Christmas Cranberry Chutney!

<a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/7556575/?claim=xs3dss3carg">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

2016 has flown in, and it seems no time since I was making my 2015 door ring! Above is a photo of this years door ring. It is filled with spruce , eucalyptus, pistachio, eryngium, hypericum and cones. No sparkle this year and no bow, which is a pleasant change! 

Our family loves Christmas, getting everyone together and sitting together playing games or watching a good movie, sadly as they children have grown we dont always have everyone home, and this year is one of those times.

I have taken a real notion for making chutneys so I thought I would try a recipe for Cranberry chutney.

After getting all the ingredients together, I set to work.

 I tried really hard this time to chop the pieces smaller as I thought the end result would be better! The smell was amazing as it cooked on the hob, and it didnt take as long as some of them to be cooked well enough.

I poured the warm liquid into the sterilised jars and screwed on the tops, not completely tight, then I popped them all into the rack in the canning pot! I thought this photo was good as it made it all look very professional, even though at the time I was terrified as I had never used this before! It brought back vague memories of a pressure cooker exploding in an HE class at school a very long time ago!! ( It wasnt my pressure cooker by the way!)

However my anxiety was unfounded and all went according to plan, no explosions or drama I am delighted to say!!

 If you are making chutney I would advise you to label and date your chutney, nothing worse than opening a jar and it not being what you expected!! So this will be ready to eat in time for Christmas, even though one person in this house would like to try it now!

Hello again!

Time is flying by at top speed, and I have started to make some Christmas presents! I am allowed to say the C word as Halloween is over, so the official countdown is on! 
I made two of these lovely table runners using Just Jude's pattern for half hexies I really enjoyed making these as they were a bit of challenge getting the corners to match up.

I bought two charm packs of Moda's Cookie exchange so I could make a red and green table runner and a more contemporary blue and grey one! The patterns in this pack are gorgeous, I love all of them.

I will posting the red and green over to my sister soon for her table at Christmas!

I loved the way Jude had quilted her runner so I decided to do the same with the one above! What fun!

Tasty Peppers

I am into preserving food naturally and I decided to have a go, with some fabulous colourful peppers. I use a lot of peppers in my cooking so I thought this would be handy, and the jars of peppers in the shops can be very expensive! Below they are ready to go under the grill to be charred!

you need to keep an eye on them as at the end they char quickly!

The charring cooks them and makes the skin easy to remove, a good tip is that they really need to be charred well or the skin does not come  off!My hands are always wrecked from things I am doing but it might be an idea to wear gloves as my fingers ended up slightly orange!

I popped them into sterilised kilner jars with some sliced garlic and added the olive oil and vinegar mixture to cover.

All sealed and stored away for a rainy day! It was great fun to do and I am sure they will taste good too. 

Summer sensation!

The weather recently has been so good, really unbelievable! For those of you who know N Ireland you will know what I mean! Great country but the weather isnt always what it could be!! So I decided it was time to go out and replant my tubs at my front door!

When we were choosing the plants, there were so many bees around the poppies, so that made the decision easy and they went straight in the trolley!

I bought some trailling petunias for this three tiered planter, when they grow a little it will be fab !

Here is the final planting! I love this tangerine colour so vibrant and right on trend this summer!

I now have lovely bright cheerful flowers growing at my front door, I just love the colour scheme!

I could get used to this weather, so good!

I will be back with more crafty projects soon, but I dont want to waste a minute of this sunshine! Hope you can all enjoy it too!

Pollen levels!

Pollen levels have been quite high recently so as pollen affects me I just stay in doors. The up side is I had fun making this wrap using wool and silk from treetops in Australia. I had a bit of clear out of my cupboards and it put me in the mood to make another wrap or shawl, although I haven't decided my colour scheme just yet!

I have quite a lot of this lovely wool from treetops, which I had forgotten about, or was it I just didn't remember how much of it I had! ssh! dont let on!!

In reality this silk is much darker so I might try something with it this week!

I found this fabulous skein of silk fibres from Oliver Twist so I think it will have to be included somewhere! May be tidying and clearing out isn't so bad when you find treasures like these!

This is a close up of the top photo, don't those colours just make you want to be creative and make something!

Next post will be what I made!! 

Baby Girl!

A friend has had a baby girl, so I decided to make her a cosy quilt! I chose this lovely fabric from Lewis and Irene, I do love their fresh contemporary designs!

I used one of their free patterns but just made it smaller, more in keeping for a small child! I cut the squares 5.5 inches square!

I made a panel for the back as I like both sides to be interesting.

I enjoyed arranging the fabric in a pattern and sewing them together.

Here is the finished cosy quilt!

This is the reverse side! What fun Im away to plan my next project!

Change of mood!

I have decided to change the mood of this blog and so from now on its just going to be whatever I am working on at the time! This week I bought loads of these succulents, and decided to pot them up in different containers.

I love these funny little plants although I have been warned they are hard to grow! When I got them they were in very dry compost, so I watered them from underneath.

This was a little container that I got originally to grow window sill herbs in, however now its on my kitchen table with these boys in it!

All these containers have drainage holes on the bottom, and I intend to water them sparingly and from the bottom. They can absorb water from the air so therefore watering is not as important. I read somewhere that watering from the top causes them to rot! I finished them off with these lovely silver stones! 

The pots are now all over my house and my daughter got a pot as well! 

I hope you like the new mood of my blog, I look forward to hearing some comments!

Pixiemoss