New Year, Bargains and Excesses!

We are back after our winter break and would like to wish all our readers a very Happy new year full of new adventures. Just thought we would give you an update of a few of our adventures over the last week or two. Our baby Christmas / Yule tree has been outside now for a couple of weeks and is looking much better.... hopefully it will continue to grow all year ready to be brought in again for next year.

The decorations have been very carefully packed away... If you follow our blogs you will know that we hand make a lot of decorations and each one contains so much love and so many memories of past seasons and the children growing up that we would absolutely hate to lose any of them.

As an extremely thrifty living family this careful packing also saves us much money each year... Talking about thrifty living, we have used the January sales to stock up on anything we may need for next Christmas at just a fraction of the price!

We have bought the crackers and all of the wrapping paper for next year for bargain prices many things were just a few pence, plus some rolls of paper which could also double up as other occasion wrapping paper, for example stars can be used as birthday or congratulation wrapping paper too. Extra thrifty bonus points! No need to worry or stress about these things throughout the year or in the run up to Christmas now.

Another good money saving tip is to look out for bargain foods after Christmas... most supermarkets are wanting to offload their seasonal excesses very cheaply. One of the things we bought were these parsnips for just 3p a bag, I have to admit we bought lots... more than 10 bags. Well, we do eat a lot of vegetables and most of them have been prepared for the freezer, ideal to grab a handful for a casserole or just for roast parsnips. We have also been enjoying parsnip crisps too.

My freezer is also now full of carrots too, apart from the ones used for carrot stick snacks and of course carrot cake. Not only has this saved us a lot of money, it has also stopped a lot of food being discarded and ending up in landfill. As a zero food waste family this means a lot to us!

For the whole festive season we have been enjoying the beautiful flowers on my rhipsalis pilocarpa cactus plant, it's like looking up a lots of tiny white stars. We are also looking forward to the new season of growing especially with the arrival of our new seeds.

So once again we wish you a very happy new year and good bargain hunting!

Old Christmas Angel

We all have memories of Christmas past, for me opening the Christmas tree decorations every year holds so many memories of times past that I really need to pause to take it all in. There are the decorations for each of my children's first christmas, the one to symbolise our wedding, the beautiful vintage French ones my husband bought me, all the ones we have hand made over the last few years.... I could go on but first I would like to introduce you to a dear old friend of mine, this is her 22nd Christmas, she looks a little worse for wear but she has been greatly loved by lots of little children.

She is the sole survivor from a pack of three, still smiling and bringing cheer from behind her tired, faded blue eyes and tattered wings. This year I decided to try to make her some new friends, the idea came to me when I made the nature faeries for the Autumn solstice and I was quite excited when I found exactly the right type of small pine cone the other day.

To start with I cut the pine cone off the twig leaving a little stump, to insert into the bead for the head, this makes it a little stronger and a better fix for the bead using a hot glue gun.

Then traced round the old angel's wings onto the new wing material, I have used thin foam self adhesive sheeting, the other side is covered in silver glitter. I cut two wing shapes out for each angel and stuck them back to back to make both sides glittery but card would work just as well here.

Then we spray painted the new angels in silver, I really love the little acorn cup hats so decided to add these to our angels. These were also spray painted silver and had glitter sprinkled on top, my husband drilled the little holes so that we could add the string to the top to hang them from the Christmas tree.

Then you just need to assemble all the parts, we threaded silver thread through the hat and also added a little hair before we glued the hat to the head and the wings in place.

Three finished angels, I'm not sure whether to add faces or not so I have left them blank at the moment while I think about it.

Here they are together hanging on the tree, they look quite similar and I would love to think mine could last 22 years. I may keep a look out for something more angelic to use for the wings but in the meantime my youngest daughter loves them and has already given them a few kisses to welcome to the family.

This is one of the nature faeries that I made for the Autumn solstice, I sprayed him silver too so that he would kind of match the others.