Christmas Gingerbread

I made lots of gingerbread today, some as presents, some for a party at work. I gave some to my lovely neighbour who then promptly told me I was 'The Gingerbread Queen'. And then I was asked on Twitter to share my recipe, so here we are:


Ingredients:

350g Plain Flour
1 Teaspoon (or more if you like it gingery) Ground Ginger
1/2 Teaspoon Ground Cloves
1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
1 Teaspoon Bicarb
100g Butter
175g Brown Sugar (I use demerara)
1 Large Egg
4 Tablespoons Golden Syrup


Method:

- Preheat oven to 180 degrees c.
- Mix flour, spices and bicarb.
- Rub in butter to breadcrumb like consistency.
- Add sugar and mix.
- Break egg into mix and then add golden syrup.
- Mix thoroughly and knead.
- Roll and cut out.
- Bake in the middle of an oven for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

You can then ice them, or just eat them. The finished products are quite hard once they've cooled down and very good for dunking in tea!

I don't have a picture of any I've made I'm afraid, but here is a picture of my favourite cookie cutters - they're in the shape of Lego men and women!

Paper Origami

Before I make anything in fabric, I always make it in paper first. Paper is cheaper than fabric, you don't need to iron it to make it hold creases, and when it all goes wrong I get less cross!

So I thought I'd show you some of the things I've made in paper recently. Some of these pictures I've played about with in lo-mob so they look cool, others are just boring phone pics - I apologise for the quality of some of them!

Firstly, a full ball made from 12 flowers. Each of these flowers is folded from 6 bits of paper, so these take a while to make. They're really pretty though:



This is half a flower ball, so made from 6 flowers, each made from 6 pieces of paper. Several people have pointed out to me that these would look good around the bottom of candles, if I left the central flower out, but I'm sligtly worried about the paper + candle flame aspect of that!



Here are some random little flowers I made in a mug on my desk at work. I've tried making this flower design in fabric, but it just doesn't work sadly!



I made this just a few minutes ago - practicing a new design. It's a waterlilly and I rather like the way it turned out:



And just to prove I'm not all about origami, here's a picture of my hair. I plaited it across my head, and I loved the effect, so I took a picture!



Also this week I had my first sale in my shop which has made me very happy. I'm hoping it's the first of many. I'm also still waiting for some ring blanks to arrive so that I can make cute cocktail rings - hopefully they'll be here soon!

My Week...

...of being positive was hard. But I got through it, and no one told me off for being negative, so I'm counting it as a success!

Things I found to be positive about:

- Managing to get to work through a foot of snow!
- Winning some prizes in a work raffle
- Finishing my Christmas shopping

And a really big thing to be positive about - I sold my first set of hair slides today! I sold them to a friend from work, rather than online, but a sale is still a sale, and she's told other people about them too, so I'm hoping for more!

Sadly I don't have any pictures of the hair slides I sold, but here's a picture of some I made last week from Japanese kimono fabric:



They, and many other things are for sale in in the shop, and as I still haven't had a sale online, the code FABRIGAMI for 25% off will still work!