Crochet stars

I have this idea in my head of having beautiful handmade Christmas decorations for the tree this year. Or cute gift tags that include a little crochet star.

I don't know if it will happen but these stars come together in a tiny chunk of time (maybe 10 minutes). They are handy to have for car trips and filling a little bit of time while dinner is cooking at night. I also took them when I visited with my parents recently. We sat and chatted and I crocheted.

I would love to turn them into a garland. They might just end up not finished off properly and tied to the tree :-)

If you want to make some the pattern is here.

Felt Wreath for Christmas

I have been determined to not let Christmas sneak up on me this year. I know. It shouts it's coming from around September when the decorations start showing up in the shops. My plan has been to start making, buying and preparing for Christmas early this year. Well, earlier.

This wreath was super easy to make. I haven't decided what to embellish it with though, if anything. I really like it like this actually. I followed the tutorial here.

In a fit of decluttering at the start of the year I went through our Christmas decorations and donated a lot of the ones we had because I didn't like them much and was determined to make some. Christmas is almost upon us and I haven't made any. Looks like things will have to get busy in our house in the next month!

Happy Christmas

I love a flash mob video. This one is fantastic. Enjoy.

Have a fantastic Christmas. Stay safe and enjoy your time with family and friends. And remember the greatest gift ever given, the Rescuer who came as a baby and saves us from our sins, if we will just ask.

If you go into the lounge room today...

We gained a new family member at Christmas. He is huge.

 

Do you know the kids show The secret world of Benjamin Bear? The kids love it and I think its fun too. I kind of think this is what our new friend is like. He secretly comes to life when we aren't around. He hasn't really got a name so far. The kids have come up with a few but nothing seems to fit. We call him 'the big bear' or 'Mr Fluffypants'. Not sure how that one came about.

 

Even the size he is, he still ends up in some odd places and positions. He was lying on the couch one day with his paws under his head and his legs crossed. He was taking a nap I suppose.

 

The kids like to wrestle with him because he is such a big bear. Although if Ellamay is to be believed she didn't wrestle with Bear, "He wrestled with me". :-)

 

He has also become a favourite place to sit and watch television.

One night I had prepared the couch for Amelia so we could do her physio before bed. When I left the room, she was lying on top of the pillows, all sleepy and snuggled up. When I came back, I saw this.

 

I wasn't sure how he would fit into our little house when he first arrived... but he has certainly made himself at home :-)

Christmas

I don't remember ever seeing the Charlie Brown Christmas. I have seen it mentioned quite a few places lately and after finding this on youtube, I thought I would share it. What Christmas is all about.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Santa Claus is coming to town

Joy to the world

Carol of the Bells

In the bleak midwinter

Little Drummer Boy

Christmas is coming

Christmas is almost here and I am not ready for it at all. How about you? I had planned to be so organised this year and make so many things and be quite festive but it hasn't happened. I have been pinning things on my Christmas board on Pintrest and have been so inspired to make all matter of delightful things, but not this year.

Remember in my last post when I said that Amelia had been to hospital for the day, in the ambulance? Well, the day after that post, Amelia ended up in hospital. She was in hospital, which meant I was in too. The tummy bug got the better of her. Thankfully, she responded well to the treatments and we came home 3 days later. Since then, the whole family has gotten sick, including me.

So anyway, I am writing this post as a sign off, of sorts. I give up, I give in, I surrender. I haven't been keeping up with the blogging so I am taking the next month off. The run of illnesses we have had in the house has really made everything harder to do. It is summer holidays here starting Friday, so it is time for a break anyway. The kids will be home for 5-6 weeks. I plan to rest up, relax and hang out with the kids. I hope we can do some making together and have fun.

I hope to be back to regular (ha!) blogging at the end of January. I need to spend some time going through the mid-craft list and let go of some projects that are just never going to get done. And I need to re-organise my 'to-do' list into what is achieveable and what is not. And then, I need to set myself some goals (New Years Resolutions?) to work out how to make time for my making. I need a creative outlet to keep sane and I have been getting increasingly frustrated that I am not doing more of what I love.

How's that for a post? A bit deep and meaningful? Well, whatever. Had to be said.

I am going to post a few of my favourite random Christmas videos over the next few days in the lead up to Christmas. I am loving youtube for getting festive while we have been housebound.

Thanks for reading along this year and I will see you in 2012!

Christmassy stuff

Hi. Remember me? I am the one that pops in from time to time. *Sigh*. I have to say, we have had a run of illness lately. For the last few months, it seems to have been one thing or another. The latest hit - a tummy bug that has floored us. One that had Amelia end up in the back of an ambulance spending the day in the emergency room. Fortunately, we didn't have to stay in and we hope and pray the problem will not happened again.

I thought since I haven't really had the time (or energy) to be blogging for a while, perhaps I should drop by and just give you a few Christmas ideas from the archives. And then maybe one day, I'll actually be back - with actual projects that I am in the middle of. :-)

Paper Reindeer.

Paper star Christmas Trees.

Rolled felt candles.

Decorated tree with recycled card circle garland.

See you another day.

Christmas and New Year

Hi. I'm back. Maybe. If I can get back onto the computer to post stuff and what not. It has been every kind of busy here. How about you? Our Christmas week involved lots of last minute organising, making and festivities. We live in a small country town so we get a visit from Santa just before Christmas on the back of the fire truck. The kids love it. He brings a bag of lollies for everyone which is very exciting. Usually it's just our kids at our end of the street but this time some other kids joined our girls waiting for Santa.

Christmas morning was delightful. We managed to stay in bed til 9am! What a great sleep in! When the kids dragged us out of bed they had already polished off the orange tic tacs they got in their Christmas stockings and had played with all the bits and pieces from Santa. We opened all the presents from us, saving the biggest for last. A new trampoline! After breakie, the kids went out and helped Tim put it together. I wish I had have taken pictures because it was cute funny. We spent Christmas eve with Tim's family and Christmas lunch with my family. 

Boxing Day was pretty warm here and we were all pretty worn out from all the Christmas fun. The kids were keen to try out their new swimmers and since we couldn't go to the pool, Tim sprayed them with the hose. Esther and Ellamay kept coming back for more too.

Amelia hated it so she just used her new camera to take pictures of all the fun.

New Years eve was spent with some good friends of ours from Queensland. It's probably been about 12 months since we saw them last so it was great to catch up. We had traditional bacon and eggs for breakie on New Years day and fluffed around for the day. Our friends went home after lunch and we all laid down for a sleep in the afternoon (YEAH!). That night, we had a lovely night out at the in-laws for a BBQ, celebrating my sister-in-laws birthday.

In all a very full week (and a bit) worth of activities and festivities. Amelia has been struggling a bit with her tummy again so that added a bit of stress to our time but hopefully we can get that sorted out again and things can be a bit settled for a time (I live in hope anyway).

That about covers it really. Posting will probably be a bit half hearted for another few weeks while the kids are still on school holidays. I have so many ideas for the Crisis this year. I hope I can make some of them happen. See you soon.

Happy Christmas

Nativity

This is our new nativity set. I love it. It is tough so the kids can play with it.

And they have been playing with it lots. It hasn't spent much time on display because its been on the coffee table getting played with. The girls have been telling the story of the first Christmas over and over using this.

I am going to have a break from the Crisis for a bit over the holidays. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and remember why we celebrate this special time.

'And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not:

'Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy

which will be to all people,

Unto you is born this day

a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.'

Luke 2:11

Christmas tree treat cups

Spoiler alert: Any family members reading this need to stop reading now and come back after Christmas. Or act surprised when you get one of these from the kids on Christmas. Okay? Good.

Our treat cups are done for this year. What a relief! Almost last minute. Using similar ideas to our previous years treat cups, we used a paper cup as the base. Esther decided we needed to make Christmas trees. I was trying to work out how I could get the right shape for one when I saw a party hat the girls had. I just flattened it out and traced around it onto some sheets of green card.

Party hats have a little flap that fits into the slit to make them stay together. Perfect. It made rolling them into their cone shapes so much easier. The girls all helped painting the paper cups brown for a tree trunk and then decorated the cone trees.

Of course, the part where we filled them with lollies... well... that takes a long time when little girls have to taste test them :-)

We attached the cone to the cup with double sided tape.

The star on top is made by twisting a glittery pipe cleaner around a star cookie cutter.

The finished product. We made 14 of them. And I hope by the time we give them to all the family, there is still 14. They are full of lollies remember! Mmm... lollies.

It has been a busy week this week. Christmas break ups, shopping and visits to the big building have really taken their toll on everyone. Hopefully, after a good night's sleep tonight, we will all wake up ready for the festivities over the weekend. In fact, I am quite sure the kids will be up at some ridiculous hour in the morning just because it's Christmas eve. They have been excited today because its Christmas eve, eve. Anyway, I have got another one (or maybe two) posts to squeeze in before Christmas so I will see you tomorrow.

Cardboard gingerbread houses

Last Christmas, I saw lots of ideas of making glittery houses for Christmas decorations. Small round cardboard tube houses, paper cup houses, grand cottages cut from paper and card. I really liked the ones that had lots of windows and a little LED candle inside. Pretty. This is what I came up with for us to make. We made some last year and we have finished some more for this year.

Cardboard gingerbread houses. I used the dimensions for the fabric dolls house and cut the pieces out of scrap photo mat board. It's great for this project because it is so sturdy.

The pieces are all stuck together with tape. I made a window and opening door at the front. The back panel, was cut 1/3 of the way across. Does that make sense? So it has one wide door and a small door. Then the back wall opens out so the inside can be played with too.

The girls painted them brown (not a very good gingerbread colour - but that is all I had) and then once they were dry they decorated them with foam stickers.

And these are the little gingerbread men I made (in the girls favourite colours) to live inside. I made them last year too. I traced around a cookie cutter and decreased the size until it was the right size for the houses. I used 2 layers or felt for these to give them a bit of thickness. The kids are having great fun playing with these. They line all the houses up so they can be neighbours and go over to each others houses for tea. It's very funny.

Sleeps til Christmas... 2!!!

Our decorated tree

I can't believe Christmas is only days away. I had a list of things to do and I have gradually been deleting things from that list that I have no hope in getting done. Oh well. It was only extra stuff anyway. Not going to lose sleep over it. Anyway, I thought I would share our tree. The kids decorated it. I am cool with that. I use to get stressed about these things but I can deal with a kid decorated tree for a few years. They won't be kids forever. I love to see what they make. They are starting to get more of their own ideas about how to do things so I think next year will be interesting to see how they do it then.

Our tree is a mixture of store bought decorations that have been strong enough to stand up to the kids 'attention' over the years and homemade decorations. Last year and this year I have bought packets of the cheap baubles from the Reject Shop and gave the girls some permanent markers and glitter glue and told them to decorate. They love it.

We have lots of white card shapes covered in pens and glitter glue. And a really long white and yellow paper chain stuck together with cheap Christmas sticky tape (also from the Reject Shop).

This year, my contribution was a recycled Christmas card circle garland. Seems everyone in blogosphere is making circle garlands and I thought it would be a great way to use up a pile of old cards.

Lastly, presents do not live under our tree. I remember what we use to get up to as kids when we were little and I am not having that! The presents come out Christmas morning when everyone (Mummy and Daddy) is awake enough to care about opening presents. The kids have their Christmas stockings to entertain them until it's present time.

Counting down the sleeps now. :-)

Paper Reindeers

When I first saw these I had high hopes of having a whole herd of them under our tree. But then I started cutting them out! Those antlers made me crazy. I even cut off some of it off to make it easier to cut out. Anyway, the kids did these when Amelia was on the pump one night. Esther and Ellamay are probably almost old enough to cut these out by themselves, but I did it this time so it was a quick craft. I love those googly eyes. I don't why we haven't used them before now. I will be stocking up on them after Christmas because they are a cool thing to have in our craft supplies. Go over here to find the printable reindeer craft.

Rolled felt candles

The kids put these candles together while Amelia was on the pump the other night. They turned out really well. It's a great Christmas craft but really why not do it for a birthday too? That would be fun.

Find the instructions for this craft here. We just used double sided tape to stick them together. And we didn't put the loop on ours to hang them obviously. Esther started making a candle holder for hers but was working on it at bed time so it didn't get finished. Try these candles out. There are lots of possibilities with this craft.

 :-)

I hope to get lots of posts up in the next couple of days before Christmas. Hope your last preparations for Christmas are going well.