Jikana Damaru

The 8th Day of Christmas

2009 presented me with some new toys - a brand new iMac computer which this blog is written on, a new laptop so I can stay connected even when we travel and a brand new car. So I suppose you could say that I have been spoilt with material things in 2009. Each of these give me joy, I love driving my car - I could spend hours in it and never get tired of the pleasure of driving - I have loved driving since I was 15. My old computer was getting so slow that some days it drove me insane - so a new one was one the cards - and it has renewed my love of getting out there in cyberspace to see what is happening in the world - a chance to reconnect with some old friends and to meet new ones.

What this has also done is make me even more aware of how lucky I am, and so this year I have also given more than I normally do to a number of charities, for while I get joy from my new things, I am also acutely aware that others in the world - including Australia - are less fortunate.

Point + Shoot : 2

Saturday Afternoon (around 2ish)

So... I am trying to learn to sew and thought a little project might be great practice. I have been wanting a door stop for the front door for a while now. It was a lot easier than I thought but I did have a step by step tutorial to follow - Thanks Tania for the link.

This is the finished product - its a little creased but other than that it turned out quite well I think.

Check out other point + shoot lovelies here.

Gingerbread Houses

This week on Flickr Faves Sunday, I bring you the prettiest Gingerbread houses with these gorgeous pics. Check back soon for some more of the most inspirational photographers on Flickr.

Some beautiful shots from my Flickr favourites (clockwise from top left):

The beautifully painted Ditsy Bird House by neviepiecakes
The adorable Gingerbread Mushroom Cottage by Gigi & Big Red
The sweet A Partridge in Pear Tree Cottage by neviepiecakes
The cute Piparitalo. Gingerbread house by karaimame

Have a sweet day!

Hand printed bags of handmade honeycomb

I made some honeycomb a while ago and it went down a treat with my friends, so I thought it would make a great little treat for Christmas. Originally, I was going to put it in some star-and-stripe printed candy cones like the ones I did for Halloween but I ended up running out of time! Instead, I came up with a quick way of making some pretty Christmas candy packaging for my honeycomb.

I had ordered some white paper candy bags for Halloween but ended up using the striped ones instead. So, after trying out my snowflake stamps in pink, green, pale blue and red (my holiday colour scheme) on my paper bags, I came to the conclusion that only red would look the best. I quickly got to randomly stamping 4 different styles of snowflakes all over the front of the bags then filled them with the honeycomb and used some of my striped masking tape to seal the backs of the bags. Ready to go!

I popped into Paperchase to pick up some stamps and reindeer candles and saw some boxes of mini clothing pegs with little red felt deer on the front. I thought they would be a cute addition to the bags of candy, with the added bonus that they could also be used to attach the Christmas cards to the back of the bags!

Honeycomb (makes about 10 bags)

Ingredients
600g caster sugar
2 tbsp liquid glucose
100ml water
100ml liquid honey
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
500g dark chocolate

Cooking instructions

Place the sugar, honey, water and liquid glucose in a heavy based jug. Using a candy thermometer, heat until the temperature reaches 160deg C
Remove from heat quickly
Add the bicarbonate of soda and whisk immediately
Pour onto a greased baking sheet and leave to cool down
Break into small chunks
Temper dark chocolate (click for details)
Pour chocolate over the chunks of honeycomb
Place on a sheet of baking paper and leave in fridge to set

Packaging
White sweet bags
Snowflake stamps
Colorbox ink pad - cranberry
Reindeer clips
Striped masking tape

Have a sweet day!

The 7th Day Of Christmas

The 7th thing 2009 has bought me is a renewed sense of looking at life with the glass half full.

I have had some ups and many downs this year - probably more than in any other year that I can think of. I have had more pain than ever before, I've been more lonely than ever before, I've felt sadder then I have in a lot of years. There were days and days of sadness, loneliness and pain - maybe even weeks. Some times I got bogged down in it, but always I tried to think of my glass as half full. For no matter how bad my pain was, someone somewhere is always worse, no matter how lonely I felt because my hubby was away - I had family and friends and knew he would be back - some people have no-one in their lives. No matter how sad I got, I only need to have my chicken (my eldest grand-daughter) ring me up and hearing her voice put a smile on my face, I only had to spend some time with my munchkin (my youngest grand-daughter) to have a happiness injection. And though it all, I had my sisters and my family loving me just because they can. So really my life is very blessed and I am so thankful to be walking this earth each and every day.

In glossy print

You can imagine my surprise when Melinda called me up to say we had been included in the recent Handmade magazine publication! It was a feature on the amazing Yarraville Market that we have been so excited to be apart of. Copies are available at all good newsagencies!

the photo of us is bottom left @ our first Loopy Love market stall!

The 6th Day Of Christmas

One of the surprises of 2009 was my trip to Singapore, my daughter's blog Childhood 101 was nominated and then became a finalist of the Nuffnang Asia Pacific Blog Awards for best parenting blog. She asked me if I was able to come to help with my youngest grand-daughter as her hubby was unable to take time off work.

While I initially said yes without even thinking, when I stopped and thought about it, it was a little daunting, see my menopausal mumma blog entry here for more info.

It ended up being an amazing journey, I really enjoyed spending time travelling with my daughter and my little munchkin. We met some amazing people, got to experience a different country and to top it off my daughter won the award.

Sometimes things are put before you, you can either choose to jump or stand back and not try - this time I chose to jump and free-falling was awesome.