Freezing fun: making ice balls, lanterns and tealight holders

The morning after...
Mortals make plans and the gods laugh... Well, that was disappointing! The water in the tins didn't freeze at all, and the rest of it froze patchily, so I've ended up with a ball that looks like a dog's got hold of it, and a rather nice ice wreath...

My previous attempts were more successful. Here's one I made earlier...

Yesterday
Full of cold, I decided to beat the bareness left behind when you take down the Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night (is that January 5th or 6th? Find out here) and decorate the garden overnight just with water.

I filled a random selection of containers grabbed from around the house as the sun started to go down.

Tomorrow morning, see how they all turned out!

Clockwise from top left: a hand cream tin. I'll leave the ice in and pop a tealight on top. A plastic bag inside an empty tin can. Once the water's frozen, I'll pull the bag out, pull it away from the ice and add a tealight. Hopefully there will be ice up the sides and a space in the middle, to make an ice lantern. With the two plastic takeaway containers, I'll twist them to free the ice, then add tealights. And with the yellow and red plastic half-balls, they're filled with water as is the container they're in. When it's all frozen, I'll remove the ball halves, and stick the two ice hemispheres together with water to make an ice ball, and plop some tealights into the dents they leave behind.

How to make sloe gin

Sloes are members of the plum family and grow from October through to November - they are delicious infused in gin, creating a sweet, fruity drink with a bitter edge. Make it now and drink it or give it as a gift at Christmas.

• 200g sloes
• 400ml gin
• 100g granulated sugar

Prick the sloes’ skins. You can do this by piercing each one individually, or just pop them in the freezer for a couple of days.

Push the pierced sloes (frozen or not) into a screw-top bottle (wide-necked is easier, but the bottle you’ve taken the gin from may be handier). Pour in the sugar and add the gin.
Seal tightly, shake to combine and store in a cool, dark place.

Give the bottle a shake every day until all the sugar has dissolved. It’s ready to drink in about three weeks, but the sloe flavour becomes more pronounced the longer you leave it.

Shown up by the snow

I take no credit for this, obviously: the overnight snowfall has done the work, acting as a beautifully neutral background for showing up the colours in my stained-glass panel (bought for me as a present by Mr Made it!)

Snow time!

A snow cat, made from natural materials (snow, torn leaf for the nose, bits of beech nut husk for the eyelashes). Cute or what?