First Makes for 2011

Well I must be feelin somewhat better cos this morning I baked and this evening I crafted - still coughing liking crazy but it has to go eventually right? and it didn't stunt my creativity thankfully!

First the baking......

I whipped up a batch of chocolate mint cupcakes.  I added chunks of 'Twilight' chocolate mint candies into the middle of the cupcakes and then frosted with choc/mint whipped frosting and finally topped each cupcake with some more choc/mint candies finely grated.  It's quite nice to use my tiny grater for something other than nutmeg in the eggnog - it's normally the only time it gets used.

I picked up some pretty boxes at the supermarket (Sainsbury's I think) that were perfect for gift giving cupcakes.  I love that these kind of things are becoming easier to find - makes giving simple things like home made cupcakes easy peasy.

I needed a couple of boxes and each held 4 cupcakes.  Since I made 2 dozen cupcakes and only needed 8 I will be taking the rest when it's back to work tomorrow.  If I leave them here at home hubby and I will just eat them so sharing is a good thing.

Okay so now to my first ever crafting of the new year.........

I took my first trip out into town briefly today and stopped in at YTOC to pick out papers for the first class of the year coming up on 19th January.  The theme is Valentine's Day and I had in mind to make a set of stacking boxes just perfect for filling with yummy sweet treats.  I knew I wanted to make 'pillow' boxes in graduating sizes so the class is called 'pillow talk' - kinda cute huh?  Well I thought so.

After several colour selections I finally settled on the pink, white and black combo and chose a couple of Jilli Bean dotty papers and 3 colours of Bo Bunny polka dot cardstocks for the actual boxes.

After making the boxes I stacked them on top of one another and tied them together with black ribbon.  Then I decided to create a pretty decoration for the top using the Jilli Bean papers, glitter and nestabilities heart dies.  The smallest of these boxes is 3" x 5" and the largest measures 6" x 7" so there's plenty of room for goodies.

This should be a fun, relaxed class to start the year, nothing too complicated so I hope there's enough demand and the class runs.  I'm really looking forward to it already.

Although my craft room is still very much up in the air right now I am gradually putting things back together and have made sure I have a good basic supply of craft tools and space so I can still craft.  I now have a 6 week deadline to get it finished since we have a beautiful day bed being delivered in 6 weeks time and it's going on the side of the room that is still very much in chaos!!!  I can't wait to share a picture of it - it was love at first sight I'm afraid and the budget went right out the window - oops!  Never mind, I'll just make it up somewhere.

So far I've managed to keep the finished side clean.  Can you believe I actually crafted these boxes and then cleared away afterwards - all in a matter of seconds too!  Everything was close at hand and easy to put away.  I sure hope that's a sign of things to come.  I'm sure it helped that I had one of my new Michael Buble CDs playing while I worked and it was HEAVEN!  I'll have plenty more of that thank you LOL!

I am booked in for several dates over the next few months so hopefully I'll have more to share real soon.

Enjoy!