Christmas cooking

Another productive day of cooking yesterday :) We made jam drops, rocky road and cheerios wrapped in puff pastry with cheese and sauce. We have nearly finished our cooking for this year - one more day and we are done :(

 

Make sure you pop back tomorrow - I'm going to start posting my "12 Days of Christmas" projects and a "12 Cards of Christmas".

Thrifty Thursday

After our weekly cooking session this morning mum and I decided to do some shopping. We popped into one op shop while were out and I fond some sweet Christmas items.

An appliqued tree skirt - $1

An owl plate (still in orginal box) - $1

 

Santa jar - $1.95

I'm linking this week's finds over at Sir Thrift Alot.

Scrap The Boys

 The colour challenge at Scrap The Boys this month was perfect to scrap this photo of Cohan!

Christmas Tree

After admiring all the beautiful new decorations in the stores, I decided to update my usual Christmas colour theme. Since I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying lots of new decoations when I already have boxes of beautiful decorations, I decided to keep 2 colours and add a third compimentary colour....hot pink!!

 

Craig set up the tree on Sunday night and I decorated it yesterday :) I love the silver, purple and pink colour combo!

Distress ink Christmas card

Kylie had a Kaszazz party on Saturday - where we made this stunning distress ink Christmas card. I tend to use distress inks on vintage / shabby chic cards, so it was nice to step out of my comfort zone. The blue & green colour combo is a refreshing change from the traditional red & green :)

The weekend

I had a wonderful and busy weekend :) Yesterday I went to a Kaszazz party where we made a gorgeous Chrstmas card (will share pics). Then Craig and I spent the afternoon at the beach - enjoying the lovely warm weather.

We were up at 5am this morning to spend the day out on the water. We put the crab pots in and tried a few favourite fishing spots. Unfortunately the fish weren't biting, but we were suprised with the number of mud crabs we caught (it's not really muddy season) - 8! We ended up keeping one legal sized male crab. Even though the fishing was a bit disappointing, it was still a beautiful day to be out on the water surrounded by gorgeous scenery.

I was fascinated by the huge number of jellyfish that were in the river! I have seen then in the ocean and on the beach, but I can't remember every seeing them in a river.

Christmas Cooking

Mum, my aunty and I did some more Xmas cooking today - a batch of pssionfruit biscuits and choc coated cherry ripe balls!

 

 

 

I don't think the cherry balls are going to last till Christmas though - Craig keeps "taste testing" them! LOL

Dragon cards

I had stamped the dragon image on the cards a while ago, and thought it was time to colour them in LOL A few strips of washi tape (LOVE that stuff) and stamp a sentiment - quick and easy :)

 

November Swaps - Cards & Tags

This month's card swap theme at Simply Crafty was Christmas cards.  Thanks to the July xmas card swap and this month's swap, I have a good start on my Christmas cards :)

My card

Tanya's card

Cathie's card

Dilys' card

Danielle's card

The embellishment theme was Christmas tags.

Layouts

It's been a while since I've shared some layouts. I have been slowly working my way through a dozen or so half finished LO's. I finished the first 2 last week.
 

 

 

Yesterday I spent a lovely day scrapping with the ladies at Simply Crafty. i managed to start and finish this LO, plus start on another one.

Horse card

I am a bit behind with sharing my cards / LO  lately (was busy blogging about the cruise LOL).   I made this card for my MIL's birthday last week.  I tried a new (to me) technique and stamped the doilies on the blue wood grain pattern paper to give it more of a feminine look.  I love how it turned out and MIL was really happy with it too :)

:

Christmas Cooking

We (mum, my aunty and I) started our Christmas cooking last week - we each made 3x batches of bacon & garlic sausage rolls to put in the freezer.   On Thursday we did some more cooking :)  I made my first batch of sugar coated peanuts with sucess!   Mum usually cooked them and gave me a batch, but I wanted to have a go at making them this year.  Suprisingly they are very simple to make :)

 

After we did the peanuts we each made 2x batches of rum balls.  

 

 

I'm looking forward to next week's cooking session :)

Thrifty Thursday

Mum and I did some op shoppig last week :)  She was on the search for some plates & glasses for a xmas project and I was just happy to look around.

I brought 2 books ($1 &$2).

 

A display box for $3.   I'm not keen on the dark brown colour, so I'm going to paint it white / pastel colour.  I'm not going to hang it on the wall, but lay it on my desk and use it to store small embellishments (similar to a printers tray).

 

A few different kitchenware bits & pieces - glass jar ($1.50), pie vent (50c), cup & saucer ($2) and a beer mug for my MIL horse collection ($1.95).

 

 

I was also lucky enough to find some cute jewellry - brooch ($3), green beaded necklace ($4) and I LOVE the kitchy deer necklace ($2)!
 

 



Professional cruise photos

We got all frocked up for 3 cocktail / formal nights on the cruise and got lots of professional photos done. These are our favourite ones that we brought.

 

 

 

Quilling creations

I made 3x gift cards, 1 bookmark and a card in the quilling classes on the cruise. I enjoyed making the quilled animals :)

 

Cruise Day 11, 12 & 13 - At Sea and Brisbane.

Day 11

We went to see the Live Culinary Demonstration in the show lounge.  The head chef was very funny and had us in stitches.  They made a prawn & scallop rissotto and a creme brulee.  We had brought the P&O cookbook, so after the demonstration we went down to the front of the restuaruant to meet the chefs and get our book signed.,

 

Another relaxed day at sea - thread card class, lunch, reading and a nanna nap. 

 

It was cocktail night, so we got all frocked up and went to the Captain's Club in the show lounge.    We enjoyed some cocktails while the Captain thanked everyone for sailing again and awarded bottles of champagne to the top 3 people for the highest number of cruises. 

 

 

We got some more professional photos taken before we met Kerrie and Dave in the formal dining for dinner.  After dinner we went to see "Life As We Know It" show in the showlounge - it was a contempory songs / dance perfomance featuring the Pacific Cirque - very different to the usual shows, but we really enjoyed it!

 

 

 

A few more cocktails and enjoyed listening to a band in the Orient Bar, before going to bed.  Another towel animal was waiting on our bed  - a cute dog :)

 

Day 12
A very relaxed day at sea - breakfast, thread card class, lunch, reading and a nanna nap. Final dinner in the formal dining room with Kerrie and Dave.  Our waiters gave us crepe paper roses and a balloon wrist corsage :)  We were having such a lovely time chatting that we missed the final show - oops LOL  We did go down to the Orient bar to listen to a band and have a few more cocktails. 

Day 13
The ship docked at 7am, so we were up at 5.30am to get dressed and have one last breakfast.  We had to pick our duty free alcohol up from the dining room (between 5.30-7.30) - usually it's delivered to your cabin the night before.  When we got to the dining room it was chaos - half the ship was waiting to get their alcohol - it was crowded and people were getting angry with the lines / waiting and anxious about disembarking in time to catch connecting flights / transportation.  After breakfast we went to the show lounge to wait till we were called to disembark.   After waiting about 15 mins we were allowed to disembark, we got our luggage in the terminal, went through customs quickly, onto the parking shuttle bus and back to our car within 40 mins.   

I wanted to visit Typo at the DFO, so we headed there and grabbed some morning tea while we waited for the shops to open.   It was my first trip to Typo.....I LOVE Typo!!   Lots of bargain bins and goodies on sale  - I brought a basket full of goodies and found a gorgeous owl canvas (50x70cm)for half price ($5 - bargain!).  It was a bit hectic in the small shop - everyone grabbing bargains.  I paid for one basket of stuff, gave it to Craig to look after and went back for a 2nd look and filled another basket LOL  Have stocked up on Xmas presents!  After DFO we headed home, when we got to the highway we found out that we were travelling with a HUGE truck convoy (raising money for kids) LOL  A quick stop for lunch and petrol, then we arrive home safe & sound :)

Cruise Day 9 & 10 - At Sea and Port Vila (Vanuatu)

Day 9
A day at sea meant we got to have a sleep in and a late breakfast.  A lazy day - trivia, lunch, watching dance classes, quilling class, reading, writing some postcards and just relaxing. 

We went to the Atrium and saw the Pacific Cirque show "Transformation" - amazing acrobatics!

 

 

We went to dinner in the formal dining room with Kerri and Dave. After dinner we went to see impressionist "Keith Scott" - not only does he do fantastic impressions (Looney Tunes characters, prime ministers, TV actors, etc), but he is an amazing singer and sounded just like the people he was doing impressions of (Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, etc)! 

Day 10
Another beautiful day - anchored in Port Vila (Vanuatu)!  After breakfast we went out to the port and bartered with some drivers to take us into town and then on a 2 hour tour of Vila.   After finding a driver (Johnny) and deciding where to tour (all different places to the last time we were in Vila in 2010), our first stop in town was to buy our duty free alcohol  We then wandered around looking at a few shops and some markets, before getting back into the mini bus  to start our tour.  Johnny took us for a drive though the largest village and explained about village life.  From there we drove to the Cascade falls.  We didn't walk up to the falls because it takes approx 40mins return trip and we didn't have suitable footwear on to walk on the slippery rocks.  We did have a look around the gardens and at the stream from the falls.

 

From the falls we went to Tanna Coffee - we could smell this place long before we saw it! LOL  The coffee beans are delivered to them, they roast it and  supply all of Vanuatu with coffee.

 

 

Our driver Johnny with the ONE machine that roasts ALL of the coffee!

 

 

We went to a beach where we could feed fish.  It was an amazing the reef was right on the edge of the beach!  We brought a bag of bread for AU$3 and went to the hut over the water to feed all the beautiful fish.

 

 

 

 

We drove around a few more beaches and through some rainforest areas before heading back into the city.

 

 

We went to 2 lookouts in the city centre - one at the war memorial and another one.

 

 

 

 

After our tour, Johnny dropped us back at the ship. We had some lunch then went back down to the wharf and did some souvenir shopping at the 80+ markets.  

 

 

We went to the Island farewell sailawy party on the Top deck, then sat in The Dome and enjoyed the sunset cruising.

We had dinner in the formal dining room with Kerrie and Dave, then went to see Jackie Love perform at the show lounge.