Christmas is a wonderful time for gift giving, sharing, togetherness and… family. Lots of family. For days. Days and days with your family…

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore my family, and we (touch wood, for God’s sake don’t jinx it) get on pretty well at these occasions. But while most people adore your nearest and dearest in small doses, unnaturally long, alcohol-fuelled sessions can lead to some pretty big blow ups!

So for those of you who never again want to hear the dreaded words: “Christmas is ruined!” here’s a little how-to guide for surviving Christmas with your family.

Arrive with a good attitude

If you don’t want to be there, your family will pick up on it faster than a sniffer dog at an airport. If you walk in with a big grin on your face and act like there’s no place in the world you’d rather be, it will start things off on the right foot for everyone.

Be really helpful

Offer to help the minute you arrive, take on jobs you’re given and be careful not to cross over from helpful into takeover territory. The last thing you want to do is upset your family by accidentally instigating a kitchen coup.

Don’t bitch about people who aren’t there

Unless you’re sure they won’t find out.

Relinquish control of the remote

Did you know that a made up statistic tells us that 90% of Christmas blow ups happen because nobody can agree what to put on TV? If there’s some Christmas telly you can’t bear to miss, set it on record at home and adopt an aura of apathy over the family entertainment.

Avoid conversations about politics

When you throw a group of people together who a.) don’t usually spend a lot of time together and b.) come from varying generations and social backgrounds, you’re going to get fireworks if you talk about anything vaguely political. Political conversations can arise unexpectedly from seemingly innocent and unrelated topics! Chatting TV can turn nuclear in a matter of seconds and without warning.

If you do accidentally find that politics comes up, and other people’s opinions are making your blood boil, take that opportunity to go out for a breath of fresh air, or run and help out in the kitchen. While I would usually advocate standing up for your beliefs, you’re not going to change any views with a Christmas row and you only have to tolerate them for a short amount of time, no matter how abhorrent you find them. It’s just not worth the drama.

Be mega enthusiastic about your presents

Hate the tie your auntie gave you? Can’t wait to regift that Miley Cyrus CD your grandparents got you because that’s what the young people like? Save it. The only appropriate reaction to getting a gift from your family is sheer unbridled joy, even if your fake smile comes off a bit Wednesday Addams.

Have an exit strategy

We all have our limits. Make sure that someone who can drive you home stays sober and that, if you can, you have an exit strategy lest the whole situation become unbearable.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Ho ho ho. There’s certainly a chill in the air and Christmas is right around the corner. For festive parties and weddings, red and green don’t have to be the be all and end all of holiday decorations. For my fellow glitterbugs, I’ve put together some sparkly Christmas craft tutorials. These are easy, quick, fun and are perfect for both parties and weddings. Enjoy!

For bunting, you will need:

♥ Scissors
♥ A pen
♥ Sparkly card (you can buy this from Hobbycraft)
♥ Thin, plain ribbon
♥ A hole punch
♥ A spare piece of cardboard

Step one

Make a heart-shaped template out of the spare card.

Step two

Turn the glittery card upside down and draw carefully around the template on the back of the glittery card.

Step three

Cut carefully around where you’ve drawn so that you’re left with a heart shape. Save the off cuts for later (you’ll see why).

Step four

Repeat as many times as necessary depending on the desired length (or lengths) of bunting.

Step five

Punch holes in the corners of your heart shapes and lay them out in the order you’d like to string them together.

Step six

Cut a length of ribbon (make sure you cut more than you need, you can always trim later) and thread through the holes making sure you go round the back, rather than the front of the sparkly card.

Step seven

Sit back and enjoy your sparkly bunting before using the off cuts for the next project below!

For drink stirrers, you will need

♥ Stick glue
♥ Scissors
♥ Spare card
♥ Off cuts of glittery card
♥ Bamboo skewers

Step one

Cut any necessary templates, such as heart or star shapes. Make sure you make them in even numbers as they will need to be glued together. For flags and crowns, cut strips.

Step two

For flags, cover the back of a strip of sparkly card in glue, wrap around the top of the bamboo skewer, press firmly together and cut a triangle shape out of it. For crowns, cover the back of a strip of card in glue, fold it in half and cut triangles to form a three-pronged crown shape. Then insert the bamboo skewer in the middle of the shape and firmly secure. For heart shapes, cover the backs of two shapes in glue and firmly press them around the top of the bamboo skewer so that they match up.

Step three

Make some fabulous cocktails, sit back and stir. Merry Christmas!

I’ve chosen this week to share a recipe that’s very close to my heart. Monday would have been my dad’s 60th birthday, and if he were here he would be dropping big hints about his cake. There’s only one recipe we use in our family every birthday because it’s completely foolproof – and absolutely delicious. It features heavily in the fondest memories I have of my parents working as a team – my mum baking the delicious cake (and me standing on a chair to help press the buttons on the mixer) and then my dad decorating it with his artistic eye. Every year it was something different, a clock, a lion, even a helicopter. It was the biggest treat to see how these masterpieces worked out (and an even bigger treat to eat them afterwards).

So this little tutorial is in his memory – I hope some other family adopts this cake as their go-to recipe and makes it a part of the fabric of their family life too. It was originally from a 1990s Sainsbury’s baking book, but has been adapted many times and substituted to perfection by my mum.

Our family celebration chocolate buttercream sponge cake (serves 8 – 10)

For the main cake, you will need

♥ 175g (6oz) salted butter, softened (salted butter, for the cake and the icing, is crucial. It gives it that lovely balance of flavour without being sickly).
♥ 175g (6oz) soft brown sugar (you can use ordinary caster sugar but I promise it comes out much nicer with brown sugar)
♥ 3 eggs, beaten
♥ 150g (5oz) self-raising flour
♥  25g (1oz) Green & Black’s cocoa powder
♥ 1 tablespoon medium fat milk
♥ 3 drops vanilla flavouring
♥ A tiny pinch of salt

For the icing, you will need

♥ 125g (4oz) salted butter
♥ 2 tablespoons Green & Black’s cocoa powder
♥ 250g (8oz) icing sugar
♥ 1 1/2 tablespoons boiling water
♥ 4 drops vanilla flavouring
♥ Any decorations you like – go nuts (I always do)!

Equipment

Mixing bowls
A seive
An electric mixer, stand and hand mixers are both fine
Scales
Two 18cm / 7inch cake sandwich tins
A palette knife (for levelling cake mixture and icing the cake)

Step one

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 375°F / gas mark 5

Step two

Measure your ingredients into bowls, beat the eggs and set aside

Step three

Cream the butter and the brown sugar together until the mixture is creamy and fluffy in consistency and caramel coloured.

Step four

Add the beaten eggs a little at a time and mix well in between each small addition.

Step five

In a separate bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder and pinch of salt together.

Step six

Fold half of the flour and cocoa powder mixture into the mixture bowl containing the eggs, sugar and butter. Add in the milk and then fold in the rest of the flour and cocoa powder with the vanilla flavouring. Mix thoroughly. Grease two 18cm / 7 inch sandwich tins with butter.

Step seven

Divide the mixture between the two tins, making sure to keep the mixture level.

Step eight

Bake in the pre-heated oven for twenty minutes. By this time the cake should have risen. If you aren’t sure, insert a skewer into the cake and see if it comes out clean.

Step nine

When the cake halves are ready, take them out of the oven, using oven gloves, and leave them in their tins for five minutes before moving them to a cooling rack.

Step ten

While your cake halves are cooling, it’s time to make your buttercream icing. In a cup, mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water and set it aside.

Step eleven

Beat the softened butter until creamy. Slowly add the cocoa mixture and sift in the icing sugar. Beat well and then stir in the vanilla flavouring.

Step twelve

When they are cool to the touch, sandwich the two cake layers together with buttercream icing and cover the two cake halves with the remaining icing. If you’re struggling to get the icing to stick to the cake (without taking part of the cake with you) keep a small mug of lukewarm water next to you and dip your knife in to make it moist as and when you need to.

Then you can get creative and decorate any way you like! Tadah!

Welcome, Darling Lovely readers to the first of what we hope to be many posts on our brand new blog, Darling Lovely Life.

Some of you already know us, we’re the team behind Under the Vintage Veil wedding blog. After two and a half AMAZING years at the helm of Under the Vintage Veil, we made the bold and exciting move of taking all of our wedding content with us and starting a fresh new adventure under a new name.

We love weddings, and we’ll still be covering them, but we both felt we had way too much to show and tell to limit ourselves to one category of this Darling Lovely Life we live! We’ll be writing about love, life, travel, shopping, interiors, weddings and celebrations, hair, beauty, style, baking and crafting, DIY and so much more!

We’ll be starting with one post a day and adding content as the site grows with us. You can read our manifesto and all about us here, but for those of you who haven’t come across us before, here’s who we are (and what we do):

Sara – editor and owner of Darling Lovely Life

Sara is the editor and owner of Darling Lovely Life. When she’s not blogging, she’s busy with freelance PR and journalism work, and her many creative hobbies which include (but are not limited to): photography, singing & songwriting, baking, crafting and knitting, creative writing and looking after her many pets!

John – IT, web and advertising manager

John is our self-billed geek in residence. An IT manager by day, John provides tech and business development support to Darling Lovely Life in his spare time.

How can you get involved?

If you like what you see so far and you want to be involved with Darling Lovely Life, there are several ways to grace our pastel-pretty pages!

The first is to send us a DIY, crafting or baking tutorial. Send your idea over to [email protected] and we’ll send you our guidelines for creating a Darling Lovely Life tutorial.

The second is to send us pretty pictures of your home. If it fits with the blog we’ll either ask you to take more or send one of our lovely partner photographers round to capture the loveliness.

If you know anyone who lives a Darling Lovely Life, doing what they love and being excellent at it, we’d love to interview them. Nominate someone amazing for our “The Darling Lovely Life of” feature, which will start soon.

And finally, if you like any of our features and think you have something fabulous to say that could fit in, we’re always happy to hear your ideas.

We can’t wait to get to know you all and for you to be a part of this new adventure! If you want to contribute, comment or just say hi, please feel free to email [email protected] – follow us on Twitter and Instagram with the username @darlinglovelies, like us us on Facebook and find our Pinterest account here.