Christmas Cards

Well I have finally got my act together and made some of the many cards I need to send out this year. I'm normally so well organised and would have had them all made ages ago but this year I've had so much else to do. This weekend I thought no more excuses just get it done. Here are a few of the cards I made.

The whole collection

Here are a few close ups

A little help and Advice please

Can anyone help me with a problem I have with up loading pictures to my blog. When trying to upload using the icon on the tool bar I find I am getting a message which tells me I have exceeded my storage space. I really cannot see how this can be I have never had problems before. I have been simply uploading photos and not jpegs is this where the problem arises? If anyone can help me I'd be grateful as a blog without piccys sort of defeats the purposes of the blog.

Thanks

A Weekend in Berlin

Just got back from a weekend in Berlin. We had a great time despite the cold and fog. Berlin is a very interesting city, its definitely not what you'd think of as a place for a romantic get away like Paris, Venice or Rome but its, well it has something about it.

The Reichstag

The Beliner Dome 

There is some lovely old German Gothic architecture to be seen in Berlin, but there is also some hideous modern, harsh, ugly blocks everywhere. I'm sorry if that offends anyone  but  it's my honest opinion. And the graffiti, I have never seen so much graffiti, its everywhere, some is fantastic and amusing, but most of it is just hideous and just so pointless. Again this is just my opinion.  

Now this is what you call humour ha ha 

Don't get me wrong though, Berlin is  a very modern and fascinating city, well worth a visit. The food was great and the people, well they were fabulous so friendly and kind I was most impressed    

A chocolate creation 

Such lovely cakes 

My advice to anyone reading this is pay a visit to Berlin. In five years time a lot of the building work which is currently underway should be finished and then I think Berlin will be amazing. I'm definitely going back.  

Pork,sage and Onion Swirls

Having watched a Hairy Bikers making some mince beef swirls my hubby asked if perhaps we could try making our variation using pork or perhaps chicken. Well I make cheese and fruit swirls using puff pastry so why not I thought I guess you could make all sorts of varieties. 

This time I went for pork, sage and onion, might try some for Christmas using minced turkey, cranberries and chestnut stuffing. If you want to try the pork varieties here is  the recipe. It is so easy.

Ingredients 

300g Minced Pork
1 pkt Puff pastry
1 pkt Sage and Onion Stuffing

Pepper
Salt

Method

Pre heat oven to 190 C 

Roll out pastry in a rectangle until its about 2 mm thick. Don't roll too thin or pastry splits when rolling and too thick and the rolls will be stodgy.

Mix Stuffing with hot water following instructions on packet then mix with 
the minced pork.

Season with salt and pepper.

Spread meat stuffing mixture over pastry leaving an edge of about 1 cm uncovered along the shortest edge.

Now roll the pastry/meat pastry sheet from the shortest end. keep roll fairly tight. 

 You will end up with a roll as shown above

Once you have created the roll then divide it into slices about 2 to 2.5 cm.

Bake for about 20-30 minutes.  

The items when cooked 

A serving suggestion

 These are great eaten fresh from the oven but also make great picnic food.

     

Summer pages

One of my favourite places in this country to visit other than trips home is Wisley RHS Gardens in Surrey. Every time I visit I seem to find something new and interesting to inspire me in my own garden. Its such a peaceful place to visit I recommend it to everyone not just the gardeners amoung us, but its also a great place to take children and just to go for a peaceful and relaxing stroll. 

The gardens are great at anytime during the year but in the summer when the roses are out is possibly my preferred time to visit. It also coincides with my birthday,so I can usually convince my hubby to purchase some plants from the wonderful garden shop.   

This year I took the following shots and made them up into scrapbook pages the layouts for which were inspired by pages seen within the creativity magazine by 'Docrafts'

This first shot was taken in the large green house. Its a spectacular place all different environments in one venue. I love the waterfall and the great swathe of passion flowers that hang from the ceiling.

The second shot which I made up for my scrapbook shows the passion flowers plus my daughter.This year the curtain of flowers was not quite so impressive as in past years but I guess everything needs pruning at times. 

   

     

Flower Child

Close up of the page detail

 
This second shot shows my hubby relaxing at the top of the apple tree hill As you can see he's armed with an umbrella ready for a sudden change in the weather. 

You were saying?

A close up of the page detail

I thought I'd just add a few shots of the flowers I wont be using them as scrapbook pages but they'll give you an idea of whats to bee seen at Wisley  

Distress inks at the Scrapbook Garden

I've just been looking at some of the other blogs I follow and I found that http://welcometothescrapbookgarden.blogspot.co.uk/ has a fabulous give away of Tim Holtz Distress Inks and great Tando Creative Masks to give away in their Blog Candy Give Away for the months of November and December. You ought to give it a look great blog as well as the giveaway candy.

Fancy dress

This week my son was invited to a Halloween Spectacular, fancy dress party and he decided to go as Bane from Batman. Well he has loved Batman since he was a very young child and the choice was therefore a  fairly predictable choice of character. He's been Joker and Batman before so he wanted to try something a bit different, Bane, therefore seemed a good choice and we thought it would be fairly easy. It turned out not to be as easy as we had first thought and required two attempts until we got the vest sorted. 

The end result as the picture below shows turned out to be very effective. My son was pleased with the end result and whilst he was at the Halloween event loads of people came up to him to have their photos taken with him so they too must have thought it was pretty good.

Well what do you think?  

BANE