A White Christmas

A dining scheme always looks much better when it has a colour scheme. I dont know about you but whatever your choice there has to be a large splash of white. Whether you tone it with warmer ivorys, beiges & golds or reds or opt for the cool tones of white, blue & silver together, crisp fresh whites are a must have for me.

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Boutique Pick Of The Week

You have to love this cute Kids Cooking Christmas Starter kit that comes beautifully boxed & contains Snowy the bowl, Rudolph the spoon, A Silicone Christmas tree Bun Tray & A5 Double Sided Wipe Clean Recipe Card with recipes of coconut ice and a Christmas sponge recipe.

This makes a wonderful Christmas present or pre gift for Christmas to make the family Christmas cake!!

All dishwasher safe. Silicone Bun Tray is also oven safe.

£14.99

visit http://www.finishingtouchinteriorsboutique.co.uk/

The pre-boxed Christmas starter set is always a winner but if you're looking for a stocking filler i have these cute christmas cookie cutters due in stock this week.

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Create A Magical Christmas

How to Bake A Gingerbread House & Gingerbread Men 

Ingredients for gingerbread Men

Ingredients

• 140g unsalted butter
• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 3 tbsp golden syrup
• 350g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tsp ground ginger and 1 tsp ground cinnaman
• pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
• 2 balls stem ginger from a jar, chopped

To decorate

icing, sweets, glacer cherries..whatever you fancy

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C gas mark 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
2. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix flour, soda, spices and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Stir in the butter mix and chopped ginger to make a stiff-ish dough.
3.Roll out dough to about 5mm thick. Stamp out gingerbread men, re-rolling and pressing the trimmings back together and rolling again. 
4. Lift onto baking sheets & bake for 12 mins until golden. Cool 10 mins on the sheets, then lift onto cooling racks.
5. To decorate, mix icing sugar with a few drops of water until thick and smooth.

We also made a ginerbread house at the weekend, but I confess this was not from scratch it was actually a kit I brought from sainsburys (tut tut I know) it was the Dr Oetker kit & was very simple to use but there is many good ones out there .johnlewis.com/ do a Gingerbread House kit for £15.00 that comes in a cute box. The kids enjoyed decorating it & it tasted delicious.

However If you want to make your gingerbread house from scratch  here is the recipe 

• 250g unsalted butter
• 200g dark muscovado sugar
• 7 tbsp golden syrup
• 600g plain flour
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 4 tsp ground ginger

• 200g bag flaked almonds
• 2 egg whites
• 500g icing sugar , plus extra to dust
• 125g pack mini chocolate fingers
• generous selcetion sweets of your choice, choose your own colour theme
• 1 mini chocolate roll or a dipped chocolate flake
• few edible silver balls

1. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough. If it won't quite come together, add a tiny splash of water.
2. Cut out the template (see below to download). Put a sheet of baking paper on your work surface and roll about one quarter of the dough to the thickness of two £1 coins. Cut out one of the sections, then slide the gingerbread, still on its baking paper, onto a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, re-rolling the trimmings, until you have two side walls, a front and back wall and two roof panels. Any leftover dough can be cut into Christmas trees, if you like.
3. Pick out the most intact flaked almonds and gently poke them into the roof sections, pointy-end first, to look like roof tiles. Bake all the sections for 12 mins or until firm and just a little darker at the edges. Leave to cool for a few mins to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
4. Put the egg whites in a large bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then stir to make a thick, smooth icing. Spoon into a piping bag with a medium nozzle. Pipe generous snakes of icing along the wall edges, one by one, to join the walls together. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then allow to dry, ideally for a few hours.
5. Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on. The angle is steep so you may need to hold these on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to dry. Dry completely, ideally overnight. To decorate, pipe a little icing along the length of 20 mini chocolate fingers and stick these lengthways onto the side walls of the house. Use three, upright, for the door. Using the icing, stick sweets around the door and on the front of the house. To make the icicles, start with the nozzle at a 90-degree angle to the roof and squeeze out a pea-sized blob of icing. Keeping the pressure on, pull the nozzle down and then off - the icing will pull away, leaving a pointy trail. Repeat all around the front of the house. Cut the chocolate mini roll or dipped Flake on an angle, then fix with icing to make a chimney. Pipe a little icing around the top. If you've made gingerbread trees, decorate these now, too, topping each with a silver ball, if using. Dust the roof with icing sugar for a snowy effect. Lay a winding path of sweets, and fix gingerbread trees around and about using blobs of icing. Your gingerbread house will be edible for about a week but will last a lot longer

(Recipe from http://www.bbcgoodfood.com)

how about these gingerbread house knitted decorations, Cute hey?

 for the instructions on how to make them visit http://totallytutorials.blogspot.com/

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Christmas dining inspiration

You may have noticed but things have gone a bit Christmassie themed around here in the past week. Ok so we arent even in December yet but its under 30 sleeps away & I am starting to feel a little on the festive side. Shopping has commenced already I am taking my mum to Cambridge next week to hit the shops in a big way...excited...VERY! (I totally love Christmas shopping, chosing pressies for everyone). But lets move on to the serious subject of table arrangments. How gorgeous is this table setting? I love the feel of the whole room, the chocolate walls & gold touches. Its a warm & luxurious feeling space & the table to me is just perfect. Not to over the top but just enough decoration to be a winning table scape. The gold napkins against the delicate flowers in the small glass bottles look stunning. ...oh & lets not forget the cosy fireplace!!!!






Dont forget my Christmas Give away, scrowl down the page to previous posting for full details. Have a great weekend xxx 

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Friends Feature Friday

Guest Writer Hannah Jones from www.hannahbuns.blogspot.com/

CHRISTMAS PRESENT CAKE

Hey! This was just me having a little fun trying out new things.  I have made two Christmas cakes and turned them into presents. I wanted to make it really colourful and fun. The children really liked this one but maybe if I do it again I might add a Christmas teddy bear or something like that. Thanks for taking a look at my blog :)

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CHRISTMAS GIVE AWAY

Well just 30 more sleeps until christmas & I thought in the festive spirit of things it was time for another
             PRIZE GIVE AWAY

THE PRIZE?

 This gorgeous handstitched, Charlotte Macey 'Figgy Pudding Tea cosie' worth £38.00

  All you have to do to enter is pop on over to                   Facebook page & like the page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Finishing-Touch-Interiors/120383714678113

      
leave a message letting me know what your favourite item from The Boutique is. Easy :) x

  

This beautifully handstitched cosie is a great addition to any Christmas table & matches  perfectly with the 'Figgy Pudding Egg Cosies' that are already available to purchase over on The finishingtouchinteriorsboutique 

              .......Or even this festive mini red spotty bunting

                          Good luck xxx

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My Boutique Pick Of The Week

Well its just 33 sleeps now until Christmas, so for my boutique pick of the week I will be  show casing Christmas inspired products from my new online store

http://www.finishingtouchinteriorsboutique.co.uk/

This weeks pick is this beautifully hand stitched santa sack from Charlotte Macey Textiles. Each has an appliquéd patch of spotty cotton and is decorated with a spotty pudding and "bring me some figgy pudding" stitched handwriting. They are £22.00 available now from the boutique finishingtouchinteriorsboutique. 
Santa sacks measure 46cm (w) x 60cm (h) and are washable up to 40°C.

This week I have had another new project on the go in the form of becoming a publisher of a new online newspaper
                'The Decor Design Rambler'
a daily newspaper with up to date posts on interior design, art & design & architectural news & tips. The newspaper is made up of news & blog posts collated from my Twitter news stream. Click on the link to see the paper for yourselves.

http://paper.li/sarahlougibbs/1321893056

 Please click on the Twitter link to become a follower & keep your eyes peeled your blog posts may be featured in The Design & Decor Rambler

http://twitter.com/Sarahlougibbs

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Decorative Artwork

 decorativeartwork. is a small company I found on Facebook that designs and creates high quality, elegant & unique handmade crafts & gifts

Romantique

Personalised Decorative Name Plaques




LOVE Heart & Flowers

All products in the store can be ordered online & you can have a design personalised with a special name or script of your choice on it for a small extra charge of €2.50. If you have a special event coming up and would like to give a truly unique and personal gift then there is a ’Celebration Design’  which you can commission to your own specific requirements by on request. They make great gifts & they cost €25.00

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Create A Magical Christmas

Make your own Christmas heart decorations-
I have always been a a lover of hearts whatever the season, both woodern hearts & wire hearts, but for the Christmas season hand sewn hearts are ticking all the right boxes for me.



This cute homemade-style felt heart is a baragin price of £1.99 from Sainsbury’s but if you like to get crafty & make your own then Amazon do these great sewing kits below
Buttonbag Winter Hearts Sewing Kit  £12.05
(I have ordered this kit myself I think it will be a fun thing to do with the kids ill let you know how we get on). There is something very homely about handmade decorations. I am a big fan of the homemade home especially when it comes to christmas.


If you are on a tight budget with your decorations this year how about these fabulous Cut-out paper hearts that I found on house to Home. Another great idea to make with the kids (or without) & it wont burn a whole in your pocket either.

Heres what you will need:

A4 paper, pencil, scissors, hole punch, wool

1) For large hearts, use half a piece of A4. For small hearts, use a quarter. Fold your piece of paper in half, then draw half a heart shape from the fold outwards (so that the fold is 
in the centre of your heart shape). Carefully cut along 
the pencil line. 2) Follow the same technique to cut a smaller heart shape out of the centre of the larger one.
3) Unfold the paper and smooth out the crease.
4) Carefully punch a hole out of the top of your paper heart shape and thread onto a length of wool to create 
a hanging loop.
There you have it your heart shaped decorations.

Next Monday Ill share some Christmas baking. xx

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Create a country style kitchen

Creating a well designed & functional kitchen takes time. Your kitchen is the heart of the home & needs to reflect your personality. You firstly need to create the work triangle which is the three main working areas of any kitchen, the sink, oven & fridge & these need to work efficiently. This means the traffic flows easily between all three making them accessable. A cottage kitchen needs to be simple yet cozy feeling. Chosse Shaker style doors with tongue & groove panels in cream or white finishes, although often island units can be contrasted in a soft cornflower blue or even a vibrant red. Walls tend to be painted in soft hues of green, blue, yellow or in light earthy tones. Bring in lots of floral patterned fabrics for window treatments, cushions & accessories like tea towels, tea cosies etc, you can mix floral's up with striped patterns for an accelctic feel.

When thinking about cabinetry for your country style kitchen opt for open shelf plate racks to display your crockery. A dresser with glass doors is another idea for displaying your ceramics. Whether you buy an old vintage dresser to contrast or have one designed in as part of the kitchen they are an essential country look if you have the space. Agas were popular once apon a time & are making a big come back but range cookers look just as good & take up much less space. Building a chimney mantle around your range works really well if you are in a modern house that doesnt have a built in chimney in the kitchen already. Displaying pots & pans above an island unit or a utensil rack above your range or aga is funtional use of space. Other storage ideas for the country look include wicker drawer baskets for your fruit & vegetable. Belfast sinks are the best option for this style but if thats not your cup of tea you can always use a standard Franke single bowl sink & make a feature of the sink area with pillasters instead. Butcher-block worktop are popular with this style kitchen & age well with the look. For finishing Ttouches to your country kitchen add pots of herbs to your window cill

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Friends Feature Friday

A warm welcome this morning to the lovely Hannah Jones from hannahsbuns. with her monthly guest post for my Friends Feature Friday series, & what scrumptious delights she has for you today my lovelies. 


Hannahs Buns Amazing Chocolate Mini Cakes.

Hey Guys, Ive been so excited about these cakes. I have been wanting to do them for ages and after going to the cake show last week and seeing other peoples  on their stands I made it my mission this week to get them done. These ones I have made are decorated for Christmas they would make a great gift for someone who loves chocolate and they are so different. They can be done in so many different designs depending on what the person is interested in. Today I have made chocolate mini cakes filled with chocolate butter cream and covered with chocolate ganache. Around the sides is tempered chocolate and white chocolate curls on top  with a Christmas pudding that I have made out of chocolate Plasticine and rolled fondant. I hope you like them and watch this space for more designs coming soon. Thanks for reading x

Thank you to Hannah for sharing more of her wonderful delightswhy not pop on over to Hannahs page for tips, recipes & more of what she has been up to.

http://hannahsbuns.blogspot.com/

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Boutique Launch & Give Away

I am completely thrilled to be finally launching my new online homewares boutique! Apologies for the delay in the launch but its here at last. I have selected some beautiful shabby chic and vintage inspired goodies for the home, as well as cute kids cooking sets, beautiful hand stitched kitchenwares & gorgeous handmade linen cushions. There is also some wonderful Christmas items on offer too, so pop on over & take a look for yourselves.

http://www.finishingtouchinteriorsboutique.co.uk/

Alongside this exciting launch & my 2011 blog awards nomination I have decided to host another give away to all those that give Finishing Touch Interiors their vote. I will be giving away this beautiful
                  Butterfly Tea for One Set.
(A cream ceramic individual sized cup, frilled saucer and crystal topped teapot in butterfly and glittering diamante decoration)


All you have to do for a chance to win is follow the link banner below vote for me & then leave a message here on my page to let me know you have placed your vote. 
Thank you for your support & good luck
Sarah xx







Blog Guidebook: Round One - Vote Now (Elimination Round):
Vote now for your Favorite Blog of 2011 Only the blogs with the MOST votes will go on to the next round. This poll is the main elimination round...

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Blog Guidebook: Round One - Vote Now (Elimination Round)

Good Morning all & what lovely news this morning I have been nominated for The Blog Guidebooks 2011 Top Blog how, exicting is that. To stay in round one however I need your votes so if you love my blog then please follow the link to vote to keep me in. I really appreciate your support.

Blog Guidebook: Round One - Vote Now (Elimination Round): Vote now for your Favorite Blog of 2011 Only the blogs with the MOST votes will go on to the next round. This poll is the main elimin...

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Create A Magical Christmas

Well with less than six weeks (yes you heard me right 6 weeks) until Christmas I thought it was about time I pulled my act together with a special series of creative ideas on our build up to the festivities. So I will be trauling the web & various shops to bring you inspiration & do-it-yourself ideas. So from baking to making with your own Christmas decorations & ideas for table settings every Monday will now be a 'Make it Monday' with this new series Create A Magical Christmas.


 But dont you worry Jo's Fabulous Finds will be back every Monday in the New Year with more Fab Finds for you. If you cant wait that long then pop on over to Jo's blogpage www.houseoffabulousfinds.blogspot.com/ & keep updated with her there xxx

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Alive With The Taste Of Africa

 This week I have been talking a lot once again about my love of eastern influences with a spotlight on oriental interiors. Today I thought I would post some gorgeous African themed spaces. The most popular exotic style in interiors is African style. Warm neutral walls are themed with accents in rich & bright colours, oranges, reds, yellows & chocolate tones. Natural materials like woods, stones & ceramics are a big focus. I love the deep dark woods like mango used in African themed designs. There is a huge influence of nature with fur of wild animals, such as zebra or cheetah or fake imitations anyway. Embroidered figures of giraffes and tigers are also popular. Its a very beautiful style, the delicious colours & animal prints are a very inviting theme.






Below are some gorgeous finds from.khayacollection. a
 beautiful zebra print rug & Kumba cloth a traditional Southern African tribal fabric. Woven from the natural Kumba reed.




Thanks for popping in I am off to rest my tird legs now as I did a 7 mile race today, its my half way marker for the half marathan I am doing in March. My legs are a little so a little resting is needed. I will keep you updated on the boutique, many apologies for the delay it was meant to go live whilst I was away so very disapointed to come home to difficulties, but bare with me.


But on good news the lovely Sarah over on one of my favourite blogs

moderncountrystyle.blogspot.com/  is hosting a give awayfor me for one of my boutique items so best you jump on over & check it out. A big thank you to Sarah for hosting.

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Friends Feature Friday

A big warm welcome today Kirsty from 4theloveofwood who kindly joins us here for her monthly guest post ......

Thank you again to Sarah here at Finishing Touches for welcoming me with another one of my beloved furniture transformations.

This time around I didn’t paint or build anything, but I did work on this on and off for 3 months.

I found this little chest at a second hand store here in the Vancouver area.

They wanted too much for it but I just couldn’t leave it behind.

Saving pieces like this is what I love to do and do best.

It was covered in some ugly reddy brown paint but I could see some interesting detailing underneath.

It wasn’t an antique piece as it had 2 small MDF panels in the back.

The rest of it was made of a very light weight balsa type wood,

so light I could lift the entire cabinet with one hand.

Acetone lifted the first layer easily but also showed several more layers hiding underneath.

I couldn’t even think about sanding because all the pretty detailing was pressed into the wood

and I wasn’t willing to damage or lose any of it.

The process of removing all this built up paint

took time (the entire spring),

great patience, (walking away several times)

and 4 cans of stripping chemicals (approx. $50)

But then something started to happen …

this is what I was uncovering

White & Gold & Green & Wood

It has been suggested that the green is sizing and the gold is leaf,

and it seems the white was a base coat.

In any event it was looking more amazing each time I finished a section.

I added 4 true vintage glass knobs, something my mother has been

holding onto for many years.

The mirror was purchased for a client,

but as luck would have it she never showed up to purchase it.

So the pair are staying together.

Because of my love for this piece,

because of the cost of this piece,

because of the labour I poured into this piece,

SHE'S STAYING WITH US.

For more furniture transformations feel free to pop in

<a href="http://4theloveofwood.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i607.photobucket.com/albums/tt160/driftwoodesign/Button.jpg" height="125"width="125"/></a>

Till next time …

Thank you so much Kirsty for another fabulous post. Please check out Kirstys page it is a magpies nest of wonderful before & after makeover's & she also has a tips section for all us beginners

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