Tag Archives: Christmas

Monday Mixer: Scent

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Scent

As she ran all she could hear was the susurrus of the murmuring leaves as they swirled about her, and she quickened her pace. She slowed stepping carefully through winding vines and convolvulus, still decorated with scattered diamonds of dew.  She paused, one foot still aloft, and flared her nostrils. Heavy petrichor rose from the forest floor masking the scent she tracked.  Her foot dropped and she stood silent, listening.
The breeze still whispered, and her mind whirled as scents mingled. Flora’s fragrance intermingled with fungi and soil’s pungent aroma, and different odours emanated from the undergrowth, confusing her and sending her into a tailspin.
She raised her nose, but the scent had vanished.
Just mere months since Christmas and here she was lost and abandoned. Her meretricious collar, now studded with dull zircona, had long since snapped…and she settled in the leaf mulch with a maudlin whine, to wait.

(150 Words)

Photograph by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)
Written for Monday Mixer over at Jeff’s Latinum Vault. A challenge which requires only 150 words and the use of three or more word prompts. As this has five prompts, it fits for Overachiever, if so desired. Go and read all the other 150 word tales! 

12 Days of Christmas: Love

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Photograph by Sarah Hall, manipulated by Lisa Shambrook
(Please do not use without permission)
Love
He’d never tell, but Kryos was jealous of his friends’ bond, something he could only ever dream of.  Within his devastated race he was the last surviving Krystallos. 
The vision he’d followed through the fog, last night, still haunted him… She was comparable to his race, but she wasn’t Krystallos. She was white, but she’d shimmered translucent green. Other details were hazy, and he’d really only caught a glimpse of her long, swishing tail as she’d vanished into the mist.
He had to find her…
Salt laced the air as the waves crashed against the mountain. The sea breeze revitalised him and as he soared around the eastern peak his mouth dropped. There she was, his ethereal vision, floating on the prevailing wind.
She whirled and spiralled through the air, flying without inhibition or fear. She was a lone creature dancing, above the ocean, dancing to her own song. 
He hung back watching in amazement and she twisted taking on an iridescent hue, the kind of green trapped within an opal, destined to shine with effulgence whenever a stray ray of brilliant light caught it.
Without a doubt it was her. Kryos beheld his ghost, and couldn’t move. He stared transfixed as she wheeled like a lost jewel against the clear blue sky.
He pressed into the mountainside, fearful of being seen, though he blended perfectly against the snow-bleached rocks. His heart thumped almost audibly against his tightened chest, and he watched as the wind carried her across the ocean. He fought the urge to leap into the sky, proud and majestic, and race to meet her. There was no way he was going to scare her off this time. Again, he melted into the frozen rock and couldn’t take his eyes off the mysterious dragon that thawed his heart.
(300 Words)

Written for A Jar of Fireflies 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop.  
Day Two: February – Love. 
Go read the others! 

12 Days of Christmas: Snow

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This is written for the 12 Days Of Christmas Blog Hop with Rowanwolf over at A Jar of Fireflies. The theme is Gifts and each of the twelve days represents a month: January – Snow:

Photograph by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)
Snow
As the snow fell, swirling and eddying, Cerys danced around her parents. She pirouetted and twirled, and leaped and flew around the garden, circling her mum and dad. 
The snow slipped through her fingers, its glitter coating everything else it touched, and she tilted her head, raising her face to the blizzard, trying to absorb the flakes that fell. 
Mum and dad stood oblivious to anything but themselves, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Nothing Cerys did caught their attention, so she became wilder, twirling like a tornado, her arms outstretched, and flurries of snow spinning around her like a cyclone. 
Still nothing impacted her parents.
They stood in silence, her mother’s head resting upon her husband’s shoulder. Her eyes were closed and her nose was red, and the grey tracks of mascara upon her cheeks now tainted his cream fleece.  His eyes were as red as her nose and his arms ached as he held his wife as close as he could, and they stood amid the squall oblivious to their daughter’s efforts.  
Cerys danced and frolicked in the snowfall, and dressed in white, decorated with a million tiny, silver snowflakes, and fur-lined, white boots, she was a sight they could not behold.
She moved as gracefully and as invisible as the wind, but she was there, dancing her heart out…
Their grief and loss blinded them, but she danced still…she danced and danced until her mother’s freezing breath finally gasped, as tiny childlike footprints emerged in the snow. Footprints that danced and danced, and then were gone…
(260 words)

Melting Snowmen Christmas Cake…

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So, it’s Christmas again…and the challenge of decorating the cake came around…
Private Photo (Do Not Use)
We have a tradition in our family, where Dad makes the cake with the help of the children. See above for 2001 photograph, many years ago, now it’s pretty much Caitlin who helps (she’s the baby in this one!) 
After the cake is made, it’s left to me to marzipan and decorate. Up until a few years ago the cake was always roughly marzipaned and then slathered with stiff, peaky royal icing and then I plonked a couple of Christmas cake winter ornaments on top and that was it! We were happy, but a couple of years ago I was inspired by Kirsty Allsopp and used her idea of polar bears on the cake. 
Not knowing if I could duplicate the said polar bears, I disappeared into the kitchen on my own and created… it worked! See here for the result! 
Last year I made Penguins…
Ever since I have cordoned of the kitchen during the decorating process and banned anyone from seeing anything until it’s finished.
It’s even turned into a competition to see if anyone can guess what I might do each year!
This year it was melted snowmen…inspired by trulycustomcakery cake’s Pinterest pic of melting snowmen cookies, and I decided to use her marshmallow technique to put them on top of my Christmas cake! 
Photo by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without crediting)
The cake was covered in marzipan and iced with fondant icing, then I put a layer of stiff royal icing to make snow. I added more water to the royal icing to make three icing snowman puddles on top, which I loved as it ran down the sides of the cake! 
Then came the marshmallows…that was the experimental bit…
Place a marshmallow on a piece of silicone or greaseproof paper and place it in the mircrowave. The instructions are not to walk away and watch at all times, as it swells (puffs up) take it out…somewhere between 8 and 15 seconds. Do not let it double it’s size or it’ll just be a gooey puddle. 
Taking them off the paper wasn’t easy either. The original poster recommended covered your fingers with grease to take them off. I covered a palette knife with oil and tried, I did get sticky and I did use way more than three marshmallows, have plenty spare! 
Then I made chocolate fondant arms, orange fondant noses and black fondant eyes, and obviously sugar silver balls became buttons…and there you have it a melting snowmen Christmas cake! 
Photo by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without crediting)
How do you decorate yours?

Steampunk Christmas Tree Bauble

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Photograph by Lisa Shambrook & Instagram 
(If you use these pictures please link back to this post, thank you.)

Still enjoying a writing hiatus and catching up with some crafting ideas… Rather consumed with Steampunk right now, and wanted a steampunk bauble for the Christmas tree, but couldn’t find one, so made my own:

1. Find (or buy) a single Christmas Bauble. Mine was 49p for 3 at my local garden centre. Stick with gold, silver, chrome, brown or neutral colours.

2. Using tweezers and superglue or another strong glue (Glue gun is too messy) add cogs, gears etc. I bought a small packet of old watch mechanisms for a couple of pounds on Ebay.
3. It helps with precision to place the bauble in an egg cup as you work.
4. Add a ribbon to hang it with.
All Photos by Lisa Shambrook 
(If you use these pictures please link back to this post, thank you)

And there you are, a Steampunk Christmas Tree bauble…

So Here It Is…

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Having just decorated the cake, it now feels like Christmas! It’s been the same over the last few years…my cakes used to be standard, just rough iced, but after watching Kirsty Allsopp a couple of years ago I became more adventurous!

The first year I put polar bears on my cake and I haven’t looked back since…this year I attempted penguins. Not all plain sailing…couldn’t buy black fondant icing anywhere, so had to make it with food colouring. Advice is to use gel paste colourings, but couldn’t find a black one, so it was liquid colours…and that didn’t help. You need a lot to make white fondant black, though I made it a day before and it darkened from steel-grey to black overnight. The icing became softer and stickier with each drop of black…which added to my frustration as I tried to mould penguins. It turned out to be easier to keep the icing in the fridge and only bring it out each time I moulded or added something (eyes, feet etc), was a long drawn out operation and several penguins were violently sacrificed during this process!

The iced-over pond was made by melting four glace mints in a tiny cake tin on grease-proof paper (at a low temperature for about 15 mins) then cooling in the fridge. The bubbles made as the mint heats makes the ‘ice’ you’re left with look pretty authentic! The pond sits on top of very stiff royal icing (I add as little water as I can get away with when making my royal icing, I like the peaks!) and I lightly coloured the icing below the pond with the palest blue (food colouring). Finished with a few snow-covered rocks of white fondant and the penguins surrounded by ‘snowballs’ (sugar decorations) and silver balls.

The rest of my cake is a standard rich fruit Christmas cake and traditional marzipan. My husband makes the cake with the children, I marzipan it…then make decisions about decorating it myself in secret and we all enjoy the big reveal when it’s finishSo, yes, now it’s Christmas!

I’ve had my face painted, cute snowflake on my cheek.

Along with the cake we’ve made our Christmas pudding, lovely recipe, which makes our main pudding and several mini ones too! Takes ten hours in the oven, but oh boy, the house smells good that day!

Since Caitlin moved to High School, I’ve missed the infants/junior school concerts and nativities…what’s not to love about little boys with gold cardboard crowns, tea-towel shepherds, grumpy inn-keepers who forget to open the door, reindeer with runny noses and angels with wonky halos..? I miss the innocence and enthusias

So what’s left? I must finish the present wrapping (before school’s out!), Santa’s done all his! We’ve got our Santa hats, the holly and the ivy…what more?