by parents. 

One boy was dressed in a huge inflatable dinosaur outfit. But the outfit had an air leak, so his friend held onto the dinosaur tail to get more air into the body, but when he let go, the neck and head deflated and fell to the ground. It was funny to see, but I did feel sorry for the kid. I gave him extra sweets for his effort. 

I asked the children if any of them had a trick prepared, only one girl had who did 4 cartwheels for extra sweets. Then another boy said he could do backward flips but was too tired and another said he could ride a scooter.

The children liked the decorations that I had made and inspected them closely. One boy told his friend that this is the spider woman's house because I put plastic spiders out this year and last year. So now I am known as the Spider Woman 🕷🕸

The Halloween-themed sweets were very popular, especially the red eyeballs and vampires blood lollipops. One young girl asked if the eyeballs were real. She looked rather worried, so I told her they were made of jelly but she could pretend they were real. She was very pleased with my answer!

 I can't wait until next year's Fright Night. Mum was so happy she said it is better than going out. She thought that some of the costumes were scary, but most of them made her laugh. And she really enjoyed counting how many children came.

I hope you had a fun weekend too.

Hugs, Rose xxx

Halloween preparations

 

This week I spent an enjoyable time preparing for Halloween. I made decorations and bought treats for my nephew and for our community Fright Night. 

I made the Halloween pop-up-card in the photo above, for my nephew using a free template from the Canon Creative Park website. It uses quite a bit of printer ink, but luckily I had plenty.

The design is quite intricate with a lot of pieces to cut out, arrange and glue down. It took me a day and a half to make. I tested the pop-up-ability of the components after glueing each part together, and the card worked very well! There was also a template for a spooky envelope to put the card in.

I filled 3 little printed packages with Halloween sweets. I made the paper for the packages using templates from the same website as the pop-up-card. These were put in a box with the card and some origami bats that I also made, and then couriered them to my nephew. The package arrived the next day and was liked very much which made my day.

Our community Fright Night is going to be held on the Saturday after Halloween this year, rather than on the 31st of October which is a school night. This will give me plenty of time to set up the decorations in the morning.

I made more paper decorations to add to last years collection. All the templates were free to print from the internet, making crafting so much easier and cheaper. I made spiral paper ghosts, a Halloween banner and more 3D paper pumpkins.

These spiral paper ghosts are almost finished. I just need to add small weights to the ends of the tails to open up the spirals. Then I will add some string to hang the ghosts by. I printed them using photopaper to make them stronger.

This Shabby-chic Halloween banner was really easy to make. Just print, cut out and glue onto some string.

These are the small paper Jack-o'-lanterns that I am going to hang on the plant by the front door.

I will be putting plastic spiders around the front door mat like last year. Nothing too scary as I have registered our house as a safe house again this year. We could choose whether to be a safe house or a scare house so that the younger children don't get frightened. The teenagers prefer the scary houses, but still come to the safe houses for treats lol.

I have filled a large basket with Halloween-themed sweets. The Fright Night organisers are also going to share out sweets to safe houses which have been donated by the Fright Night sponsors, so there will be plenty of goodies for the children.

We are hoping for dry weather for the event in just a week. It was perfect last year 🎃🦇👻

Will you be doing anything for Halloween this year?

 

See you again soon. 

Hugs, Rose x

Spring is here!

Today is the first day of Spring and it has turned out to be gloriously sunny. It was a big surprise to see such a quick change in the weather after the terrific thunderstorm and lashings of rain we had last night.

I woke to hear the dawn chorus from the many blackbirds, thrushes and tuis that visit our garden. 

I managed to photograph a tui in our neighbour's pink blossom tree which leans over our fence. The blossom looks like bunches of dangling bells and is full of nectar which the tuis drink. Tuis are lovely birds with a little plume of white feathers at their throat. Their song is amazing to hear, it is very long and cheerful with a very wide range of notes. 

I wandered around the garden with my camera and Otto followed as usual. I found many flowers just starting to open including a dainty forget-me-not, which I enlarged in the photo above, and discovered a tiny ant drinking nectar from one of the flowers.

I noticed a few flowers on the yet-to-be-named blackberry/boysenberry bush. We didn't have any luck with the fruit on it last year. The fruit all dried up for some reason, despite the amount of rain we had. This season I need to get advice on how to look after them and identify what sort of berry they are.

The pretty, mauve-flowered bush above fell over and split its trunk during the Winter storms. It managed to layer one branch, which survived, and this is flowering now. We had to remove all the rest of the dead branches. It used to be quite a large bush.  

The white arum lilies are flowering now and stand out brightly in the shade under the trees.

The Meyer lemons are ripening nicely. I picked one yesterday to use in a chicken and leek in white wine sauce recipe. The lemon was juicy and full of flavour and added just the right amount of zinginess to the dish.

The hellebores are still flowering since the beginning of Winter, and there are more buds forming. I don't deadhead the hellebores, they are left to self-seed under the trees.

This Spring we are lucky with the little blood orange tree. It has produced quite a lot of fruit for its size. Now it is just a matter of judging when they have ripened fully and picking them before the birds and slugs get to them.

A few of the anemone bulbs which were planted last Autumn are flowering. I was lucky to find this one which hadn't been munched on by snails.  

This fucshia managed to survive the Winter outdoors and today I discovered flower buds on it. When we bought it last Autumn it was in full flower. I took a cutting of it just in case it didn't survive, and the cutting has been successfully growing in the garage on a shelf by the window. I need to find somewhere to plant it out now.

The bad storms this past Winter blew the tree in our lawn over sideways even more, and it is now on a great lean towards our neighbour's property. We might need to contact an arborist for advice about it. If it needs to be removed we will need to get permission from the council who will come and inspect it. 

Our Alder tree was also blown sideways and lost many branches due to the hurricane. It is such a shame as it is a large old tree. It will be awful if we lose it.

On a brighter note, the Chinese primulas have grown well. They like the partial shade that they were planted in. And the flowers are in varying shades of pink and white. These should self-seed under the trees and bushes and make an even better display next year :o)

In the next week dad and I are planning to go to the garden centre to buy compost and vegetable seedlings. We will also be looking for flowering perennials and shrubs and maybe a couple of dessert grape vines. I'm not sure what time of year they sell different plants, but I enjoy looking anyway.

I hope this post finds you well and I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Hugs, 

Rose xxx

Enjoying a day of Winter sunshine

 

The weather cleared up nicely on Saturday after many days of rain. The night had been very cold with no clouds, resulting in a heavy morning frost. We had glorious blue skies and the temperature rose to 18 degrees Celcius. Just perfect for me.

Frosts, where I live, are usually gone by mid-morning after the sun has warmed everything up. 

It was warm and dry enough for me to put the cushions on the outdoor furniture. I sat outside on the deck with Otto for a few hours, relaxing and enjoying the dappled shade cast from the surrounding trees and bushes and listening to the birds singing.

I treated myself to a cup of tea with some biscuits and happily read a back issue of the New Zealand Life and Leisure magazine. Then I visited some blogs using my iPad. I had a lovely time catching up on what everyone has been doing.

Afterwards I walked around the garden with Otto and took a few photos of the flowering quince that has grown over the fence from our neighbour's garden. The last time I photographed it in flower was in November last year, which was late Spring. I hope they continue to flower that long this year.

The golden arctotis, at the front of the house, has also started flowering and there are plenty of buds coming up. It seems earlier this year too, it used to start flowering around September at our last house. Maybe it's because they are in a sunnier spot here, rather than under trees.

The orange tree is laden with fruit which is almost ready to pick. Otto is helping me by keeping a close eye on the oranges as they ripen :o)

I hope that you are enjoying your week.

Hugs, Rose x

A third of the way through Winter!

 

I am sitting here at my desk, on a very wet rainy Winter afternoon, going through my list of Hygge activities that I can do to brighten up the day.

I had forgotten about my Hygge list, created 4 years ago, until I went through my old Winter blog posts. It was just what I needed 😊. So, I picked a few activities to do and set to work.

My first activity was to bake an "Easy lime and coconut cake." I found the recipe online on the Taste AU recipe website and luckily had all the ingredients needed to make it. This is the third time I have used my oven to bake something. It turned out nicely despite there being no temperature markings on the oven temperature dial! 

While the cake was cooling and waiting to be iced, I set about doing my second task which was to clean and rearrange my desk. I added one of the miniature cyclamen plants, which I bought a few days ago, for some cheerful colour.

My next Hygge activity was to dig out my favourite Gien filets bleu tea-set and make a large cup of Twining's English Breakfast tea with a slice of lemon in. The tea went perfectly with a slice of the cake I made. A bonus is that the cake was also liked by mum and dad.

As I had my afternoon tea I watched an episode of Gardener's World, which I really enjoy. And then I watched the latest Chateau Diaries vlog post on YouTube. It was lovely seeing the English Summer flowers and also the happenings at the French chateaux de LaLande.

As I looked out of my bedroom window, at the pouring rain, I felt happy and cosy inside and actually enjoyed watching the rain splashing on the deck outside. My cat Otto sat on my knee for ages cuddling and purring. Bliss. Otto then curled up and fell asleep on a chair by my side.

I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to start a jigsaw puzzle...

...But Otto was only pretending to be asleep. As soon as he realised that I was opening a jigsaw puzzle box he was there in an instant to help me!

Supervising me was quite exhausting work for Otto, and after deciding that I was capable of doing the puzzle by myself, he finally found a comfortable place to have a nap.

The last Hygge activity that I chose to do was to use the photos I took yesterday, of the new indoor cyclamen plants we recently bought, to create this blog post. Another thing that I love doing.

We chose a variety of miniature and large cyclamens in different colours, to brighten the house up for Winter. Our old cyclamens are dormant at the moment and are living in the potting shed.

I had a very lovely, relaxing time today. The Hygge things that I chose to do have left me feeling happy and cosy on a cold and wet Winter-day. 

Tomorrow morning I will plan what to do for the rest of the weekend. It is a long 3-day weekend. Matariki, the Maori New Year, is being celebrated here in New Zealand at the moment.

It is now time for me to have a warming cup of hot chocolate before bed.

I hope that this post finds you well and enjoying the season you are in.

Lots of hugs, 

Rose x