SEW Excited it’s Christmas!
In all honesty i wasn’t really in the Christmas spirit this year and bought my presents completely last minute, not helped by my mum also not being in the christmas spirit, not even having so much as a christmas tree up in her house!
My sister and I had to buy her a tree, it may be small but at least it’s something!
But eventually i managed to feel festive, partially helped by matching christmas jumpers! Nothing quite says ‘Christmas’ like matching festive jumpers!
I received some lovely presents including (and i am so excited I can’t stop staring at it!) a dress makers form from my mum and her boyfriend! It’s adjustable and polkadot and just amazing!
I also got some fabrics, a gift card for a sewing shop and a rotary cutter! I’ve spent a lot of the day draping and pinning the fabrics I have to it. Now all I can think of doing is going back to London and making dresses!
I had my festive fabrics with me to make my family bow ties. I decided to make a festive outfit for my form! 😀
By the way, the bunting on the form above was made by my 12 year old cousin! I gave her my old sewing machine (along with essential sewing supplies!) last year and she is quick becoming a sewing whiz! I’m very impressed and proud!
The day was rather lovely too. The whole family got together at my grandparents, we played card games, drank wine, opened pressies and ate lots of food!
I’m sure tomorrow will be lots of the same!
I hope you too had a very merry Christmas!
Claire!
First Draping with Fabric from my Sister!
Christmas Tradition – Stirring the Christmas Pudding
Every year, at my mothers house, we make a christmas pudding or cake, as do our neighbours. We’ve always had a tradition of stirring the pudding 3 times and then making a wish before putting it in the oven. Of course, like all magical wishes, you can’t tell anyone what you’re wishing for or else it wont come true!
I used to always look forward to the knock on our front door asking me if I wanted to go and stir next doors pudding. I’d always shout ‘Yes!’ with glee and run to get my shoes. It was definitely one of my favourite christmas traditions which I hope to carry on even though I now live so far away, despite not even really liking christmas puddings.
Have you any fond memories of your families Christmas traditions?
Nutty Christmas Stuffing
One of my housemates is going home to his parents house soon for the Christmas period and so we decided to have a little christmas meal of our own. I was in charge of food and decided to make it a real feast. We decided to go for turkey with all the trimmings and also bought a joint of Pork for Ash who isn’t that keen on Turkey. Our other housemate, Jack, is vegetarian and so had his own little ‘meat’ roast to put in. Jack also ended up roasting all the vegetables and making mashed potatoes and swede. Yum! I made the Yorkshire puddings, Gravy and decided to make some stuffing from scratch too!
I’ve made stuffing before, a traditional sausage, sage and onion, but needed to cater for Jack and so looked around for a vegetarian stuffing recipe. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one that I really fancied and so decided to create my own concoction to bring some festive cheer to our meal! I ended up with a delicious (and yes it really was tasty!) mushroom, walnut, cranberry and apple stuffing and thought it was so tasty that I just HAD to share my recipe.
And yes it was given the thumbs up by Jack.
So here’s how you can make your own, Vegetarian approved, stuffing this Christmas:
You will need…
For the seasoning I just used Sage, but you can obviously season to your tastes. I also used chestnut mushrooms to add a nutty, mushroomy flavour and walnuts to add a creamy, nutty flavour. Apples are there to add a hint a sweetness and I also thought they would go quite well with Ashleys pork. I bought a loaf of Tiger Bread because it is delicious, but any bread will do. Slightly stale bread would be best as you are just using it to make breadcrumbs. Cranberries are christmassy and I felt that it wouldn’t be a christmas stuffing without!
I’ve not given you many measurements because I don’t really measure, i prefer to just do what I think looks right for me, you can add the amounts to suit your tastes too.
First off you need to grab a blender, or a ‘whizzy stick’ as I have, to make bread crumbs. Just throw the bread in there and blend away.
Next chop up your celery and half an apple into chunks. Do what you want with the other half apple. I ate mine, It was delicious. 😉
Throw the breadcrumbs, celery, apple and cranberries into a bowl and put to the side for later. I only put half of my packet of cranberries and it seemed to be enough.
Top tip : If you can’t find fresh cranberries (as I couldn’t), by some dried ones and pop them in a bowl of water so that they will be nice and juicy!
Next off its time to chop up the mushrooms (i used half my punnet) and onion. I also chopped 2 cloves of garlic. Throw all these into a frying pan.
Grab a knob of butter and soften them all before adding 100ml of water.
Add this mixture to the breadcrumbs etc. in the bowl and mix together. Then add the nuts and seasoning and stir again.
Put the mixture in a baking tin and throw in the oven on 180 degrees for around 15-20 minutes until golden brown on the top.
And there you have it! A yummy, nutty, vegetarian stuffing. The perfect festive accompaniment to your Christmas Meal!
Just for fun, here’s the spread we ended up cooking (served in pots and pans because we don’t have enough serving things)
And yes, i did manage to finish that gigantic plate of food. I may or may not have had to lie down for about an hour afterwards 😉
Please let me know if you try this recipe and what you think of it, or even share your own take on this festive stuffing!
I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!!
Red Accents – What I Wore
Yesterday I decided to wear this lovely grey, woollen dress from Zara. It’s very plain, but very versatile which I LOVE.
I felt like making my outfit a bit more festive by adding these cute winter tights i probably bought from Primark (lets face it, most of my clothes come from there). I just love the adorable snowflake and heart pattern! I find these adorable ‘pixie’ boots from new look go perfectly with most outfits, I haven’t wore them in a while and so I had to show them a little bit of love 😉
I also added this sparkly belt to add a bit of festive glitz to the outfit. I’m pretty sure that this is, again, from Primark.
To finish it off I continued with the festive theme by adding a festive colour! I went with my bright red Zatchel and red beaded bracelet. I just love this bag, it’s so well made and big enough to carry everything I need.
Over the top I wore the cape that I made myself which again adds a bit of wintery sparkles. I’ve actually been thinking about ways I can improve this cape design and hope to be making many more in the near future! Although I know there are a lot of improvements to be made with this cape I still love it dearly and love to show it off at any possible moment.
For my make up I went for some subtle, but striking, eyes. I used white and silver/grey eye shadow before lining with black eyeliner and then a sparkly eyeliner on top (again adding to the glitz!)
I decided i wanted bold lips and what better than bright red to match my bag! I very rarely wear lipstick but definitely think I should do it more often.
I just left my hair in it’s natural, wavy state (i’m far to lazy to actually do any serious styling) and just pinned back the front to keep it out of my eyes. Despite being so simple my boyfriend kept saying it looked really nice! Sometimes I guess simple is the way forward. 🙂
Do you like to wear bold colours?
Festive Penguin Stocking!
Picasso is getting all excited for Christmas and already has his stocking out! Although he’s having a lot more fun inside it rather than hanging it up 😉
Have you got your stocking out yet?
If you haven’t even got a stocking yet you can get your very own Penguin stocking just like Picasso’s in my Etsy Shop! (Click the image to follow the link!)
Enormous Raffle! 50 Prizes to be won!
Today I heard of an Etsy teams plight to help their fellow team member. It really does prove how much of a great community Etsy is and really restores a bit of faith in the human race.
Sandra, of Azulado, lost her husband to cancer a few days before Christmas. Now she is struggling to support her 5 year old son whilst making arrangements for her husbands funeral, not an easy task for anyone.
With all the extra costs for the illness and burial of her husband and finding it difficult to get support from her government she is understandably struggling to get herself back on her feet.
This is where her Etsy Team comes in. They have all banded together to organise a huge raffle full of amazing handmade gifts! With 50 chances of winning something beautiful, whilst supporting a family going through hard times, who could say no?
The raffle only costs $5 usd (that’s roughly £3.50) so not exactly breaking the bank, but can hopefully make a lot of difference to one family.
I think this plight has really touched me personally as it is very similar to own my mothers situation when she had me.
A month before I was born my dad died from a heart disease leaving my mum to bring up myself and my older sister on her own. Luckily our family supported her throughout and, in my opinion, myself and my sister have grown up very well (she really did do us proud). I couldn’t ever imagine going through what my mum went through, she is truly an inspiration to me and a fantastic woman.
So please help out another mother going through a difficult time.
All the details can be found here : http://star-of-the-east.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-kindness-of-strangers.html
Big Plans for 2013
I know, I know. I’m a terrible blogger. Christmas became a whirlwind of un-organisation and just seemed to appear out of no where for me! The New years arrived and work took over, I didn’t even get to go out and celebrate! But now it’s a new year and a new chance to work hard, improving myself and my business!
I will do a quick Christmas update soon (once all the photo’s are edited) but for now I want to look to the new year and what it has in store!
I have been thinking long and hard about my new years resolution and realised that I needed more then one. There’s so much I want to do this year to really feel like i’ve got the most out of it.
Here’s the list I finally came up with :
Hopefully with these goals I can not only make The Penguin Theory a success (or at least on the way there) but I can also have an exciting, action packed year following the other loves in my life (acting and travelling being among them).
So what are your new years resolutions this year and what are your goals?
Until next time (I promise I will resume normal blogging again now)
Happy New Year!
Claire
Reindeer at The Moon Underwater
Yesterday I attended a christmas event at the Moon Under Water Wetherspoons in Enfield.
In all honesty the event wasn’t as big as I was expecting, and I wasn’t expecting it to be a big event at all. There were a grand total of 5 stalls (most of them sporting the cheap, mass produced, generic christmas items) and, although it started at 12, barely any customers arrived until about 2pm.
My boyfriend and his friends came along to help out and keep me company until my sister came along to help. When she did arrive she brought along some awesome decorations for my stall including this amazing penguin tea cosy! Apparently it was her housemates grandmas and they said I could have it! I’m so thankful because it is so adorably amazing!
I was starting to feel a little down about the lack of customers and sales but knew that everyone would be arriving later, when the reindeer arrived. I was so excited about the reindeer that I’d even taken my big DLSR camera with me!
When they did arrive, all of a sudden there were crowds of families with kids and I really hoped I could make at least one sale.
Their ears are so fluffy!!
I managed to sell two items in the end (three if you include the one to my sister) but then I know I was catering to the wrong crowd at this event. At least I made back the money on the stall. Plus i gave my business card out to a lovely lady who said she was involved in lots of craft fairs! Hopefully I can find a few more events to set up stall in. 🙂
At the end of the day I’d say it was a success. I managed to cover the cost of the table and had a lovely catch up with my sister who came to help out.
Plus, I got to see the reindeer…Something I may have been just a little too excited about. 😉
‘Till next time!
Childs Polkadot Skirt now in Store!
If you have or know someone with a little girl who loves cute, pretty things then this would be an awesome gift this Christmas!
This adorable skirt is 100% cotton and features two layers of different sized polkadots.
The elastic waistband makes it a very comfy fit and also gives it room for growing children, It measures 23 inches when relaxed and 38 inches when fully stretched. It is 13 inches long.
It is the perfect summer skirt!
But wait, didn’t I say it was perfect for a Christmas present? But that’s in Winter!
Although I do think it is the perfect summer skirt, I also think it would be adorable in winter with a pair of thick white cotton tights.
If you like this skirt but would like adjustments to the waist or length then I do take custom orders. I would take around 2 weeks for me to complete and I can make it to any specifications you would like (longer, more/less layers, different colours, adult sizes etc). Just click the ‘Contact Me’ tab at the top of this page to get in touch and I will see what I can do for you!
The skirt in the Pictures can be found for sale here
WI Finchley Frost Fair!
Tomorrow is the Day of the WI Finchley Frost Fair!
I will be there along with other great crafters such as Making Mosaics, Mahliqa wire jewellery, Tom Butcher Ceramics, Stu Gardener Designs and many many more!
I’m a little worried to have my crafts sat along side all these artists and definitely wish I had more stock, but I am excited non the less. Just have a 12 -close shift (yes that’s 13+ hours) to get out of the way and then I can get even more excited!
Here are a couple of my new Items you might be able to see there:
A cute, double layered, polkadot skirt for a toddler.
A little boys apron, so he can make mud pies or what ever little boys like to eat.
Hope to see you there!!
Till next time!
