Today, and tomorrows crafts have been a bit of a disaster in ways… I made fudge today which I poured into a jar a while ago… and it is now “Fudge Sauce” (delicious nonetheless)

So…. the recipe to make fudge sauce, is, in essence, the same recipe, except without the fudge getting hard and fudge-y.

In the name of research, my children have tried the fudge sauce with many accompaniments and have pronounced it

“deeee-licious” on… anything, really.

What you need:

1 can of “Carnation Caramel” (400 gms)

300 mls milk

180gms butter

1kg of granulated sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

(If  thought this would harden, I would say “line a tin with parchment”, but I would just get 5-6 jars into the oven on a low heat to sterilize them instead)

Put the ingredients into a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heating gently till the sugar has dissolved.

Raise the heat and boil rapidly for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally to stop it sticking,  then plunge into a basin of cold water so it doesn’t cook further and beat with an electric whisk for 2 minutes.

Pour into readied jars and enjoy with… anything!!

It just doesn’t happen. 

And you know? That’s okay with me. I have my time to do what I have to do at night, and I have accepted that if I want to enjoy the equilibrium and relative peace and happiness on a daily basis in our home, then thats how things are going to be for some time! And besides, the kisses, cuddles and hilarious one-liners that I am privileged to have and hear make it all worth while

Today was a case in point… a friend of mine has had a very worrying diagnosis, and I dreamt of this painting for her last night… and began to paint this morning…

In between playing jigsaws

sorting letters and making words

 painting and gluing together 

(as well as lunch, snacks, dinner, reading for hours, armchair-counseling and all the other things that involved my boys who have a complete embargo on my photographing them for this blog. “Someone” might see them y’see)

The tidying up sometimes takes longer than the playing!!

But I finished it this evening… and am so pleased with it!

I’ll post more photos later in the week… and see you tomorrow when I join Ginny for Yarn Along!

This week we were meeting up, and for many of us, we won’t get to meet again until January, so I made them a very small gift of thanks and Christmas blessing. These Christmas baubles are lovely and easy to make, and would be a great simple gift for kiddies to make too!

I covered polystyrene balls with strips of paper torn from a book with yellowed pages (“King Lear”, from the early 1970’s if we are to get technical!!) I glued the paper on with PVA glue- make sure to keep smoothing the paper down so any creases are flattened, I kept rubbing the glue on and it softens the paper and smoothes easily.

Onto the dry papered bauble, I stuck a 2” x 1” rectangle of an old map, then an old Irish Christmas stamp from the 1980’s. I had tea-dyed a sheet of rose- decorated tissue paper, and tore a strip of this which I glued partially on top (I covered all the collage-ed bits with a 50% PVA and 50% water mix. This glue mix gives coherence to your collage so the parts don’t look disparate in relation to each other)

With my glue gun, I glued a piece of tea-dyed linen string, with a button on top to cover the glue.

I also added two more buttons onto the collage (I would have preferred to have had white or cream buttons, but had to make do with a rainbow of colours!)

I also made a couple of fabric wrapped baubles,

also decorated with buttons, and some 

ric-rac and fabric ribbon. 

♥ ♥ ♥ Only 10 days to Christmas!!!!!!! ♥ ♥ ♥

I’m linking up to the Christmas Craft Collective here!

The evening before, Fergal had to go somewhere, so I brought the two older boys to karate, and then came home with the two smaller ones to make apple tarts until we had to collect them.

And how it rained! It was one of those dark, dark evenings when the 20 second sprint to the car renders you like a drowned rat. So we began to make apple tarts, smallest boy and I, while the Wee One played on the floor. After two minutes, possibly three, I turned to check on a quiet little girl. She was playing “making apple tarts” with a plate of flour (!) “Eeek!”, I thought, then decided to leave her to it, we resumed our tart-making. Within minutes she was stripping:

seconds later she was almost naked, swimming on the floor of flour saying: “look mama! I’m a penguin!!” 

(how could I do anything but laugh- she pronounces penguin as “pen-goo-in”!)

 Hours later, after she part-turned to dough as soon as she ran to the car (flour+rain= very bad combination), two tarts baked, 2 boys home, a soaking bath, a protracted bedtime (it never goes swimmingly when you need it), Fergal and I started into the cleaning of the (white, floury) house.

The following morning, our visitor arrived and, apart from the dog pooping all over the floor (something that has never happened before. Ever), it all went well (whew). Really, really well (and whew again). 

And by lunchtime we could sit eating some delicious apple tarts, at peace that the visit was successful, in a gloriously clean, tidy house (not that that lasted long) with the dog, firmly, outside.

We had lots of small and not so small kiddies (we are a burgeoning group here in the west!) who helped brush, pick hooves and feed the horses.

Lauras uncle kindly loaned us his puppies which were a huge attraction,

and afterwards we sat in this beautifully scenic field (complete with dead crow, we found out later- “not fresh kill” I was confidently told by one four year old)

where we had our picnic (there seems to be a common thread running through this blog) and natter before extricating our children from a hole in the hedge (the camp) two fields away to go home.

Next week we are going to a story-telling session in a caravan (not sure whether it is a gypsy caravan or Father Ted style…) Eclectic, that’s us…