How to make an easy Crocheted lace

When I was making my Valentine Banner, I found out that I didn't have laces or ribbons at home, so I decide to make my own piece of lace to use in my project. This crocheted lace is easy to make.

I used Mercerized cotton, size 10 in natural color, and a  hook number 8.

Make 4 chains and insert the hook into the first chain. Draw this chain through the working loop to form a circle.

1st row 3ch, 3dc into center of circle, 2ch, 4dc into circle. Turn.

2nd row 3ch, 3dc into 2ch loop, 2ch, 3dc into same 2ch loop, 1dc into top of turning chain. Turn.

The 2nd row forms the pattern. Repeat it for the length of lace you want.

I really had fun making this shell stitch lace, and it worked perfectly for my banner--it gave my project a vintage touch.

~Have a wonderful day and come back soon~

Making Vintage Valentine Banners

I think that these vintage photos are so sweet. They deserve to be displayed, and what a better time to do so than on Valentine's Day, where our hearts are filled with love. It makes us plan thoughtful gifts, and use affectionate words that convey what we too often forget to express in our busy lives. 

 Love is in the air! Now that I have a "fireplace" I can decorate it for Valentine's Day. I displayed my romantic couples made of porcelain and pretty porcelain pieces covered with  flowers that I love to collect.

I have this album book full of vintage photos that I recived as a gift years ago. I took copies and cut them into heart shapes to make the banner; you can find vintage photos on "The graphics fairy blog" She has tons of vintage photos and postcards.

I cut pieces of strips, then I cut the edges with this type of scissors.

My little boy helped me to glue the strips of paper all aroud the edge folding it as we glued it

He did a great job, he will be 4 years old in May, I know, time flys.

 To cover the back of the heart he glued another paper heart.

Then we added  glitter all around the edge  of the photo.

If you would like to make the cherubic, you can copy and paste this photo and print it, then enlarge it to desired size. It makes a sweet ornament too.

I glued two paper cherubics together, but do not glue the wings, so it can remain open

I cut another shape of paper to incorporate it with the cut paper hearts on my banner

I used monotype corsiva letters, size 72 to make the banner message, "Be mine" and my favorite french  word "Amour" Then I glued it to this piece of music paper. Then I opened some holes to hang the banner with a pretty lace. I didn't have laces of ribbon in my house so I made my own croched lace. I will make another post showing how to make Croched lace.  My little boy and I had fun making this vintage banner for Valentine's Day, I hope that you will have fun making one too.

~ Have a wonderful Valentine's Day with your loved one ~

Raisin and Cinnamon Pastries

I found this yummy pastry recipe that I love in an old book and I wanted to share it with you. It will take time and patience but it is worth it. The Danish Pastry (it is known in Denmark as Wienerbrod, or vienna bread) is not difficult to make if you follow precisely the directions. If I were to stress only one point, it would be that you should keep the dough as cold as possible so that it will not be sticky while you work with it. 

 1 1/2 cups butter or margarine

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (sift before measuring)

2 packages yeast, active dry or compressed

1/4 cup warm water (lukewarm for compressed yeast)

1 cup cold milk

1 egg, slightly beaten

3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom (optional)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Egg yolk

Cream butter with 1/2 cup of flour until well blended, and chill for 30 minutes. Soften yeast in warm water; add milk, egg, sugar, cardamom, and salt. Stir in 2 cups of flour. Beat with spoon until dough is smooth and elastic; beat in  remaining flour until well blended. Turn out on lightly floured board, form into ball, dust with flour, roll into a 16-inch square. Turn butter-flour mixture out on floured board roll and shape into a rectangle 8 by 16 inches  (it should roll out like pie crust; if too soft, chill longer). Place on one half of the yeast dough. Turn other half of dough over butter to encase it. Pinch edges together to seal. With a rolling pin, lightly pound dough to about 12 by 16 inches. Fold 1/3 of dough over center, then fold remaining 1/3 over center. Chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes, or in freezer for 10 minutes (don't freeze it). Pound dough lightly again into a rectangle, then roll into a 16-inch square and fold side thirds over center again; chill. Repeat pounding, rolling, folding, and chilling three times more. After final chilling, roll out the dough to a rectangle  about 16 inches x 20 inches, brush with milk and sprinkle with a mixture of cinnamon sugar and raisins. Roll up the dough lengthways and cut into 2-cm/3/4-inch-thick slice. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, arrange the pastries on it and leave in a warm place to rise . Bake in a preheated oven, Gas mark 6/200C/ 400F for 10-15 minutes. Mix the egg yolk with a little water and brush over the pastries shortly before the end of cooking time.

You can make buttery, flaky Danish pastry in any shape and it can be filled with apricot, prune, almond, coconut lemon, or vanilla custard filling.

~Have a wonderful day and come back soon~

Chicken in my Kitchen

Thinking about the Cotswolds region, where cottage doorways are a tangle of roses, and where hens and geese casually wander into cottage kitchens, is giving me a sense of tranquility. So I painted these hens and roosters for my kitchen to give it a country cottage look. I made this frame the same way that a used to make my faux fireplace.

~Tuning-up~

Every morning compose your soul for a tranquil day, and all through it be careful often to recall your resolution, and bring yourself back to it, so to say. If something discomposes you, do not be upset, or troubled; but having discovered the fact, humble yourself gently before God, and try to bring your mind into a quiet attitude. Say to your self, "Well, I have made a false step; now I must go more carefully and watch-fully" Do this each time, however frequently you fall. When you are at peace use it profitably, making constant acts of meekness, and seeking to be calm even in the most trifling things. Above all, do not be discouraged; be patient; wait; strive to attain a calm, gentle spirit. ~St. Francois de Sales~

Have a wonderful day

A Happy New Year to all my followers!

Recipe for a Happy New Year:

 Take twelve, fine, full-grown months, see that these are thoroughly free from all old memories of bitterness, rancor, hate and jealousy; cleanse them completely from every clinging spite; pick off all specks of pettiness and littleness; in short, see that these months are fresh and clean as when they first came from the great storehouse of time. Cut these months into thirty or thirty-one equal parts. This batch will keep for just one year. Do not attempt to make up the whole batch at one time (so many persons spoil the entire lot in this way), but prepare one day at a time, as follows: Into each day put twelve parts of faith, eleven of patience, ten of courage, nine of work (some people omit this ingredient and so spoil the flavor of the rest), eight of hope, seven of fidelity, six of liberality, five of kindness, four of rest ( leaving this out is like leaving the oil out of the salad_don't do it), three of prayer, two of meditation, and one well selected resolution. If you have no conscientious scruples, put in about a teaspoonful of good spirits, a dash of fun, a pinch of folly, a sprinkling of play, and a heaping cupful of good humor. Pour into the whole love ad libitum and mix with a vim. Cook thoroughly in a fervent heat; garnish with a few smiles and a sprig of joy; then serve with quiet-ness. unselfishness, and cheerfulness, and a Happy New Year is a certainty.

H.M.S. (Taken from the book "Leaves of Gold")

~Have a wonderful day~

Traditional Figgy Pudding Recipe

I made Figgy Pudding for the first time on Christmas day. I have never tasted figgy pudding before, so I decided to try this figgy pudding recipe. We are going to do this figgy pudding recipe every Christmas from now on. My family loved it and if you have not tried figgy pudding before I highly recommend it.

"Figgy Pudding"

Ingredients

½ cup butter

½ cup vegetable shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large egg yolks

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons rum extract (or flavored extract of your choice)

1 apple, peeled and cored and finely chopped

1 pound dried figs, ground or finely chopped

Grated peel of 1 lemon and 1 orange

1 cup chopped nuts

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ginger

1 ½ cups dried bread crumbs

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 large egg whites, stiffly beaten

Custard Sauce

Ingredients

2 cups milk

1 large egg

¾ cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter

*Makes 12 servings

 We are going to start with the ingredients that you see here, and there is going to be about three or four steps of the procedure. It’s a little lengthy as far as that goes. As you can see I have the trusty kitchen aid ready to go, and I’ve got a beater paddle on it. We are going to start off with butter and vegetable shortening, and we are going to blend these together and make kind of a paste. Actually a lot of recipes will refer to as creaming. So we are going to dump these in. The shortening, of course, is always soft as it is, but the butter, I actually set out for a while because I wanted that to soften as well, so that this will just blend together nicely and turn into a kind of a soft cream cheese consistency. Now that we’ve got it in there, I can go ahead and turn the speed up just a little bit. All right as you can see, we’ve achieved all one color inside of our bowl here, and we’ve creamed the shortening and butter together. So I’m going to keep this on a low speed now, and I want. to gradually add in my sugar We don’t want to dump a whole lot of the sugar in there. Instead we want to just actually drizzle it in as the paddle turns. Okay, so we’ve finished adding gradually our whole cup of granulated sugar, and I catch it about this speed, and I it all sped it up a little bit in between so that we got nice and combined the way that it needs too. Now we’ve got 3 large egg yolks. We are going to go ahead and plop those in, and we’ve got a cup of milk, a literal cup of milk. I’m going to try to drizzle that down the side. If you don’t have a pouring shield, sometimes it dribbles like that. Now that we’ve got some liquids in there, we want this incorporate fully, and I’ve got some extracts. I used a half-half mixture of almond extract and rum extract, actually. You can put real rum in there if you would like. It’s up to you. Now that we’ve got our liquid elements inside, we are going to go ahead and everything has been incorporated the way that it needs to. We’ve achieved this opaque yellow color, which is what we are after. We’ve got the zest of an orange going in here and the zest of a lemon as well. What I like to use is a microplain grater, and that way you get just the nice vibrant zest and you get none of the pulp because the pulp is going to turn it kind of bitter, and that is really what we are trying to avoid when we use citrus fruit in a recipe like this. So we’ve just got the zest in there, and what is left is the main attraction, which is some dried figs. What I did to get them to this consistency actually was just throw them inside a Cuisinart, and they got to this small stage, which is kind of like a little big smaller than a small dice as far as that goes but not quite minced. So we are going to incorporate those inside as well as I’ve got a whole apple that I cored/peeled. I cut those into really small dices as well. So we will incorporate all that into our mixing bowel, and then we will go to the second stage of the recipe. All right, so we are back to the second stage of the figgy pudding recipe. We’ve got all of our wedding ingredients; our butter, shortening, apples and our figs are all in the bowl now at this point. And we are actually going to start throwing in some things that are going to bind this together and flavor it as well. You can see I’ve got some plain bread crumbs, and I’ve also got some chopped walnuts here. They started off actually as chopped walnuts, and I threw these into a Cuisinart to get them to this consistency. In here I’ve got my baking powder and I threw it in all my dry ingredients in a portion cup. I’ve got some cinnamon in here as well, and it is a little hard to see obviously because it is all mixed together. And I also got a little bit of ginger, ground ginger in there and also some ground cloves. I’m going to go ahead and crank the mixer at a low speed, and I am just going to kind of sprinkle in these dry ingredients first. Just make sure you get a nice even distribution. Now I am going to go ahead and throw in my chopped walnuts. Again I got them to this consistency by throwing them into Cuisinart food processor. So we are just going to drizzle those in. I approach these recipes this way slowly not just in order to teach them, but just because we want everything to have a nice even distribution before we actually put it into the oven and let everything sit together the way that it needs to. And in go the plain bread crumbs. Again, we are just going to drizzle these in. All right, now that we’ve all the ingredients in our mixing bowl for the figgy pudding, what we are going to do next is I’ve got three egg whites. You remember we put three egg yolks into the bowl as part of a binding ingredient. I’ve got three egg whites here, and we are just going to beat these to stiff stage, and once we’ve done that we are going to go ahead and just fold them in with the spatula in the bowl, and folding is actually turning over, and we will show you that process when we get to that point. Now we are just going to beat these to a stiff peak stage and then fold it into the bowl once we are finished. So we’ve got our stiffly beaten egg whites, and I’m just going to hit those a couple more times with a whisk to show you the stiff stage there. So we just kind of fold this in with the spatula into our mixture. I’m making sure to get the edges and the bottom of the bowl. And again, this isn’t stirring. This is really just folding the mixture over upon itself gradually because we want to keep the volume of these egg whites because we whipped a lot of air into them. I’ve got a greased Pyrex bowl that I have been keeping chilled in the refrigerator so that it stays greased, and I just used butter all the way around up to the edges, and I am going to place it inside this pan. With a lot of custards and a lot of dishes like this, this same procedure is going to be used. So we are going to put the ingredients inside of our greased bowl, and then I’ve got some boiling water behind me on the stove, which we will pour into the pan and the whole package will go inside the oven, which I’ve got set at about 325 degrees, and it is going to cook for approximately four hours. So it is a real slow gentle method that we are going to use for this custard. We are going to go ahead and pour this into the bowl, and I am going to kind of pack it in just a little bit. There are options as well. You can pour these into molds to make festive Christmas shapes and stuff if you like. Kind of like a cookie cutter, I guess. But we’ve just chosen a regular Pyrex bowl for illustrating our procedures. So we are just going to level this off and, again, I am going to pour my boiling water about half-way, the depth of my shallow roasting pan, and we will put it in the oven again for about four hours to 325 degrees and show you the final product. Okay so we’re back with the finished product, the figgy pudding here. We cooked this in a Pyrex bowl so that you could actually see on the edges as far as doneness and the texture that we are trying to get on the top of this, and it is just an old rustic bread pudding essentially. So I’ve allowed it to cool, and we know that it is cooked thoroughly because you can see the cracking on the top. So we had a nice even heat in our oven. As you can see, we’ve got a nice crusty top and a really soft and moist center, and I’ve got some custard sauce that I’ve prepared here, and I have mounted it with butter at the very end. That is a tasty Old English treat there. Figgy pudding with warm custard sauce on the top.

 1.For Custard Sauce: In saucepan, scald milk and allow to cool.


2. Mix together remaining ingredients, except for butter. Add to cooled milk. Cook over low heat until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in butter, mixing well.

3. Serve pudding warm with custard sauce or sweetened whipped cream. Store unused portions in refrigerator.

Recipe from: "Louis Ortiz on behalf of Expert Village.com"
 
 

I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas. I'm wishing you a happy New Year full of joy and blessings.

                                                                              

Nativity Scene Collection

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by; Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. For Christ is born of Mary and gathered all above while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of won-d'ring love. O morning stars, together proclaim the holy birth, and praises sing to God the king, and peace to men on earth...(Text: Phillips Brooks,1835-1893)

******

How beautiful are the nativity scenes. I just love them. I decorated my mantel with one of my lovely nativity scenes, and I wanted to share my little collection with you.

I made this nativity scene with clay that I found at a craft store, this clay in particular can be baked in a regular oven. I love the natural terracotta color.

The simplicity of white.

 This was my first Nativity scene that I bought when I was newly-wed, it is made of porcelain, and I love the vintage look that the figures have. In Venezuela we traditionaly display the nativity scene in our homes. Baby Jesus is who brings the presents, and we open the presents on the 24th at midnight. Some Family can't hold the anxiety so they open their presents early in the morning. Some groups of people gather and sing serenades to  baby Jesus in the manger, and they go singing from house to house. I was living in the city, so I didn't have the opportunity to see those singing groups, but I have heard people talking about them.

This is a link with a traditional song, "Nino Lindo"

http://www.morellajimenez.com.do/letninolindoaguinaldo.htm

I love the baby's pink cheeks.

 I want to wish you a wonderful Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. Thank you so much for reading and following my blog, and for your beautiful comments. I really appreciate it. This motivates me to create new projects, share them with you, and improve my self.

 ~Have a wonderful day and come back soon~