Twinkle, twinkle little star - Christmas gifts for BFFs

Each year I organise for Sophie to give some of her friends little Christmas gifts.

Last year we made "stained glass window" gingerbread biscuits ...

... the year before it was marshmallow snowmen gifts ...

and the year before it was reindeer noses:

This year I came across some pretty sparkly ribbon bracelets in a local shop. I bought one for each of her three BFFs (and one for her of course) and as an extra bonus they came in matching chiffon bags.

We personalized them with a sparkly star (template made by Sophie) and added a poem:

Twinkle twinkle little star

Thank you friend for who you are.

Bracelet sparkling like that star

Friends forever, that's who we are. 

© 2014 Nicola Noble & Little Love Cakes: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Christmas craft fair - decorations for the tree

Last year one of the school mums and I discovered that we both like crafting. Melinda has an amazing stash of crafting goodies and we decided that once Justin was at school full time we would try to get together every Thursday morning for a bit of crafting for the soul time.

Coming out of that was the idea that we would take a table at the school Christmas craft fair and so we started in September making lots of different things that we could sell. A huge number of the items have been inspired by Pinterest and we have had great fun making them all.

We started with some decorations for the Christmas tree.

I had seen the simplest wire angels, made from butterfly paperclips, that I was desperate to make. Unfortunately the wire paperclips for these are not generally available to buy in the UK (even on eBay!) but fortunately Melinda is from the US and often goes back on holiday so managed to track them down and came home with a large supply of them. 

So we set to and made large and small angels, with a mixture of ribbon colours and a mixture of bead heads. The final touch was to add a label and the finished angels have gone down a storm with all who have seen them - creating orders way beyond the Christmas Craft Fair. So glad other people liked them too ...

Another decoration I made for the tree was a simple wooden star. I bought the stars from our local craft shop and drilled little holes in the top of each one. I then cut a square of hessian (from my stash of things I keep that will come in useful some day!) which I attached to the star by threading some bakers twine through the hole in the star and through the hessian. The finishing touch was a simple button with some bakers twine threaded and knotted through and glued into the middle of the star.

I also made a snowflake decoration, but didn't have time to make lots of these and ended up keeping the prototype for myself. It was made by cutting a snowflake out of sticky back glitter foam using one of the dies from my Sizzlits snowflakes set, sticking the remaining square onto white felt and attaching a button to the middle with a knotted piece of bakers twine in the middle.

© 2013 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Vanilla and chocolate biscuits

I found this simple recipe years ago (courtesy of Sainsbury's) and have made it a couple of times. I whipped up a batch this week when I ran out of after-school snacks for the kiddies: they didn't like the chocolate version which meant I had to eat them - what a shame!!  I made stars but the original recipe suggests hearts, and I thought I'd share as they will make lovely for Valentine's Day gifts.

Vanilla and Chocolate Love Heart Biscuits

Makes about 25 biscuits

Ingredients

110g butter, softened
55g golden caster sugar
few drops of good vanilla extract
175g plain flour
1-2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Turn the oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas mark 5. Cut two pieces of baking paper to fit two baking trays.

Beat together the softened butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the flour with the milk and using your hands or a spoon mix everything together to make a ball of dough.

Sprinkle a little flour onto the table. Split the dough in half and put one half on to the floured table. Add the cocoa powder to the bowl and using your hands knead the dough to mix in the cocoa powder.

Break the vanilla dough in half and roll out one piece until it is about 5mm thick. Using heart cutters, cut out heart biscuits. Using a very small heart cutter and cut small hearts out of the middle of each of the biscuits.

Break the chocolate dough in half, roll out and cut some small hearts to fit inside the big vanilla hearts – you will need to gently press the small heart into the big hearts to make sure that they stick together in the oven (this is really important so that they cook together). Carry on making the biscuits to any design you choose. Carefully use a palette knife or cake slice to help you move the biscuits to the tray.

Bake for 8 minutes until the biscuits are just golden and cooked – the time will vary depending on how big they are. Put the biscuits onto a cooling rack and leave to cool.

© 2013 Nicola Noble: The heart biscuits image courtesy of Sainsbury's. Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.