I tried to include a handmade element in any gifts I gave this Christmas (or will yet give, in the case of family I’ve not yet seen).

When you’re doing a lot of handmade gifts, it can be tricky to come up with a good variety of ideas (there’s only so many people I can give sock monkeys to). So, for a wonderful friend of mine, I decided to make a jar of fortunes – basically paper fortune cookies with inspirational messages in them.

These are satisfyingly easy to make. There’s loads of tutorials around the web on how to make them, but I’m going to try and explain how I did them. First you need to cut a circle about 4″ in diameter from your patterned paper. You don’t want to use a heavyweight card or anything – printerweight patterned paper is fine.

I cut mine using a Fiskars circle cutter, but use a punch or die, or draw around a cup – whatever you’ve got. When you’ve got your circle, make as if to fold it in half (patterned side out), but only crease the middle part of the circle.

Pinch only the middle of the fold

Open your circle back out, and then go to fold it the other way. You will notice that the crease you made above now bows in. If you give it a push inwards, it should take on the familliar shape of a fortune cookie.

Push the folded cookie in to shape

You may find you need to put a dab of glue or double sided tape in the crease to hold your cookie closed.

Now all you need to do are print and trim your fortunes. When you have your fortune strip, you can then tuck it in to your cookie.

The fortunes I used for this gift were all inspirational sayings, but you could fill your cookies with jokes, lines from a poem or song, meal inspirations, or anything that would suit your recipients taste.

Then you can simply arrange them in a jar, tie with a ribbon and add a lable with a poem or greeting.

Let me know what you put in yours if you give this a try!

Who wouldn't love to receive this jar of cookies?

So, you’ve been invited to a last minute Halloween party this weekend, and you’ve got to come up with a costume pronto? Well I’ve got some quick and/or lazy suggestions for you

Made Up

These simple costumes mean you can wear your own clothes, then with the addition of some make up you can become

• Zombie: Pale skin (white powder on any exposed skin – face, neck, arms etc), dark sunken eyes (try rubbing some brown eye shadow in around the hollows of your eyes), dirtied finger nails. Wear whatever clothes you like, but the more bedraggled the better
• Vampire: pale skin again, draw on a few veins with pale blue powder or pencil. Add some fangs if you can get some (pound shop maybe). Men should wear a suit, women a long dark dress.
• Gun shot victim: tear a bullet sized hole in the front and back of an old t-shirt (perhaps over the hear area) before putting it on. Using any make up you want draw the bullet hole on to your skin behind the hole. Add blood liberally – an easy way to make fake blood is to add red food colouring to syrup.
• Mummy: Wear white underneath, then wrap yourself head to toe in toilet paper bandages. Then pray it doesn’t rain!
• Lobotomy patient: draw a surgery scar just above your brow and embellish with fake blood. A good excuse to spend the night stumbling around, as you’ll be ‘in character’

Simple Accessories

If you have a chance to get to a novelty/pound/costume shop (or have something left over from last year) a simple accessory can make a costume

• Witch: The stereotypical pointed witches hat only needs the addition of a long black dress. Backcomb your hair, grab a broom and you’re good to go
• Devil: Got some devil horns? Add a red shirt & suit trousers, or a red dress (any length) and get set to raise hell
• Musician: If you have a novelty inflatable instrument (guitar, saxophone etc) to hand, then pair it with a suitable rock & roll outfit from your own wardrobe and you’re ready to rock!

 A Little Effort

 Some things can be thrown together quite quickly if you’re prepared to make a little effort

• Print and cut out lots of pictures of your preferred hot (female) celebrities. Stick them all over a plain t-shirt – et voila, you are a babe magnet
• Stab some plastic knives through cereal packets and glue in place, then attach these cereal packets to a plain t-shirt. Paint/drizzle liberally with fake blood (see above, or use red paint). Yup, you’re a cereal killer
• Cut lengths of yarn as long as you are high. Cut lots more lengths of this yarn – really, lots. Glue, tape or otherwise attach these lengths around the inside brim of a large hat – there should be enough yarn that you are completely obscured when wearing the hat, thus resembling Cousin Itt from the Addams Family. Add some sunglasses over the yarn.

Really Lazy

These require the minimum of effort. Some I have borrowed from elsewhere (see, even I’m not making the effort!)

• The old classic – cut some holes in a white sheet and instantly transform yourself in to a ghost.
• Take a leaf out of Wednesday Addam’s book: wear your normal clothes and if questioned you are a serial killer – “they look just like you and me”
• Wear whatever you feel comfortable in, them simply add a name tag saying  “Hi, I’m GOD”. Well, it worked for Oz and he’s the definition of cool.

These are just some quick thoughts out of my head. My friend Amy is a true mistress of costumes, you’ll find loads of inspiration on her blog.

(Cute baby picture from The Social Bee’s flickr stream)

It’s National Curry Week , so it seemed as good an excuse as any to share with you my curry recipe.

Okay, I know this curry is a slight cheat in that it uses curry paste, but I don’t cook curry well enough or often enough to warrant a cupboard full of spices. So, this is my take on a quick and easy curry that tastes amazing anyway. 

Ingredients
(Serves 4)

Vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, diced or minced
3 small red chillies, chopped (I took ones from my kitchen plant)
1 or 2 large carrots, cut into strips (julienne)
4 spring onions, julienne
1 bell pepper, julienne
2 tablespoons curry paste (choose a spiciness to suit your taste)
1 tin chopped tomatoes
300g button mushrooms, whole
1 tin coconut milk

Method 

1. Heat a small amount of vegetable oil in your pan and sweat off the onion, garlic and chillies.
2. Add the carrots, spring onion and bell pepper, and fry gently for a minute, before adding the curry paste and cooking off for a further 2/3 minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes, mushrooms and coconut milk and simmer (without a lid) until the sauce reduces and thickens (about 15 minutes).
4. Serve with rice & whatever trimmings you like.

Sound good? Of course, the recipe is easily adapted to suit your tastes. Don’t like mushrooms? Swap for cubes of butternut squash or sweet potato (adjust cooking times to make sure these are cooked through). Devout carnivore? You could include some diced chicken breast in the mix – simply ‘brown’ of the chicken in the pan first, remove and set aside while you cook everything else, then add in along with/instead of the mushrooms and make sure you cook until all the pink is gone from the chicken.

So, what’s your favourite curry folks? Do you like to cook them, or are you more a takeaway menu kind of curry connoisseur?

(photo kindly taken by my friend Katie)