Christmas Tips and Ideas - Week Four - You're Crackers!!

Christmas crackers, lovely fun filled little bits of frippery that get us all laughing and joking at the start of the festive meal (and provide fabulous head wear into the bargain).

But they can cost an absolute fortune, looking at them in the supermarket the other day even the cheapo nasty ones with the little bits of plastic (that the dog usually ends up choking on while you're all tucking into the dinner and then he regurgitates his breakfast all over Auntie Nellie's new sparkly Christmas shoes) were well over £5 a box.  If you want a box of 'deluxe' crackers with 'luxury gifts' (how many silver plated dice or thimbles do you really need?) expect to pay at the very least £20.  You may as well crumble up a twenty pounds note now and send a bit less to landfill.

Sorry, I'm starting to sound very Scrooge-like here.

If you're a cracker virgin you may want to buy a kit, with all the necessary bits and pieces, including the snaps, but I think it's sooooo easy just to do it all yourself.  Of course if you're canny, you can watch out for these kits in the January sales usually they are sold for pennies and then you are set up for next year.  Just pack them carefully up with your decorations and you wont lose them.

Right....what do you need. 

Some pretty paper, crepe paper, pages of comics are good for children's crackers, brown paper, either plain or decorated or even those glassy leaflets that drop out of every magazine we buy, as long as they are about A4 size they will work just fine and once rolled up they will all look suitable festive. 

Enough toilet roll tubes for each cracker you want to make plus two spare (for shaping each cracker).  A selection of little gifts, either random or specific for people (put a little gift tag on each cracker as you complete it if you do this).  If you don't want gifts pop in a couple of wrapped sweets or a little certificate of a promise of a service (an evenings babysitting, an hours weeding or ironing etc) folk can swap these around if they want to at the table causing much fun and merriment.

Make some paper hats from thick tissue paper or go down the 'Good Life' route and make newspaper hats, making sure of course that any 'posh guest' gets the Times and not the Sun!!  Although again these can be swapped before the meal starts!!

A pack of 'snaps'........ miss this out if you do as we do and just shout 'BANG'.

A little selection of jokes or mottos.

A glue stick.

Bits of tinsel, ribbon or string for tying up.

Decorations or cut out pictures for putting on the crackers if your paper is plain.

Now to assemble -

Put all your sheets of paper in a neat stack, place a toilet roll tube centrally along the length and make a row of little holes (a darning needle is good for this) just after one end of the tube, this will enable the cracker to pull apart a bit easier and one person to be 'the winner'.  See the picture above.

Now put a line of glue on one side of one toilet roll tube lay it on the paper, with one un-glued toilet roll tube on either side of it and roll them all up in the paper.

Pull out the two un-glued tubes out by about 2 cms, tie your ribbon, tinsel or string around one of the gaps and fasten neatly.  Drop your gift, hat and motto down the other end of the cracker, and poke in the 'snap if you have one and then tie that up like the other end.  If your crackers are guest specific, label NOW or you will forget who it is for.

Decorate the top of the cracker with your cut outs of bits of tinsel.  Pack away carefully until Christmas so they don't get crushed.

Pop over to Angela at Tracing Rainbows for more links to festive tips and ideas.

Next week will be the final tip and then  it's CHRISTMAS....woohoo!!

There's still time to leave your opinion on yesterdays' question and enter the giveaway.  I will pick one commenter from the list of all comments by a Random Number thingy tomorrow at midday.

Sue xx

Decisions and Plans and a Giveaway (if you help me......please!)

We are in the midst of making lots of plans at the moment, and making many decisions.  We have an exciting year ahead, moving house, setting up our new small patch of country living the self- sufficient way in rural Berkshire.  Planning the building of new raised beds, planting in the greenhouse ready for the growing season ahead.  But before all that we have to figure out the logistics of moving ourselves, three dogs, two cats 39 chickens and all the farming paraphernalia that we seem to have acquired over the first three years of our foray in self sufficiency

Where did it all come from I wonder on a daily basis.

We are moving from a large four bedroom, three bathroom farmhouse with lots of cupboards and storage space, to a little, two bed, one bathroom bungalow, with almost zero space to store things.  We are downscaling from ten and a half acres to just four,  although that isn't really a problem, now we have no large animals we can cope quite well with that aspect of the move. 

We are in for an exciting time with our packing for sure, taking with us only what will fit nicely into our new home. Our year of living simply will be finishing with a grand finale of jettisoning all that is no longer needed so our new abode will look comfy and homely without being cluttered.

Over the Christmas holidays no doubt Lovely Hubby will be doing lots of lists......he's good at lists my man! 

I, in the meantime, have something else on my mind.....my new Challenge for the coming year. This would have been happening wherever we ended up living and is a major shopping challenge.

 Will I be able to do it, or like the sign above have I made unrealistic assumptions.  I think I can manage, I have been vaguely checking things out over the past few weeks and over the next couple will be doing a bit more research into things.

One question for you, my lovely readers to help me in my research, would you class Marks and Spencers as a high street shop or a supermarket.

Over to you, and for helping me with my research there will be a little Christmas Surprise giveaway to one commenter, picked at random (if you are a follower of the blog as well I will pop something extra in the little parcel heading your way as a thank you for following the mad ramblings of an ex-townie on a regular basis).

Sue xx

A Vegetarian Christmas

This will be my first Christmas as a vegetarian.  The questions I'm facing most seem to be "how will you cope, what will you eat?", folk seem genuinely worried that I'm about to starve or not enjoy myself this year (which is very considerate of them of course).

Well let's looks at what I used to eat.....a big plate of veggies and stuffing with a little portion of chicken with lots of lovely gravy.  I have not eaten turkey for the last thirty or so years after seeing the way they were reared and slaughtered en masse for Christmas, once I'd seen this, turkey was banned from my house, my children and my husbands all understood and switched to chicken........thank you.  At the time of this programme chickens were not quite treated as badly.....now they are and now I don't eat them!!

Now take a look at the plate and see what I won't eat....just the chicken, all the rest (with a modification on the gravy) is still the same.

I have bought one of these just to try it, but it's not an essential part of the meal, I thought I'd give it a go though, if it's tasty I can have it sliced on sandwiches too.



I can still eat chocolates, most are veggie friendly.  I don't like marshmallow things so that's not a problem.  I looooove liquorice which is fine.

I can still drink this.......there are lots of veggie friendly wines around.  I'm not being too rigid at the moment, as some I've already got will still be drunk. 

Cider is fine.....thank goodness.....hic hic :-)

My gift to myself this year is time......we have no large animals to look after due to circumstances this year and our imminent move, so we will have all Lovely Hubby's Christmas holidays from work (over two weeks) to have lie ins, to potter, to make plans for next year, to visit family, to relax....to just be, now THAT is my kind of Christmas

......and I don't have to murder a big bl**dy ugly bird to enjoy it!!

Sue xx



Clever Purchase?

On Saturday we went to the Christmas Smallholders Sale at Thame Market.  It was nice to spend some time together, sell off a few bits that we don't need anymore and generally meet up with other like minded souls and catch up on news of the animals they have bought off us in the past.  Lots of our Large Black pigs are happily breeding away as the corner-stone of new herds. 

While we were there we had thought that there was nothing we needed to buy, with our move coming up in the New Year we are down scaling not making any more purchases.  But when we spied this animal trailer, larger than any of ours, with a split walk in door on one side, dividers to break up the space and in perfect order we were smitten.

After all we didn't see just a trailer, we saw a removal van, it's big enough to hold even our largest bits of furniture, so we can do the whole move ourselves without hiring a large van.  We saw a good dry food store for when we arrive at our new place, it will save us buying a heavy duty shed, all our galvanised feed bins will fit in nicely and we will be able to store enough straw for the chickens in the other half.  We saw a potential business opportunity, we could move animals for other smallholders who may not have trailers of their own, oh and we did see the potential to actually move our own animals in it eventually if we need to move them en masse.

A clever purchase.......we think so!!

Sue xx

Putting your head in the lions mouth.....

Putting your head in the lions mouth....is very safe as long as you trust the lion completely.

When little Suky and Rosy the Jack Russell play together it sometimes seems as though this is really the case.  Rosys' teeth are sharp...very sharp and exceptionally strong, she can despatch a rat twice the size of Suky with one squeeze of her jaws and a couple of shakes of her head. 

But when the two of them play together, those teeth hold Sukys' head, paws or scruff of neck so very, very gently. Now and then of course, things go a little too far and Suky lets out a squeak and Rosy immediately backs off. 

But Suky is straught back into the game, batting at Rosy and ducking and diving.

It's lovely to watch.

Of course we would never let them play like this unattended, but when we're there it's nice to watch them play and set the boundaries of their relationship.

And then they curl up together and fall asleep.

Sue xx

Christmas Tip and Ideas - Week Three

Linking again to Angela at Tracing Rainbows and the rest of the Tips Team.

BUT if you have to......

.... make your money count, keep control of the finances and start next year positively instead of sitting down at the end of Christms Day thinking ' was that it....was it worth it, how will I repay all that money'.

It's one day, it's a family day, it's a religious day, it's a 'what you make it' kind of day.  You can't buy love, you can't buy happiness, you can't buy family.  Sit and think....you have love, you have happiness and if you're lucky you have family.  Show you care in little thoughtful ways on Christms Day and throughout the year.

And because this post is supposed to be about tips and ideas, heres some of my favourite ones just for you.  They help the environment, make every gift a double gift, and mean you can use up something you might already have in the house.  If you do have to spend, do it wisely, do it thoughtfully, it will be appreciated all the more.

Wrapping

The best type of wrapping (in my humble opinion) is brown paper ('brown paper packages tied up with string.....').  You can make it as simple or as elaborate as you wish, keep the paper plain or stamp it, or draw on it, let the kids go wild with the felt pens and turn it into their own designer wrapping paper, stick pictures on it....use your imagination.  Simply use paper and string, or tie your parcel with ribbon, or tinsel, or ric rac or strips of fabric,.  Finsh off your parcel with handmade gift tags or print off a favourite photo of the recipient and use that as your tag, with your message written on the back.

After Chrstmas this is much more easily recyclable than the glossy and foil papers, you can flatten it all out and use it to line compost caddies, when tipped into the compost bin it will decompose naturally.

Chose a tin to suit your recipient, new or old, collectable or jokey and fill it with a couple of little gifts, maybe on a theme..... a few sewing items for a crafty lady, some seeds and gardening labels for a keen gardener or some toiletries, all wrapped in pretty tissue.  Just treat it as a mini hamper and run with your imagination.  If buying for a child choose a money box tin and fill it with sweets or little farm animals and maybe a couple of coins in the bottom to get them going on a life of saving.

Use jars for packaging pretty soaps, or toiletries.  Make your own mix of pot pourri and give it in a jar to keep the aroma fresh as well as looking pretty.  Measure out all the ingredients for a batch of biscuits or cakes and tie the recipe in a little card at the neck of the jar, noting any extra ingredients that the recipient will have to provide (eggs, milk etc), if it's biscuits that need cutting out, tie a nice shaped cutter to the jar with the recipe.  For the guys in your life make it an old fashioned sweetie jar with retro sweets, flying saucers, mojos, black jacks, a sherbert fountain etc. Finish off your jar with a sweet shaped label and a big festive bow.

Simply stand your jar in a re-uasable gift bag or a swirl of brown paper.

Tie your gifts up in a scarf, either a lovely silky square or a woolly one, make the scarf match the presents and finish off with a tinsel pompom and gift tag.

And lastly buy or make a couple of extra presents of tins or jars of biscuits or chocolates (anything YOU like) and stand them under the Christmas tree in unsealed gift bags with a label wishing the recipients a very merry Christmas with lots of love.  This is ideal for when the unexpected visitor or neighbour pops in with a gift for you that you really weren't expecting, you can simply pull one of your gifts out from under the tree with a flourish and wish them the same.  If you don't have to use these gifts they can simply be added to your larder at the end of the holidays or donated to a Food Charity of your choice, the bags can be saved and used next year.

So use your imagination....think outside of the box...or jar.....or tin, above all have fun with your presents.  Presents given with thought and love are worth ten times as much as those given with stress and guilt over spending far too much money.

Sue xx

Pug Fix

Well especially for Sandie, and all those of you who missed a certain little puglet yesterday here is another Pug Fix just for you.

When not chewing my left slipper Suky has been helping with the Christmas decorations..... she finds them very tasty!

She learnt very quickly that if she emptied a box.....

... she would be allowed to sit in it!!

But after a few minutes she decided there had been enough sitting and looking cute ...

... and headed back for her very own shoe box by the Aga, nice and cosy....and she likes the taste of this one.

Live Action from Pug Mansions....I mean the farm.

She's doing really well, eight out of ten toilet trips are on the newspaper now and she's even been for a walk!  She managed about 50 yards before the shivers and the grass just got too much, and being wrapped in Mums' scarf was just so much more appealing, plus you get a much better view when you're lilfted above your normal six inches off the ground, you can watch what the big dogs get up to.

(She can only walk around the farm at the moment as there aren't any other dogs walked on our normal short doggy route and she hasn't had her vaccinations yet, that's to come on  Monday....shhhh don't tell her!)

Sue xx