CHRISTMAS CRAFTSTRAVAGANZA

Here are some of the gifts I have been crafting this season...

Terrarium ornaments...

Materials: clear glass ornaments, twine, spruce clippings from my tree, dried flowers, and paper butterflies. I made the butterflies from old engravings that I scanned and printed. Each one is double sided with wire in the middle (to get the wings to stay in the proper position) and then I added glitter...because, well, as far as I'm concerned EVERYTHING should have glitter on it.

Apple cider, mulling sachets, and ginger spice cookies...

Materials: glass jugs with festive trimmings (juniper, spruce, and pine cones) for the apple cider...and cheesecloth, bakers twine, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, allspice, cloves, dried lemon peel, dried orange peel, and candied ginger for the sachets. I found the recipe for the cookies here...and I packaged them in brown paper bags tied with a bakers twine bow. And just for the record, the cookies are extra delicious when dipped in the hot mulled cider. I speak from experience.

Justin and I have also been putting together an epic wedding album for my parents and we are in the finishing stages of building a 6 foot tipi for my youngest nephew. I'll post pictures when it's done!

Okay, back to the Christmas factory. We elves only have a few more hours to finish making our presents.

ORANGE YOGURT CAKE

Justin and I finally finished unpacking all of our kitchen stuff.  That includes not only the abundance of things we brought from our apartment...but also ALL of our wedding presents. Since there was literally NO room for anything else in our apartment in Brooklyn we decided to store them in my parents' garage until we moved into a bigger house. 

Well, now we're in that bigger house...so we got to open all of our super sweet gifts and start putting them to use!

One of the lovely things we got was a ruffled cake stand with a glass cloche. It was just screaming for a pretty baked thing...so I decided to make it one.

I made an orange yogurt cake using a recipe I had cut out of an old issue of Martha Stewart Living.  It is available here.  However, I wanted mine to be a little more decorative (after all, it is going onto the world's cutest cake plate) so I also made some royal icing (recipe here) and piped on a few swirls and then topped it with orange zest and a dusting of powdered sugar. 

I think I'm going to be doing a lot more baking.  Here's some reasons why:  a.) I get a big kick out of it, b.) I LOVE sweets, c.) I have all kinds of new baking accessories, d.) I have LOTS of counter space to use said baking accessories....and most importantly, e.) what's a better way to get my NYC friends to come visit than tales of delicious homemade treats?!