A firm favourite christmas drink has to be mulled wine. Its Infused with the christmasy winter spices and it ensures to keep you warm during this winter period. Today I will sharing my recipe. For me this was the first time I made it and I think it turned out very well. If you do not drink alcohol you can substitute the wine with equal amounts of cranberry and apple juice. Right then, on to the recipe!
Ingredients :
One bottle of wine
150g brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves
4 cardamon pods
2 star anise
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 orange - peel and juice
1 lemon - peel
1 lime - peel
small piece of ginger
1) In a pan add the sugar, lemon, lime and orange peels along with the orange juice. Warm mixture on a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.
2) Add the cinnamon stick, cloves, cardamon, star anise and nutmeg, along with quarter of the wine. Also add the ginger but be sure to cut into it so the flavours can be released. Bring this to a boil to form and syrup.
3) Turn down the heat add the remaining wine and bring to a simmer. Do not boil because all the alcohol content will disappear and we don't want that! Simmer for 2 minutes, turn off and cover with a lid. Let it sit for a hour, so everything infuses.
4) After the hour you can sieve the bits out and warm up without boiling and serve!
Hope you guys have a great christmas, be sure to check out all our other christmas posts :)
I apologise the lateness of this post, been busy helping Santa in his workshop ;)
As you can see by the title this week i will be showing you quick and easy D.I.Y Christmas Decorations!!
As am slightly bankrupt with buying so many presents, the thought of having to buy christmas decorations on top of all the gift buying too was too much, hence the inspiration for this post, improvised christmas decor
- In a bowl, plop out as much PVA glue as you desired, mix well with some water so it is slightly runny and then add glitter, the more glitter the better!!
- Use as much string as you like/ I used about 50cm-1m worth- colour is up to opinion :)
- Now mix the string in the glittery glue to make the string an explosion of glitter
- nows the tricky bit, (using a print out stencil) place your pins in its desired places, (like the above image of the star)
-fill in the entire area of the pin/stencil area and leave to dry, for fast results, dry via the freezer
My end result; a bit more of a rustic feel and the image doesn't show as much sparkle but trust me it is
The next D.I.Y is Cardboard stars!
These are great for name place tags, hang on the tree or even place around the house. This was pretty simple and uses up wasted cardboard from gift packaging or cereal boxes!!
Once a star template is printed and cut out, place the star on cardboard and trace around. You also need to find the centre point but don't worry I'll show you.
Cut out 2 stars in cardboard and both need the centre marked. The first star you need to cut down the centre of one spike to the censer point and then the other war you need to cut up the centre point form between the middle of two spikes. Like this Image...
Then slot together
It should look like this…
You can then spray paint or decorate to your hearts content! for the girly girls out there, you could coat the whole thing in pva glue and cover entirely in glitter
Lastly~Lid decoration!
Inspiration;
So mine was much more "crafty" looking than above.
The best thing is to paint the Lid- mason jar lids are usually good starters.
To start, paint the lid on the outside- hiding logos etc, then I covered the lid in glitter glue and confetti stars- very messy! I left it to dry with it resting on baking paper protecting the surface.
I then found a really cute santa sticker and placed it on top- I think it was from 99p store :) Then I used a dynamo embosser- as I didn't paint my lid the logo was appearing through the glitter so I made a label saying merry christmas one and all. So quick and really effective would be a cute xmas gift!
Here is the end Result!!
Please send in your crafty images via our twitter we'd love to see them!!
We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year! from all Three of us!
I don't know about you but a big part of the christmas festivities includes eating and making food...and drink but I will cover that part next week! To get me into the festive feel of things today (I say today but i've been trying to put bake these and put this tutorial up all week!), I am going to making gingerbread biscuits. These are yummy warm and are the perfect accompaniment to a mug of piping hot chocolate.
Ingredients Needed:
125g butter
100g dark brown muscovado sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
325 plain flour plus some for dusting
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon & cloves
5 tbsp royal icing
2 tbsp water
decorating bits - silver balls
1) In a non stick pan melt the butter, sugar and syrup together. Stir together until combined.
2) In another bowl add all your dry ingredients; flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, nutmeg and cloves and stir together until combined.
3) Take the saucepan off the heat (make sure the liquids not boil) and add in the dry ingredients. Stir together until it forms a ball.
4) Let the dough cool down for a few minutes and roll it out onto a floured surface. Using cookie cutters of your choice, cut out shapes and place on baking trays lined with greaseproof paper. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees and cook them for 9 -10 minutes.
5) Once cooked remove from the oven and whilst they are warm, poke a hole at the top in order for you to put a string through them and hang them up.
6) Mix together the water and royal icing and decorate the biscuits however you like.
Tip: Dust the cookie cutters with flour to prevent them form sticking to the dough
I hope you enjoy baking these as much as I did. Do you guys have any christmas food traditions or bake something special during the festive period? I know for me I always enjoy eating loads and loads of panettone (with lots and lots of butter).
Like always If you don't already follow me on all the social media platforms, get following and I also wanted to add a quick little plug for myself because I have a online store where I sell handmade cards which are designed and produced by me! If you do have the time I would really appreciate if you could check it out, curlyneedle.bigcartel.com :)
Can you believe its already December! This year has flown by so quickly and to be honest i'm quite glad its nearly over, this year has been full of highs and quite a few lows (especially for me). But anyways enough of the negativity!
Its December and that can only mean one thing...its officially the start of the christmas month. This month our blog will be dedicated to everything christmasy and festive in order to bring some christmas cheer to everyone who reads our blog :)
Today I shall be kicking things off with my top 10 christmas songs. I loveeeeeeee christmas songs, they just fill you up with happiness, warmth and christmas cheer. So here is my perfect soundtrack to get you in the christmas spirit hope you enjoy :)
10. Kicking things of at number 10 is jingle bell rock- mean girls style!
So there is a story behind this, It was christmas 2012, and we were going to a christmas bar crawl or something like that and my flat mates at the time were like right Amreeta, we're dressing up like these four. So that night we went out with our hats on and knee high socks and to be honest I don't remember the rest of the night but it must of been a good one ;)
9. winter wonderland - Tony Bennett
This makes me want to snuggle up on the sofa with a warm blanket and watch home alone.
8. Sleigh ride - The Ronettes
7. Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby
I love her voice, I love her. There's something so Hollywood-esque about this song.
6. Dean Martin - Let it Snow
This always reminds me end of the year school assembly's, This was the song they always playing (without fail every year!) when you left the hall. Anyone else that agrees?
5. Brenda Lee - Rockin Around the christmas tree
4. Destiny's Child - 8 days of christmas
Hand's down I thought destiny's child's were sooooooo cool! I loved watching the video as a kid. Can I just add this song came out 14 years ago!!!!
3. Mariah carey - all I want for christmas is you
2. Wham - last christmas
1. Frozen Let it go
All hail the new cool christmas song for 2014! You know I had to put this one at number 1!
I also wanted to add another song, this year band aid created this song to help with the Ebola crisis, so please go check it out and buy the original single.
I hope you liked my top 10, please leave in the comments below which one is your favourite and if i've missed any out, until next week have a nice week guys. Ohh and we just hit 400 followers on bloglovin, so thank you so much! We really appreciate every single one of you that takes the time out to read our little blog :)
