Projects for Christmas

I made homemade Christmas cards as I usually do. At several points in time, I was sure I had bitten off more than I could chew, but 85 cards are now made and mailed.

J's work exchanges names for Christmas. I made these two towels for the J's co-worker. I also made homemade bread for her in my fancy loaf pan and it came out perfectly!! I could take credit for it, but I told my friend who is a divine cook that I was having trouble and she gave me this cooking spray that makes it work EVERY time!

In addition, I need several gifts for friends who we were either going over to their house and/or I wanted to give them a little something. I made a template and then made several of these towels to give to our friends for Christmas. It's more pretty than functional.

I did have a small Christmas disaster. I have this snowman cake pan that my mom purchased for me several years ago during an after-Christmas sale. Since we were going to visit my nieces and nephews, I thought it would be fun to make the cake for them.

I whipped up the cake batter with ease and placed half of it in each side of the pan. Other than a little longer to cook, everything seemed smooth sailing. The cake came out and cooled off and then I began trying to assemble the two sides. I used store-bought icing to place the two sides together. It wasn't perfect but worked okay. Then I began to ice the outside and add decorative icing for the top hat and eyes. At this point, things started going down hill VERY fast. I tried using toothpicks to keep things together. At one point, it began to look like this -

I used the leftover batter to make mini cupcakes. I thought the mini cupcakes would help it stand up, but it continued to decline. The decorative icing wouldn't stay in place so the snowman's top hat looked more like blue painted running down the snowman's face.

I finally decided there wasn't enough toothpicks in the world to keep the cake together and if my nieces and nephews really loved me they would eat a fallen snowman. So as you see, we have a front half in one dish and a back side of a snowman in another dish. Oh well, E for effort!!

I received several new craft books and supplies for Christmas so I'm thankful for a new year and new ideas!