A Lovely Little Post of Thoughts and Festive Musings...

Hello lovely readers and happy Thursday to you!

Can you believe that Christmas is a mere two weeks away...?

I haven't been in the blog world too much of late...if read my post from a week or two ago, you will probably understand why!  {{smiles}}

My precious mother is finding this 7th pregnancy much more challenging and tiring, so I feel honoured to still be at home and able to help her where I can!

Thank you to each of you who are dilligently praying for her and our baby brother...your thoughts and prayers are truly appreciated!

How I long to meet this little one who is already loved and cherished by his family...

~

I thought I would share a little post of thoughts, happenings and various projects that I have been working on of late instead of the usual, Thursday Pearls...I had hoped to return to the blogosphere last week but alas!  The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity with more set to come!

In my absence, I have been working on completing a delightful little order for a sweet customer...can you guess what I have been creating?  Oh indeed...reindeer!

Oh, and I have a wonderfully festive tutorial planned for next week, sweet friends, so do stay posted!  If you like to sew and create, then you will love these darling fabric trees...

 

These patchwork fabric Christmas trees are also available on my Etsy shoppe...

My grandmother arrives late next week...she will spend Christmas with us and oh my!  

How much we have to complete before then!  Christmas crackers...we always love making our own...gifts for the girls...organising the final menu...what fun!

But our hope is to keep our Christmas celebrations Christ centred and simple so as to not lose the beauty of this time of year by stressing about trivial matters...a few years ago I shared a post on celebrating Christmas for real...would you perhaps like to read it...?  You can find my post here...

Christmas card making is something I just love, don't you...?

Each year we make a couple gift boxes for dear friends and family members, and I love popping a handmade Christmas card in each box of handmade and homemade goodies!

Simple and sweet...Christmas cards

This Monday coming we have a lovely Christmas brunch to look forward to...two dear friends and precious sisters in the Lord are hosting this little party for us and a few other young ladies, and I am sure it is going to so wonderful!

My dad has been away for a good few days now on a business trip, and is only expected home this coming Tuesday...of course we all miss him dearly, but we have tried to be productive in his absence...in the evenings we older girls have enjoyed watching Wives and Daughters which he got for us before he left!  Ah...how I love this BBC adaption!  So beautiful...

Cornflowers are blooming...aren't they beautiful...?  There is just something soft and romantic about them...{{happy sigh}}

In amongst daily happenings, the garden is growing and there is much preserving to be done too!  Cucumber pickles...summer squash bread...jam (made with berries from our neighbour!)...

Beth is lending a hand in the garden now as goodness!  There are just too many jobs to be done each day to keep the fresh produce coming in!  

Tomato Chilli Jam...oh so scrumptious...recipe can be found here...

And not to mention the watering...summer has arrived, and that means lots of hot weather!  

There is a terrible drought in our country at the moment, so would you perhaps pray that the Lord would see fit to send us some much needed rain?

Where we are, we have been fortunate to have more rain than most places in South Africa...and we are very thankful for that!

Gem Squash...

~

Well now, dear readers...I must be off to finish off some house cleaning...with guests coming to stay, it is always a good idea to use the opportunity to give our homes a little tidy up and a sort through...my task has been to clean windows, and we have those lovely windows that are made up of tiny individual panes...this means a bit of extra work, but how satisfying it is to stand back and admire your handiwork!

Blessings to you and much love...thank you for your continued friendship in the blog world...I appreciate each one of you sweet ladies!

Oh, and for those of you who followed Beautiful Girlhood on Facebook, I would like to let you know that I no longer have a page as I deactivated my personal profile...I dearly want to spend more time enjoying my home, family and writing my blog/reading blogs, so hopefully I can free up some time to do just this by not being on Facebook...  I hope you will continue to follow here, though!

With joy in Jesus!

Our Favourite Christmas Fruitcake Recipe

  ...And here is the promised recipe for a lovely moist Christmas fruitcake... 

Christmas Fruitcake

500g dates, shredded

4 ½ packets (250g each) dried fruitcake mix OR

500g seedless raisins and 375g golden sultanas and 250g mixed candied citrus peel

200ml brandy

450g butter, at room temperature

475g brown sugar

9 large free-range eggs

600g cake flour

5ml bicarbonate of soda

5ml salt

2ml ground cloves

2ml ground cinnamon

2ml ground mace

5ml cocoa

50ml ginger syrup

125g ginger preserve, finely shredded (make your own!)

125g walnuts, chopped

Grated rind of 1 lemon

250g glace cherries, halved and sprinkled lightly with flour

60ml brandy

The night before place the dates, cake mixture or raisins, sultanas and candied citrus peel in a container and pour over the 200ml of brandy.  Close tightly.

Butter a 25cm cake tin, line it with three layers buttered brown paper and set aside.  Preheat the oven to 120 degrees Celsius.

Cream the butter and brown sugar and add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.  Sift together the dry ingredients and mix with the butter mixture.  Stir in the fruit mixture and add the ginger syrup, preserved ginger, walnuts and lemon rind.  Mix well.

Spoon a layer of the batter into the tin, followed by a layer of cherries.  Repeat until everything has been used, ending with a layer of batter. 

Cover the tin with a round paper plate or use a piece of cardboard cut to size.

Bake for 4 hours, remove the plate and bake for another hour or until done.  Remove from the oven and pour 60ml brandy evenly over the hot cake.  Leave in the tin to cool.

Wrap tightly in aluminium foil and place in a container with a tight-fitting lid, 

Pour a few tots of brandy over the cake every seventh day, closing it tightly each time.

Makes one large cake or two smaller cakes...

For decorating ideas and other festive bakes and cakes, see this post from Christmas 2013!

~ Have a truly beautiful day, sweet readers ~

Festive Baking Delights Have Begun...

Oh, the delightful smells of festive baking have begun in our home once again, starting with our traditional Christmas fruit cake which is always baked around this time of year in order for it to be well 'ripened' by Christmas...

How exciting to beat together the eggs and brown sugar and gently stir in the wonderful spices: cloves, cinnamon and mace and the fruit mix to create a beautiful Christmas cake, which will mature until a few days before Christmas when we will decorate it especially for the special occasion whilst singing along to cheerful carols of the season... 

Have you made your Christmas fruit cake yet?  Are you planning to decorate it in any particular way this year?  {Do see my post from last year for some beautiful ideas here...}

And if you haven’t made yours yet or you are seeking out a new recipe to try, do stay tuned for ours which I will be sharing with you all tomorrow! 

~ Sweet blessings on your day dear readers ~

52 Crafts in 52 Weeks – Week Thirty Two

With October almost at an end and Christmas fast approaching, it is time to begin turning our thoughts to all things Festive.  Mom, Nancy and I have been going through all her and Granny’s old Christmas magazines the last few days, looking for some fun projects to make over the coming season.

This weekend will see us older girls in the kitchen baking our Christmas fruit cake.  After having great success last year, we have established the baking of our own Christmas cake as a firm tradition.  We’ll have to give some thought to its decorating, though...

I started off this week with some festive sewing.  The beautiful fabric reindeer ornament featured in the December 2012 issue of Crafts Beautiful was the project I decided to undertake and I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the process.  My mom helped me with the finishing touches as I am not 100% comfortable with attaching ears and eyes to any stuffed animal!  As it is my little reindeer (which has been christened Rosy) has to live with a terrible nose...

 I used my gorgeous vintage fabric to make Rosy so you might say she is quite a special reindeer...

 

 With only ten more weeks left in 2013, I’d better get a move on with sharing the projects I tackled this year!  There are a few Christmassy ideas coming this way very soon, so if you’re feeling a bit uninspired to start with your festivities, be sure to take a look at the loveliness I have planned for next week:-)

Do you celebrate Christmas?  If so, what is your favourite thing about this season?

Kelly-Anne