Last minute gifties and Happy New Year

An entirely new year, and like the heroine of Anne of Green Gables said about a new day, 'with no mistakes in it yet'.Maybe, being a whole year, we should say, 'with no disasters in it yet'..... although that may be tempting fate. Anyway, I wish the very Best of Everything to all of you in 2011, and no disasters, please!

I had a nice quiet Christmas season, with all orders picked up well before the 24th (unlike other years) and not even one 'it's an emergency, I must have a purple pie plate to give to my mother for Christmas and I know it's only a week, but surely you can do it.....' customer. It was so calm and civilized around here it almost made me nervous, but then I decided to make a few pieces to give to my daughter's step-daughters. The oldest is studying to be a pastry chef and the other, who is busy sorting out her personality as all teens must, asked for a 'zebra plate'.



Making the zebra plate was harder than I expected. Turned out I had no real idea what zebra strips look like! A quick Google helped out though and here is the result. Not bad, but boy did it take a lot of black.

 The other gift I wanted to make was a series of square plates for serving goodies. Since J. also likes all things oriental, I immediately pictured plates with bamboo designs. Here they are:

Both girls were delighted!