Some more gorgeous present wrapping from recycyled cards

Last week I showed you some ideas for using old Christmas cards, and promised to show some more ideas what else to do, so here it is.
Starting point again, again will be a present in  a box, which this time you wrap in white plain paper as below.

Get some print-outs with shapes of snowflakes which you can find on the internet as here below.

To the left in the back of the picture above you see a white piece of paper, which was folded double, folded double again, then folded in a 45 degrees angle. If you unfold this, you get a piece of paper that will be folded in 8 symmetrical segments.
This will help you with the cutting of the template for the snowflake , so fold your paper as above, then look at the differnt symmetrical snowflake pictures and decide which you like best, then cut this from the white paper .

Unfold your template.
Get some Christmas cards with snowy and glittery or blue parts on it.

Glue this all on a piece of paper and use the template to draw your snowflake on the blue-white paper.
Cut out your snowflake.

Then take some red Christmas cards as below.

Cover front of box with red from the cards as a background.
Glue your snowflake on the front. Use some cookie cutters as templates and cut out some Christmas tree shapes from leftover bits of gold paper from Christmas cards and glue them on the top of the box as below.

Do the same with the back of the box  as what you did with the front.
Do the same with the sides of the box as you did with the top.
Get some ribbons and tie some nice bow around it.

And you're done! Have fun!!

A gorgeous and quick present- biscuits with Baileys hazelnut liqueur and chocolate

I was inspired to come up with these really gorgeous Italian style hazelnut/chocolate biscuits as a quick little present this Christmas , through an unexpected email I received in the beginning of this month.
A lovely lady , Sarah Stevens, from a company called Grayling, wrote to me about my blog and how she loved my Bakewell tart, which recipe you can see here.
She then asked  if she could send me a sample of the new Baileys flavour, Baileys Hazelnut to try out in some of my recipes if I was thinking of doing seasonal recipes.
I thought it would be really fun to have a starting point and to try out lots of things around hazelnut and hazelnut liqueur - so yummy- so I had a bit of a think and have come up with this several recipes- this one is the first.
The combination of hazelnut and chocolate is a match made in heaven- just perfect.
Great with a strong espresso- mmm!
You can make it look very pretty by wrapping it , just like Italian Amaretti biscuits, in white tissue paper with a gold ribbon as you can see here above.
The recipe is super-easy- honestly. 
Give it a try!!
The ingredients are as here below :

Ingredients
340 gram ground almonds
340 gram caster sugar
half a cup of chocolate / cocoa powder
4 egg-whites
30 ml Baileys Hazelnut liqueur

How to make the biscuits:
Prepare 2 baking sheets by covering them with aluminium foil and greasing the foil with butter.Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Centigrade.
Whip the egg-whites till they are stiff  and you can get real peaks from them.
Fold the sugar, ground almonds, cocoa powder and hazelnut liqueur into the stiff egg-whites and get it to be a sticky but well-mixed dough.Don't over-mix ( and don't use a mixer but mix by hand ) -so there is no more air in the egg-white mixture, try to keep it light!!
Fill the baking trays with small blobs of the sticky dough- two teaspoons each is about right, 2 cm apart.
See below.

Then bake in the pre-heated oven for about 20 to 25 minutes- that is how long mine took to be done.The inside will still be a bit goey, but the outside should be done and crunchy to the touch.
Take off the baking trays and put on a plate or rack to cool down.
You can then put them all in a biscuit tin and give them as a present like below- to the right.

Or you can wrap them separately like amaretti biscuits, see here below and present  with coffee to your friends and family after Christmas lunch. Just take a square of some tissue paper, white or coloured, then twist the paper around the biscuit and tie a golden ribbon as decoration.

Whatever you do, your best bet is probably to give them away, as they are so tasty you will eat them all in one go !!!!Hand these out and make other people happy-much better for keeping your figure !!!
Happy baking!!
                                                        In the next week or so I will do some more seasonal baking and
will be covering some more holiday decorations and gifts, amongst which this gingerbreadhouse so stay tuned!

 I am linking this to the culinary smackdown battle
                                    It's a keeper Thursday link party. ( You can find the link at the bottom of my blog )

Plate-rack make-under

 To paint or not to paint- that was the question this weekend.
Let me share with you the find I managed to get for practically zilch money.
It was tied up with a bicycle chain outside a charity shop.Poor thing!

I could see the potential, especially as I am a bit of a cups and saucers girl, and always have too much stacked away. Cups, plates, teapots and saucers, keep on falling out of my cupboards,  and I keep on adding to my collection - so extra storage is always a plus.
 I thought to get it for this bit of wall which had just two plates-so this is the before here below.

I thought to give the plate-rack a quick make-over and make it match the blue dresser which make-over you can read about here
The colours of the dresser are more or less as below- pale baby blue from Farrow and Ball.
I had some paint left , so was ready to roll and get the plate-rack made-over to do the matchy-matchy thing with the dresser.

I cleaned the plate-rack, drilled the holes to hang it- then lost my nerve about the paint.
To paint or not to paint?That was the question.I thought no-then I wasn't not sure.Actually I think too matchy-matchy is maybe not the way to go.
So at the moment I am keeping it the way it was- a total make-under and we'll see how I feel about baby-blue paint in the new year........

What do you think??To paint or not to paint? I look foward to your feedback!!!!
I am linking this to Metamorphosis Monday

Another feature- on : "The Internet Sends me Cake" Blog

I had completely forgotten that I had sent in a submission some time ago to , and only found out yesterday I had been featured ( way back in November ) on "The Internet sends me cake"
This is a very funny website about baking and food that is really worthwhile looking at .
I stumbled on it via DesignSponge
Check out the post - if you want- on The Internet Sends Me Cake here

 I will enclose the recipe for this cake at a later date- it is really yummy...
Have a great weekend!!!!

A quick and easy Christmas present : a festive Christmas bread

This was the gift my best friend at Art-school handed to me proudly one Christmas, when she had just returned from a holiday in Ireland and when she had fallen in love with Irish sodabread and baking.
It's not the same bread, but it was such a lovely gift and a and delightful gesture that I wanted to share this with you as an idea for a present.
When you struggle to make a proper bread with yeast , Irish soda bread it's the way to go . It's extremely easy to make.
Wrap it up in cellophane with some baubles and a nice ribbon and you have the ultimate quick and easy Christmas present.
Here below is how you do it.....give it a try- you will love it !!
The ingredients -here below-are:
 

Ingredients:
500 gram flour
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 pint  ( = 2.3 dl  or 1 cup ) natural yoghurt .(  or milk into which you squeeze some lemon juice )
1 handfull of hazelnuts
2 handfulls of raisins
1/2 half handfull of glaceed merino cherries
1/2 half handfull of mixed peel 

How to make the bread:
Pre-heat the oven to 215 degrees Centigrade

Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of flour and the salt. Add the hazelnuts, raisins, glaceed cherries and mixed peel to the dry mixture till these are all covered in flour.
Add the yoghurt, then mix the whole thing with your hands to get a decent mix ( it's a bit hard-going for an electric mixer).Keep paper towel handy to wipe your hands!It has to be mixed though so it is a consistent dough.Add some yoghurt if it is too dry, an add some flour if it is too wet.
You want to aim for a dough that you can hold in your hand without it sticking to your fingers, and that feels like an big fat old lady's soft arm -then you have reached the perfect mix.
Shape it like a round-ish ball, and place it on a greased or buttered baking tray. Cut  a cross in the middle with a knife.
If the bread is going to be good once it's baked, , the cut you made on the uncooked doughy bread should get bigger, wider and then and sort of fall open after a minute or so .That is what you need to happen.
It should look like this:

Bake the bread in the pre-heated oven for about 45 minutes.
It should then look like this:

Next stage is the present-wrapping.
Take a big piece of Christmassy wrapping paper and put it in the shape of a lozenge on your worktop.Place a cardboard box that is big enough to contain your bread on top of it like below:( I used an old box in which the Christmas crackers came last year which is the perfect size ) - like so :

Fold and glue the sides of the paper to the box- you will manage to cover the whole inside and outside this way.

Put some evergreen branches in the box on the bottom, then put your Christmas bread on top.

Sprinkle some icing sugar on the top of your bread, and place a few Christmas baubles next to the bread in the box.

Wrap up in cellophane and tie with a red Christmas ribbon . And there you have your quick and easy Christmas present!!

To remind you how you could use the advents biscuits ( which recipe you can find on  this post ) as decoration, I just wanted to show you a display on which I used them , all wrapped in cellophane with ribbons and displayed on some greenery.

and here is a detail.

So whatever you are baking this weekend, a Christmas bread as a present, or Christmas biscuits as decorations, I guess you will be busy!!  I am linking this to Marty's party.
Below some more pictures of Christmas decorating coming along at Modern Country Lady H.Q.

 This is the top of the blue dresser which you could see I did up in this post.
Christmas is the time when I get out my Christmas crockery as you can see.The wreath with the bears was made a few years ago but still going strong.
Happy baking, crafting and decorating and happy weekend !!
I look foward to your comments! Let me know what you think!

Sugary sweet -Christmas tree decorations

This is just a quick post to show you how simple your Christmas tree decorations could be without spending too much on it, and still have something pretty to look at.
You would need the ingredients here below:

Ingredients:
Granulated sugar,
Green, yellow and red food colouring,
Some Christmassy shaped biscuits cutters
A bit of water.
A few small bowls and a teaspoon.

Here is how you make your decorations:
Take 12 tablespoons of granulated sugar and add 2 teaspoons of food colouring.
Make three bowls like this, each with a different colour- one gree, one yellow, one red.Or you can go for just yellow and green , which is what I did.
Mix well. The mixture has to have an even colour ( green, or yellow, or red).For the mixture think wet sand like when you build a sandcastle. So: not too dry, and not too wet.Add,  if too dry , a tiny bit of water.

Roll out some baking paper.
Take a Christmassy themed biscuit cutter ( star, tree, bell, or otherwise) which has a high-ish edge.
Using the baking paper as your worktop on which you will make your decorations, fill the biscuit shape with the sugar"sand"- and compact well with your finger or the bottom of a teaspoon.Loosen the shape by using the handle of the teaspoon like a small knife and go all along the edges ,so the shape of the star or tree or whatever shape you have chosen , pops out onto the baking paper.

Let the shapes dry.This may take about 15 to 20 minutes.The sugar will become pretty hard.

Wrap the shapes in cellophane and tie with a ribbon.They are now ready to be hung from your tree.
You can improvise a small tree by taking some branches and spraying and / or painting them white and putting themin a wicker basket with some evergreen cover at the foot of the "tree".
Hang your decorations from the branches and you are done!

Enjoy your Christmas decorations! And if you are tired of them, you can simply dissolve them in a cup of tea or coffee!!
XOXO
Bea

All- white Christmas wreath

Hi there! Today, I’m a guest over at Groupon getting crafty and talking about making an all-white wreath from discarded recycled materials.

I am soo excited as this is my first time guest-blogging !!!!!! Go and have a peek for the full tutorial and more pictures and let me know what you think !! I’ve created the project  as I am very much into re-using unexpected materials and was very inspired by the white-ness of it all... .
Hope to hear from you soon..and hope to see you here for the full post!!!!

...............................................................................................
The link to the Groupon blog seems to be broken so here is the full post below as well..

I love recycling materials so to find a whole glut of cutt-off paper was like Christmas come true.I first had no idea but could see potential.. especially because it was all white- so very Christmassy.
This was my fabulous starting material :

When I discovered an old Christmas wreath I had left over ( see below ) , there was only one thing for it- time to update a classic with my found paper treasure !

I painted the base wreath white with some leftover Dulux as I liked the matt finish it gave ( and also because it was leftover, so practically free- another win- win situation! ) The only downside was it took ages to dry, but this might have been because it was a cold garage..

Well, at least it gave me some time to think about what to do with the white paper.After a couple of experiments, I came up with a wreath like the one below, where the paper strips were half folded over each other and then secured to the white base with practically invisible nylon.

I liked the whiteness of the finished product , so kept it fresh, clean and perky with some simple baubles in lime and silver, and some white ribbons.

What do you think ?
Let us know what you're planning for your festive wreath.Happy Christmas crafting.

The colours of the rainbow....so pretty in the sky

Well, I just want to thank my father, my mother, my husband, all the members of the Academy-  sorry , of the Modern Country Lady team, for all their support tonight . 

Thank you, thank you, thank you .( Tearful clutching of the Oscar optional by the way ).

I wanted to do a post about Christmas wreaths, and obviously the members of the Modern Country Lady Team were aware that I was tired and flagging a bit and decided to do their bit.

Material was inspected and given the all clear, 

 And team members were climbing over each other to be helpful and many hands made light work. 

More or less.

It reminded me a bit of a  dedication in a book  I once saw:" to my dear daughter, without whose invaluable help this book would have been finished a lot sooner ".

And it was a bit like this with this as well...

I had no front door wreath yet ( bad Modern Country Lady )so something needed to be done.

I did the old -"grab some evergreen branches by torch light from the garden"thing and got going with making a garland and  folded the two ends together to make a wreath.

Like so.

I put some multi-coloured baubles and matching ribbons on and I was done!

Hasta la Vista- I suppose that is not relevant......but you get the picture- piece of cake...

And all I can say is- phew- just in time..

Because it's the first of December!! So I have only a couple of weeks left to do my decorations !!

Hang on, maybe I could have waited and have done it tomorrow....

Nooo!! It's great to come home tomorrow and all the colours of the rainbow will be smiling at me...so I am actually pleased I did it...
Have you got your door wreath done ?? No pressure by the way!! Just a question !!