These look very much like they were made by a child, don't they? Slightly rubbish. Or maybe an adult and child together. Well actually they are my own work (thank you).
I was pushed for time to get them made so that I could give them to people this week, so decided to do the baking bit while Matthew was in nursery. I thought he could do the sprinkles when he got home - but he was too tired to even do that. He was too tired to even eat one. Sigh.
I'm going to tell everyone that he helped anyway. Otherwise WHAT IS THE POINT?
Things are getting seriously Christmassy at The Little House in the Park.
Matthew was really taken by the willow Christmas trees so we made one of those first. Most of the hard work (cutting and bending into shape) had been done for us, so all we had to do was assemble all the bits, tape them together and then decorate with tinsel, bows, ribbon and various baubles and other dangly things.
Next we made the gnome. Well - I made the gnome. Matthew mostly messed around with the jar of beads and kept trying to swipe the needles off me. It's just a piece of felt cut into shape, sewn up along the neck and hat, and stuffed with wool.
You can't really see just how very funky the angel is in this pic. She has a blue face, green arms, a pink body, purple wings and red tinsel hair. All chosen by Matthew. The skirt is a doily (obviously). We're getting our tree today and she might just have to take pride of place.
We're meeting up with a load of friends and their families on Sunday for our annual Christmas get together. There will be something like 18 children - mostly smallish - running amok in a room above a pub in Bristol. All afternoon.
I've volunteered to bring some crafty things to keep them entertained, so have been racking my brains to come up with non-messy projects that don't involve glue or paint. Here they are:
Glittery pine cones - we collected loads a couple of weeks ago and put them in the airing cupboard to dry/open out. I've bought a big bag of tinsel pipe cleaners (who knew these even existed? My life has been transformed), which can be wound round to make tree decorations. Easy.
Pomanders - one for the older kids I think - when I made mine I found the cloves quite hard to push in.
2D beady baubles - I've cut out a load of circles from silver card, punched holes in them, and threaded them with silver elastic. The kids can go wild decorating them with self-adhesive jewel beads and various other stickers that I've dug out.
3D Christmas trees - I've adapted this from various versions I found online. You cut out two identical Christmas tree shapes from green card and then cut slits in the middle (from bottom to middle on one and from top to middle on the other). Then you put stickers all over both sides - I've gone for a dotty/bauble theme here - and slot them together.
I'm also bringing a pack of paper chains, and a load of black card with metallic crayons (I don't know why that feels Christmassy. It just does).
Wish me luck...
Ta-dah! Homemade Christmas cards this year. (I am turning into Kirsty Allsopp.)
I wanted to try and think of something easy that Matthew and I could make together. We bought a big sheet of dark green card and hunted out some biscuit cutters to print with. First we used a big snowflake with white paint (Matthew did all of the printing for that one), and then when that was dry we used a small Christmas tree with green paint (he lost interest with that one... plus maybe I was being a bit too controlling. Ahem).
I cut the sheet into squares and glued it onto white card. They're not quite how I pictured them, but not a bad joint effort. Who knows what added sophistication next year might bring?
This week the Holburne Museum is organising a Lantern Procession to mark the beginning of the Bath Christmas Market. We are very excited. Especially as we now have our very own homemade lantern, which we made at The Little House in the Park last week.
We started off by threading willow sticks through a cardboard base with holes round the edge, bending the ends of the sticks underneath the card and taping them down. Then we taped another piece of card over the bottom (to cover all the ends) and taped around the sticks near the top (to stop them waving about and poking small children's eyes out).
Then came the really fun part - gluing white tissue paper around the sticks (two layers), covering that with lots more glue, and decorating it with bits of coloured tissue paper and glitter. A big old sticky mess.
We've put a string of LED lights in our lantern (you have to make a hole to get them in) and are now ready for the procession (or recession, as Matthew calls it).
Last week's session at The Little House in the Park was all about hibernation and hunkering down for the winter.
The spider's web is made from wooden skewers stuck into a conker, then wound round with wool of different colours. It was very therapeutic to make (I was deliberately blocking out Matthew unravelling all the other balls of wool in my peripheral vision). The spider is just four short black pipe cleaners twisted round in the middle, with its legs pushed into the wool.
The hedgehog is made out of clay, and his little den is a cardboard box painted with shiny autumn colours and then stuffed with kapok and straw. We finished it off by gluing leaves on top. Matthew always likes it when the clay makes an appearance - I think he'd be quite happy just spending the whole session making clay hair with the garlic crusher.
I fancy hunkering down for the winter. Wonder if the boy would be OK if I just crawled under the duvet for a few months?
Hooray! Got all my pendants ready for display today, in time for the Christmas craft fairs. We're going to be at the Friends Meeting House - right next to Bath Christmas Market - on Sat 24 Nov, Sat 1 Dec and Sat 8 Dec. Hopefully some of the coachloads of people piling into Bath on those days will pile over our way.
There are about another dozen of these pendants, and they are all different - no two the same. Quite proud of that.
A few paintings from The Little House in the Park using autumnal colours. We were supposed to be doing leaf prints, but Matthew was in the mood for swirls and handprints so we went with that. I really like the swirly ones - they look like fireworks.
Today's adventures at The Little House in the Park were of the spooky kind, in anticipation of Halloween next week.
The spider is made from pipe cleaners and furry fabric. You twist four pipe cleaners in the middle, wrap a strip of fur around, then use a long piece of cotton to wind all round the body and in between the legs to keep everything in place. Then you use a darning needle to thread elastic through the top layer of fur, and finish off with googley eyes.
The bat is cut out of black card, with some strips of netting stapled on top. Again we used a darning needle to thread the elastic through. You can't see in this picture, but the end of the elastic is tied to a stick so you can bounce and fly the bat around. Cool.
The pumpkin is just bits of torn up orange tissue paper glued onto gold card. We sprinkled some green glitter on top too so it catches the light. We were supposed to make it into a mask but didn't quite get round to that (someone lost interest and started running amok with all the stuffed toys. It wasn't me).
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