Christmas Crafting

 

In the past few months my private practice has taken up more of my time and I worked far into December. It meant not having so much Christmas crafting time, but we did manage to sneak in some fun before the big day. 

At the top - our Christmas cards. These were printed with acrylic paint onto white cardboard. We used a round pencil eraser to make the red dots; an edge of corrugated cardboard to print the stars; and, a spaceship sponge - a modern take on a starry theme. 

This was our version of gingerbread houses - tennis biscuit houses :). They were pretty easy to put together. You need tennis biscuits, lots of icing and some sweeties to decorate. Next year, maybe I'll have a go at making actual gingerbread.

Homemade Christmas gift tags made by Big One. Every gift had a personalised tag.

Homemade wrapping paper by Big One.

This year Little One made this awesome handprint tree at School - all the children made one and it served as a forest - the backdrop in their small Christmas production. I decided to turn it into a ten day countdown tree to Christmas. Each day we decorated the tree with a sparkly pom pom and on Christmas day we added a star to the top. 

And lastly...a Christmas Elf made from a Lipton Tea Box. We spent the afternoon creating with some friends - it's become a lovely Christmas tradition. The idea was to create gift boxes from the tea boxes and this was Big One's creation. 

I hope you enjoyed these. See you back here in 2013! 

Christmas Moments

  Wishing all my readers a truly blessed and beautiful festive season. Isn't Christ's birthday such a special time? It truly is my favourite time of the year - hot weather and all.

Christmas came with a wag and a woof! Surely the highlight of this December was introducing a Jack Russell puppy to our family.

 Don't you love the second little puppy - he's as cute as the real one don't you think?

It's so much fun receiving a parcel in the post, but extra special at Christmas time. A beautifully packaged parcel arrived all the way from Indiana - Thank You so much Katherine! Our friendship is a true testimony to the wonderfulness of blogging :). I also got to taste Peeps for the first time - oooh they are yummy.

I promised to post some more "Teddy on the Shelf" photos on Facebook and I didn't post any - my apologies. To make up for it, I'm sharing some more here with you.

You may recall in the last post that Little One wasn't too fond of our mischievous teddy Nicholas. That changed a bit when he came bearing some gifts.

Sometimes he just sat around.  

 

Other times he was quite busy being carried around. He even went on a outing with us. He went missing for a few days and we thought that he may have got lost, but, thankfully, he had just found his way into the washing basket :).

Drinking Little One's favourite juice. 

His favourite book "the three bears" ...who would have thought ;).  

Next year I'm sure the children will be very excited when he comes out of the Christmas box - it was so much fun starting this new tradition. 

It also really made me smile to find these. 

Spontaneous Christmassy play. 

Top pic: Big One

Bottom pic: Little One 

When I asked Little One why the blue gift was on top of the tree and not next to it, he told me that "Mr Bean" put it there. Gotta love how they think.

On Christmas Eve we got SPARKLY. One of Little One's favourite things about this Christmas I think.  

And we played with gifts of course. Big One's best gift this year -the Perplexus Maze Puzzle .

He removed the gift wrap and started playing with it while it was still in it's box - Addictive! 

Next post will be the little bit of crafting we got up to. This season always goes by too quickly for me. 

Till next time...

Teddy on the Shelf

Have you heard about or seen the elf on the shelf  ideas all over the web? I saw the little elf for the first time last year and think it's a really sweet idea - having a mysterious little elf arrive in your home and him getting up to all sorts of antics while the children are asleep. And he is really cute.

Anyway, we had an old Santa toy that broke last year - you know, those NOISY, dancing Santa dolls - I'm thinking that maybe it was broken on purpose by the Dad person - hehehe. Well, I couldn't let a good Santa suit be thrown away, so I found myself dressing up one of Little One's teddies in it. That's when the idea of a Teddy on the Shelf came to mind - our cute substitute. 

 

 

Our little teddy was named "Nicholas" by Big One and has been getting up to all sorts of mischief. Little One has had me giggling - he has really not been impressed with this teddy. He has told me that he will "kick him out of the house" (harsh words from a four year old!) and I have found Nicholas "locked up" in a cardboard box - apparently this was him in jail. It appears that there are some serious consequences for getting up to mischief in our house :). 

 
To see lots of elf on the shelf ideas and fun...here are a few links:

lilsugar

Complicated Mama

SheKnows Parenting 

Till next time. 

Christmas Treasure Hunt

Usually in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I have a few small surprises for the children. Last year one of them was a Christmas Treasure Hunt to look for some small gifts in the garden. I ran out of time to write about it, so I thought to share it with you this year.

I found these wonderful Christmas cones over at Mr Printables and used them to create a fun and fairly simple treasure hunt. Little One was only three and a bit at the time, so it had to be easy to follow. The kiddos loved it.

First up was a boy cone, who had a note saying:
Find a tree
Find a tree
Hee hee hee

Next up, a Christmas tree, with a note saying:
Where can Rudolf be?

Rudolf has a note too:
The Easter Bunny is here!
Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear

I decided to call the snow bunny, the Easter bunny, to get a few smiles. His note said:
I love Christmas, 
I can't help myself.
Such yummy treats.
Now can you find an elf? 

The elf's note says:
Santa's got a surprise for you!
Just find him. 
That's all you need to do.

Santa has the gifts and a note saying:
Ho Ho Ho
Way to go! 

This was so easy to put together. If you click on the Mr Printable's link above, it takes you to the post where you can download and print out these cuties. Simply cut them out and stick them together. If you don't know the Mr Printables website, well then, consider this information a small Christmas gift from me to you ;). It is a wonderful site, full of incredible freebies to print out. Have fun!

What Christmas surprises do you get up to during the festive season?

Christmas Crafts @ Love and Lollipops

I love this time of the year, don't you? So on the eve of December 1st (YAY!), I thought I'd dig into the archives and share these with you. Just to get you in the mood ;).

Milk Bottle Santas

Imagine a Santa Ten Pin bowling game with these...

Christmas Cards

It sure is special receiving a homemade Christmas Card. I didn't last year, but I really do want to make some this year.

Bottle Top Snowmen 

Have some fun making bottle top snow people.

Teddy Bear Ornament

Make a teddy bear ornament from two pipe cleaners. I have included a nice tutorial in the post. 

Coffee Filter Christmas Trees

Pretty for some Christmas art work or cards. 

Christmas Tree (Tennis) Biscuits

Easy to make and yummy to eat...mmm

Sock Snowmen

These make for sweet little gifts that the children can make for their friends.

Matchbox Advent Calender

You have one night left to make this :)

A Christmas Sensory Box 

A sensory box filled with Christmassy goodness. 

Christmas Eye-Spy Bottle

I never posted about the bottle seen here, but if you go to the link, I share how I made another Eye-Spy Bottle. This is great fun for the really little ones.

Little Town of Bethlehem Craft (from toilet rolls!)

My favourite Christmas craft of all...this precious little town of Bethlehem. I love how this one turned out...who would have thought that toilet rolls could be turned into something so special?

Have fun preparing for the BIG DAY, but remember it's a season...Enjoy it all :)

Bottle Top Turkey

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

...to all my friends and family in the US :)

Cloud Dough

I've seen around the net that this is called "Cloud Dough", but I actually think that this is closer to the real store-bought Moon Sand than the recipe I shared here.  Either way, you can't go wrong. It's a whole lot of fun.

This "dough" isn't really doughy at all. It's fluffy and light and mold-able. Little One enjoys playing with it with spoons and small containers. It does make quite a mess, so I prefer that we only play with this outdoors.

So the recipe is simple:

8 cups of flour

1 cup of oil (baby oil or vegetable oil)
Please note: Baby oil shouldn't be eaten, so supervise if you use the baby oil option :)

Mix it all up and P L A Y !

I cannot recall where I saw this super recipe for the first time, but there's a nice post with some extra links to what other Mommy's have done with Cloud Dough at Learn with Play at home.com.

Till next time...

Lego catalogue ideas {and a Giveaway winner}

Lego catalogues... they are loved in my home. They are read and re-read until they completely fall apart, but you dare not throw them away.

Big One has always loved lego.  Little One has been playing with the bigger lego blocks since he was very young, but it was about a month before his fourth birthday that the "mini lego switch" went on in his brain. He now plays with the mini-figurines day in and day out. I have felt quite sorry for the cars and construction vehicles that have been so loved up until now. It reminds me to enjoy every stage and phase - it doesn't last forever.

So seeing all these poor falling apart lego catalogues, I decided to give myself a whole lot of work and make longer lasting lego books. To make, I used nice A4 sized coloured cardboard and Flip Files. I cut down the double lego pages and pasted it onto the card and popped it into the book. Now hopefully these special catalogues can last for a bit longer.

After I had made these, I realised the wonderful opportunity that this book provides for language enrichment. Any lego-loving child, who struggles with language, would enjoy looking at these action-packed pages, and it then provides a nice tool for speech therapists to use to engage a child and talk about the picture. You can also use the different scenes to "find things" on the pages. 

And one more idea... I have also converted some of the pictures into puzzles. 

I wonder what else I could do with a lego catalogue?

One last exciting thing before I leave you - I recently had a giveaway and I do have a winner for you! Thank you to my international readers who try as they might couldn't access the Little People's Products Facebook page. I gave you the extra entry for your effort. And the winner...Briana Richardson :). Congrats Briana...I'll be in touch with you shortly. 

Till next time...have fun.