All the homemade Christmas people over here please, lets share our ideas :) - SECOND EDITION :)

[BabyDubsEverywhere]

OLD THREAD

We were all on about pinterest, jars, and where we are up to in our christmas planning :)

Lets go...

And now a plea for help - I want to make by BILs curry kits - lots of spices and maybe a few non-perishables, together with a recipe the spices come from and a 'just add meat'. But I am really stuck coming up with a recipe that has enough spices to be interesting to give as a present, and also doesn't look too horrendous to make. Any suggestions?

Spent the day making chutney - 2 batches of apple, blackberry & cinnamon chutney (absolutely delish & v. Easy), green tomato chutney & fiery Bengal chutney. Just have to find somewhere to store them all...

Got a big bag of lemons & one of limes for a £1 a bag in the local Market on Friday, so planning to make some curds or possibly preserved lemons.
The wrapping ideas & tags look fab- love the pics on profiles.
For those looking for bottles for flavoured spirits, try
jamjarshop or Lakeland.

Oooh, green tomato chutney - I take it you grow your own? I love that stuff!

I have just made lemon syrup for lemonade and bottled it with a sprig of rosemary in one bottle and a spring of mint in the other one. It looks a pretty colour but I have honestly no idea if it will actually last - half the internet says use within 2-3 days, the other half says it lasts a year or more.

Oh ... and I don't have my copy (annoyingly) but 'Cooking Like Mummyji' by Vicki Bhogal has good simple curry recipes (might be in the library or someone may have it)?

Frankly I tend to just fry onions, bung the raw spices in when they're fried, add diced meat and simmer in its own fat/a splash more oil until tender, chuck in maybe some chopped tomatoes then finish with chopped herbs or a splash of yoghurt. Not authentic I suspect but if your BILs are very basic cooks it is pretty foolproof IME! An interesting combination of raw spices makes it much nicer than bought curry paste so I think it would be nice with your kit?

EllaDee - I think of Pinterest like a visual favourites tab! Works well for me...

I made some kiwi jam today, lovely lovely - kiwis courtesy of a neighbour who grows them in her back garden :o

Made another batch of lavender hand scrub too, with added food colouring this time to make it look a bit purple. Looks really nice in the jars.

I was meant to be sewing this evening, but got distracted by Spooks [hgrin]

well i have made the lemon hand scrub and i'm not sure i got my measurements right? It seems to be a bit overly oily, but then maybe it's meant to be like that? Has anyone else done it?? I may attempt it again, once i get more sugar!!! I also made the brown sugar body scrub and that looks fine!!! SO i now have my bits for snowman soup, so i'm going to try that this afternoon!! :)

Got lots of jars in different sizes from Ikea, they were 3 per person, so my mum got me 3 when she was in, so i'm doing good.

Not sure what else to try, like the lavender hand scrub idea too??

How are you doing the snowman soup? I want to make some but where can I buy cheap nice mugs? And what are you using for the hot choc? The individual packets you can buy or are you making your own packets? how?

I did the lavendar hand scrub and it looks a bit oily too. Might add more sugar later on? Don't think I'm going to go into mass production with it though, doing a more satisfying job with my Christmas decorations.

When you say Ikea was "3 per person" lisa do you mean they would only allow you to buy 3 at a time?

Have made mini-christmas pudding decorations today - look jubbly, and have just bought some cheapo mini-cars from homebase (£1 for 4) to make some crayon car-rolls for the fair too. Sewing machine has been taking a battering recently - maybe I should have also bought more needles! :)

I've been lurking for ages and pilfering some of your ideas - thank you!

So far I have made:
Lemon hand scrub (Lisa - 20oz sugar, 8fl oz olive oil, 8 tbsp lemon oil)
Red onion chutney
Flavoured oils (basil, rosemary, chilli)
Xmas pudding vodka
Spicy rib glaze (8oz soft light brown sugar, 2tsp smoked paprika, 2 tsp cayenne pepper, 2tsp garlic powder, 1tsp ground allspice powder, 1tsp chilli flakes, 1 tbsp sea salt - courtesy of Simon Rimmer/BBC!)

Still to do:
Fruity apple chutney
Peppermint bark
Chocolate coconut balls (1lb des. coconut, 1 tin condensed milk, 4tbsp icing sugar. Mix well, form into balls, chill. When set, toss in melted chocolate to coat and allow to set - heaven!)

Xmas/ cinnamon butter
Brandy butter

I'm trying to find some large cardboard boxes with lids (I'd ideally like to quill the tops) - is there anywhere anyone can recommend?

TIA and thanks all for posting your ideas - MNetters are such a creative bunch!

Apologies; lavendAr lavender

Wow mrs that's a good list! :)

I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment!

Hello,

I am dipping my toe into this thread, as I haven't managed to do a lot in preparation for Christmas since my dd3 was born 5 weeks ago, so I don't have much to contribute yet...

However, at my dc's request last week, I made some festive popcorn which I made last year and gave away in glass jars. Basically you cook a packet of salted popcorn in the microwave. Melt 400g of white chocolate and mix in 12 crushed up candy canes. Then add the popcorn and mix very well until all is coated with the chocolate and mint mixture. Then, spread out on greaseproof paper, sprinkle with lots of edible glitter and refridgerate until set. Then break into small chunks, put in a jar and give away (or just eat it, which is what my dc did with last week's batch!)

The other thing which I have done, is make a load of fimo millefiore beads, like <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=polymer+clay+millefiori+beads&hl=en&sa=X&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7TSEA_en-GBGB388&biw=1280&bih=562&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=my4NUhpj6clk1M:&imgrefurl=beadazzleme.blogspot.com/2011/08/polymer-clay-millifiore-round-beads.html&docid=OnJSyjRLoi7_3M&imgurl=3.bp.blogspot.com/-BsMBLkZGQiE/TkVONAnFdcI/AAAAAAAAAVg/P5SAHLPJ9T0/s1600/DSC06691-1.JPG&w=1271&h=1024&ei=02GlTrmPLcWx8gOG_MD6BQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=78&sig=115286145345480891830&page=15&tbnh=150&tbnw=186&start=164&ndsp=11&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:164&tx=87&ty=13" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">these (but not as professional-looking!) which I will turn into necklaces and/or bracelets in a couple of weeks.

Wholelottarosie thank you! That's what I was going to do before baby brain set in!!
I'm trying to keep each item I make to under £2 so really dont want to spend more than £1 on the mug.

Festive popcorn, what a great and easy idea!

Oooh, this thread looks great! This is my first ever post so just going to watch for a bit while I get the hang of it!

Well i'm using glass storage jars for my snowman soup, i have small enough candy canes to stick in them, and i bought the sachets of hot choc and i've just emptied them in I've gave the people enough of everything for 2 lots of hot choc!!

Thanks you mrstiredandconfused i shall do my lemon scrub again with your recipe

I can't take any credit I'm afraid Lisa - I nicked borrowed it from the original thread!

And what does yours look like and smell like? Texture and what not? Just so i know i'm doing it right :)

It actually looks like yellow snow

It is very lemony (ran out of essential oil so used five x 5ml bottles of essential oil and an extra two tbsp of olive oil (instead of 16tbsp essential oil) to 60oz of sugar - that has made four very good sized kilner jars worth of scrub). Smells gorgeous! Made it two weeks ago and I keep "shaking" it to make sure the oil doesn't just collect at the bottom and it makes a lovely crunchy sound!

The only bit of advice I would give is when you have added your essential oil, add the olive oil slowly (I needed 24fl oz so I added 12 then six then another six - it's easier to leave some out than pour it in and have to take it out again!) and just go by what looks, feels and smells nice to you. Have faith!

Can I make a suggestion, can we add a link each time we mention something new to the thread? That way we can go straight to a recommended method rather than searching and guessing which will be good.

Never Eat Yellow Snow :o

Right (rolls up sleeves) these here scrubs. I went and purchased some lemon, lime, mandarin and rosemary essential oils in readiness for actually doing these instead of fannying around. But I am confused ! I also was going to do that original recipe (8tbsp of lemon oil, 20oz sugar etc...) but I've just done the maths on the lemon oil - 1 tablespoon is 15ml, 8 of them would be 120ml. I purchased 10ml bottles of Lemon essential oil at the weekend at a price of just under £3 each - I would therefore need TWELVE of them [hshock] so that would be an expenditure of £36 before I even get on to the olive oil, sugar, jars and packaging!! Am I being thick here?! I know you can probably get the oils for less than what I paid but even at half price we are talking £18.

I am envisioning myself making miniature scrubs in those little jam jars that you get in hotels with your breakfast -more of a finger scrub than a whole hand scrub

It's the lemon oil isn't it? I'm missing something obvious here - like, it's not lemon Essential oil but some cheaper type of lemon oil that you can buy by the gallon for a few quid at Lidl. Please put me out of my misery [hgrin]

Thought it was lemon juice cartblanche. But I'm possibly being dim .

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/Christmas/1317334-All-the-homemade-Christmas-people-over-here-please-lets-share-our-ideas-SECOND-EDITION?pg=17

I used that one for the lemon hand scrub, and it's lemon juice or oils