THE THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT

 One of my  Flickr friends is the wonderful Haniela.  

 She also has a fabulous blog  with tons of gorgeous recipes.

(Photography © Haniela's, All rights reserved)

Last year I feel in love with her Christmas gingerbread table decorations.

( Photography © Haniela's, All rights reserved) 

I had forgotton all about then until she started posting them again this year and remembered how wonderful they were.

 Anyway I was searching for inspiration for an advent ring (normally I wrap a bit of tinsel around some candles).  So I decided to make my own version.

 I wanted to incorporate some ditsy prints and try an unusual colourway for Christmas, but I like how it turned out.

Happy advent!

FREEBIE DOWNLOADABLE AND GIVEAWAY WINNER

Congratulations to Amanda on winning the giveaway, your goodies will be in the post soon.

Check out her blog for some delicious recipes.

Anyway I would love to give you all a little Christmas gift.   So I have turned my mini Santa cake into a downloadable cupcake pic for you.

If you go here you can find it in pdf form.

Download the sheet, print it out and then with a 2 1/8" round craft punch cut out your Santas. You can then either punch out a plain circle of card for the back or have a double sided cupcake pic with two Santa's.

Glue the two sides together with a cocktail stick in the middle. If you are feeling extra festive you can even add some glitter!

They make excellent toppers for my Christmas cupcakes.

Happy Christmas from me to you.

ps if you do make your own I'd love to see some pictures.

CHRISTMAS CUPCAKES

 

I am appearing on Three Counties radio today with a Christmas cupcake recipe. I shall be on Lorna Milton's show again at 2.00pm, you can listen here.  So I thought I would share it with you lovely people too.

But first a story;

Once upon a time there was a young girl.  Ok... lets make that a young talented spark of a girl!  She loved to create but  had never heard of the internet or blogs or online magasines!  Poor thing, what a world she had yet to discover.  She had to make do with her Mother's collection of 101 Ideas Magasines which were actually very interesting.One day her mother came to her and randomly gave her some old Christmas cake decorations that had belonged to her Nana.  She looked at them and thought 'Mmmm' because they were a bit tatty and sparkly bling was in, but she filed them in her box of 'things I feel too guilty to throw away but don't want to use'.  The years passed and vintage was in vogue.  So she dug out her Nana's decorations and thought 'Wow!  these are so on trend, I must use them for something fabulous!'

And here it is.

A recipe for Christmas flavour cupcakes.

I shall be announcing the winner of the giveaway tomorrow but I'm afraid it will close today at 12GMT.  However tomorrow there will be a  freebie for everyone else!

xx

TIME FOR A PRETTY CAKE

 I sent off a cake this week for a first birthday party.  

 It was based on this earlier cake 

 but with the fairy from this cake.

That's all I have to say really, I just thought you all deserved some prettiness.

ps Don't forget to enter the giveaway.