Life hacks - don't you love them?

In the past month, I have been tweeting useful articles on how to re-use and/or repair items and they have proved very popular... for instance, did you know that the pumice stone you use on the hard skin of your feet can clean the water sediment in a toilet? I know, it's not a Xmas tip, per se but if you have guests and need to clean a scaley toilet, then it's handy. I use a broken pumice stone for cleaning, I am not suggesting you use it again on your feet... gross! But let's move away from toilets to more exciting things, such as handmade Xmas decorations. I had a go at making a wreath for my front door and a tree decoration this year: see them here on my 1930s House blog. They came out pretty well and my daughter helped too.

Let's move to festive baking and here is a cake we made for a party. We only had blue icing left, hence the unusual colour scheme. The 'clever' thing about this cake is that it was made in our breadmaker and it was too big to fit in the takeaway silver tray so I cut it in half. The other half was stored undecorated in a tin as my partner is very fond of fruit cake but doesn't like icing. Two for the price of one!

My daughter and I both love advent calendars and guess what... there's one that combines hacks and festive ideas: http://sugru.com/go/advent-calendar. My daughter and I like this toy mash-up:

We have some samples of Sugru to try out and I am hoping to make/fix something in the Xmas holidays, which start on 22 December. The last day of my daughter's school term is Friday 19 December. Merry Xmas everybody from Mrs Santa and Rudolph Michela.