Christmas, new year,and Monster high!

I wanted to use this opportunity to publish some of my more recent festive pictures.  This year was the first Christmas that we had in our basement flat, and I loved getting all caught up in the magic of decorating.

Most of the decorations we managed to buy at cost-price, second hand or were hand made!  It suprised me how many people who came over during this seasonal period who commented on our paperchains, it seems that these are one particular part of Christmas that people are neglecting in favour of the more expensive commercial decs.  Not so here! I think that we should all begin a paperchain craze and bring them back, after all they are so cheap and easy to make.  all you need is a bit of glue and coloured paper cut into strips.

the nutcracker decoration and sparkly purple trees I got from the pound shop!

here are a few of the festive photos above.

Christmas to me is also a time more about cooking and making things and getting together with family, so a couple of notable food items that were included on our menu was the Stollen, a German Christmas cake filled with a "sausage" of marzipan.  Mine had a slightly British twist as I couldn't resist decorating it slightly, so in the end it had a Merry Christmas, wreath and Sparkly tree atop.  The cake is supposed to represent the baby Jesus (as far as I know), although mine ended up rather more like a snow covered log!

the second was the trifle that I made, I didn't include any cake-ey or biscuit element into this one as certain individuals who would be consuming it are not keen!

these art deco plates are my pride and joy, brought at an auction.

Monster High, is a series of cartoons and dolls etc from Mattel who make Barbie.  The background is that they are a group of alternatively fashionable emo/goth types who are the children of famous monsters who are all in attendance at a High school called monster High.  To begin with I saw these dolls about a year ago and pined for one, eventually I brought myself a Frankie Stein doll, I later aqcuire a Ghoulia Yelps, now I am completely obsessed with them! I love their different looks and and kooky accessories.  So basically everyone was hassling me about what gift I would like for Chrimbo, and honestly both Sea monkeys and anything Monster High related was what I asked for.

I can now say I feel like a very lucky girl as I received BOTH of these!  the sea monkeys are amazing and are doing well, hatched about 3 days now.  The new Monster high doll to join the collection is new one to the gang Spectra Vondergeist!

sea monkeys, freshly purified water but in an unhatched state

Frankie Stein

Ghoulia yelps this sadly isn't one of my photos although I wish it were.

Finally the new addition Spectra Vondergeist!