Christmas Crafting.

Hi again everyone! I'm not sure if anyone reads here anymore, and my blogging has become sporadic at best. Life gets crazy, huh? However, I love this little corner of the internet. It has so much of little family's history on it, and I come back here a lot to help jog my memory on things and to show the kids special moments from the past. So, even if it's not as frequent as it used to be, I'm going to keep popping back in and posting when I get the time.

Today, I wanted to share my most recent crafting adventure.

About a week ago, my mum shared an attic24 link on my facebook timeline. It was a picture of this gorgeous wreath...

Isn't it lovely? I replied to my mum that I have followed the Attic24 blog for years, and that I'm sure Lucy had made a whole bunch of wreaths for different seasons or occasions. Which of course then led to me falling down an Attic24 rabbit hole (man that girl is talented!!), and eventually landing on her Christmas wreath.

By that time I was totally itching to make one of my own. As beautiful as these wreaths are, they weren't exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to make myself though. So I did the only logical thing and headed on over to pinterest for some more inspiration.

By that evening, I had begun a little collection of christmasy crocheted creations (how's that for alliteration!) with which to embellish my wreath. (The colours came up SO WEIRD in this photo)

On the weekend I went on a wreath hunt, and found a styrofoam wreath at Spotlight for about $8.00. I had found this tutorial while browsing pinterest, and decided to use it instead of doing the stripey wreath cover from the Attic24 post. I just thought it was super cute! I chose an awesome bright pink fluffy yarn, and got to work. It really didn't take me too long. It was a little bit to get my head around at first; you have to kind of loop the yarn around with your left hand instead of picking up loops with your hook. Once I got the hang of it, it was easy peasy. I single crocheted around the whole thing, and then did a shell stitch to make the super cute scalloped border.

The lighting in these photos is completely awful, I do apologise. I was working at night, and you know, no light an all... 

I started playing with placement of my bits and pieces and quickly decided that I was going to keep to flat embellishments (ie, none of those little red balls or curls I had made, and no pompoms). 

I used the leaf pattern from here, the heart pattern from here, the mini wreath pattern from here (with little silver rings that I had stashed from my jewellery-making days), angel pattern from here (minus the tassel), and flower patterns from here and here. I only used cotton yarn, and only used what I already had at home. My husband was very proud, haha. Oh, and I also used a star pattern that I made up a few years ago, but I haven't got a link for it, I'll have to do that at some point! 

I actually ended up just pinning the pieces. I did this for a few reasons; firstly it was easier and quicker, and what's not to love about that! Also, it means that I can change them easily if I want to go for a different colour scheme or something another year. I made some simple little white single-crocheted strips to turn into curly swirls for my finishing touches. Annnnd..... voila!

I chained a loop which I pinned to the back for hanging, and today, I hung it! Yes, we have already decorated our house for christmas. Because, we are awesome like that, and we LOOOOOVE CHRISTMAS! I'll share some more photos of that sometime soon.

So here it is, my beautiful new Christmas wreath; in situ:

Go on, get crocheting! You know you want to!

Our 2013 Advent Calendar {a tutorial}

I’ve just finished making our advent calendar for this year.

Instead of having chocolate or lolly treats inside, this year I’ve decided to make it activity-based, and each day, inside our advent calendar is a little Christmassy activity, to get us into the spirit (not that we really need help with that, we may or may not have had our tree up for a week already, and been listening to Christmas music for at least twice that long!).

I trawled Pinterest adding ideas to my advent calendar board, included the various Christmas parties and events that were already scheduled, and soon enough, I had 24 fun activities ready to go!

Here is our list of Advent Calendar Activities:

1. Make our advent wreath (this year we are going to follow the advent candle liturgy at home, as well as at our church).
2. Make Christmas cards (Lincraft had 50% off their Christmas stock – already! – and I grabbed a bunch of Christmas craft kits, including star-shaped Christmas cards, with lots of stickers and embellishments)
3. Trip to Little Monkeys (Our local indoor play centre. We’ve been intending to go all year and it just hasn’t happened. I want to do it before the school holidays starts, so that there will be fewer kids there).
4. Playgroup Christmas Party.
5. Make a paper chain decoration for our house (we did this last year and Mayana loved it. Incidentally, did you know that Peter is not allowed to make paper chains with his kids at Kindy because it symbolises oppression? Sheesh!)
6. Have a Christmas dance party! (Anyone who’s met Mayana will know that she loves a good dance party!)
7. Watch a Christmas movie.
8. Read some Christmas books! (These will be special gifts, too)
9. Make woven bauble decorations (another 50% off Lincraft kit)
10. Make and play with Christmas playdough. (I will probably make it green, and maybe flavour it with mint to make it multi-sensory. We’ll cut Christmas tree shapes and decorate them with sequins and beads etc.)
11. Make Christmas angels. (Another craft kit that I picked up for $2 at Kmart a few months ago)
12. Make presents for some friends. (I bought small papier-mâché gift boxes from Aldi a few months ago.. we’ll decorate/paint them as gifts)
13. Go looking at Christmas lights.
14. Watch a Christmas movie.
15. Read some Christmas books.
16. Choose some toys to give away (Our very small playroom is pretty much as full of toys as it can handle, so we are going to prepare for the inevitable onslaught by giving some of them away and making room. I actually can’t WAIT for this day!)
17. Go Christmas shopping for Papa.
18. Make some wrapping paper (and wrap Papa’s present).
19. Make Christmas tree biscuits.
20. Decorate the biscuits. (This has been a tradition of ours for the past two years) 
21. Christmas with the Friends (our Christmas with Pete’s side of the family)
22. Tonight’s your Christmas Show! (The kids at our Church are putting on a show. Mayana is playing Mary!)
23. Make our gingerbread nativity. (Another tradition of ours. in 2011 we made a traditional gingerbread house, last year we made an Aussie Homestead version, and this year we are going to try our hands at a nativity scene)
24. Read the Christmas story in the Bible. (This is a tradition too… a before-bed thing on Christmas Eve, snuggled together on the couch)

So, list done! Next thing was to decide how to make the advent calendar. I wanted to do something that would double as a Christmas decoration. There are stacks of ideas on Pinterest (I pinned some of my favourites) and I sort of combined a few ideas for ours. I used this idea last year too, but just had a lolly and a decoration (which I’ll explain in a minute) in them.

So I popped all my activities in  a fancy font in a Publisher document and cut them into strips.

Next up, I needed toilet rolls. We certainly go through enough of them in our house, and there is a special basket in our making room full of them. They come in handy for heaps of arts and crafts! For this advent calendar, you’ll need eight of them, each cut into three pieces. You’ll also need some pretty Christmassy paper, and some sticky tape.

Last year, I found this fabulous wooden Christmas tree at Big W for $10. I haven’t really looked to see if they’re there this year. The coolest thing about them is that they come with 25 tiny decorations – 24 hanging decorations and a star. These are what I used in my calendar last year, and Mayana was keen to use them again! I put one in each tube, and the star goes in with the final decoration on Christmas Eve.

Next, it’s just a matter of wrapping each piece of cardboard tube in your Christmas paper, and popping in one decoration, and that day’s activity. Don’t forget to write a date on each tube!!

Now where to put them! On one of my walls in our family room I have a bunch of frames with various typography art in them. In the centre of them all is a frame I put together to hang photos in. I bought a huge old frame for about $3.00 from an op-shop – no glass or backing necessary – and tied four lengths of twine across the frame. Usually there are Instagram photos or cute cards or pictures hanging in it, but at this time of year it becomes our advent calendar. So it’s just a matter of clipping each little present into place, and the calendar is complete!

Cute huh! And so cheap to make. This year it really didn’t cost me anything, because I had the wrapping paper from last year and the frame was already up. Today we bought some small baubles from Big W (2 packs of 20 for $3.00 each), and as we take each little gift down, we will put a bauble up, so that we aren’t left with boring looking naked string hanging on our wall… this is, after all, one of our Christmas decorations!

Easy! And so cute!
Do you make your own advent calendar? What are you going to put in it this year?

The House The Friends Built

Yesterday, after reading Talia’s blogpost, I had a hit of inspiration to build a Gingerbread House. From scratch.

It was SO. MUCH. FUN.

I made the gingerbread dough last night using the recipe that Talia referred to, from The Red Deer. It’s super easy. I actually refrigerated it overnight, as I ran out of steam and didn’t feel like baking after dinner. It was okay, but needed a good hard working to soften it back up this morning.

I cut the template pieces out of baking paper, which meant I could stick them straight on my rolled –out dough and easily cut around it. Once my pieces were cut and baked, I brushed on the glaze and gave them plenty of time to cool.

The icing is also super easy, my only tip is that when it says, “Beat until very stiff peaks form” it means VERY. The icing works so much better as cement/glue when it’s really stiff. I didn’t include the lemon juice in the icing, because I didn’t have any.

We first put together the walls. I wanted to decorate them before I put the roof on, so that I could get to all of it easily.

We were probably more gung-ho with the icing than we really needed to be, but better to be safe and sorry! We let the walls set for a while we did some chores and had lunch. Once the icing was well and truly hard, we felt safe enough to start with the decorating.

I found it easiest to squeeze the glue straight onto the lollies then stick it on the house. I made a make-shift piping bag using a snap-lock bag with a small corner cut out. Worked like a charm.

We used coloured musk sticks, M&Ms, sour straps, liquorice and freckles.

Once we had the walls how we wanted them, it was time to add the roof.

Again, we probably used more icing than we needed to, but it’s certainly very stable as a result.

Pete and I had so much fun doing this together. Mayana was a little bit involved, but she was putting more lollies into her mouth than onto the house, so we distracted her with ABC2 after a while!

So without any further ado, here is our very beautiful Gingerbread House, of which we are suitably proud – especially considering this is the first time that either of us have done any kind of Gingerbread House building/decorating, and we did it all from scratch! I think we may have added another tradition to our little family Christmas list.

Now everybody pray with me that it survives it's 2.5 hour trip out to Christmas day with Nana & Pop!!

Point + Shoot : Brisvegas Baby

This weekend consisted of a LOT of driving, and a LOT of fun.

It started on Friday, when we made our way down to Brisbane to finish off some of our Christmas shopping. We chose a Westfield Shopping Centre, and landed in Shop-Til-You-Drop Heaven. There are really not very many shops in our town, so to find ourselves in a centre that had David Jones, Myer, Target, K-mart, Big W and about 30,000 other little stores (including favourites such as T-2, Kiki-K, Typo, Bed Bath & Table, and STARBUCKS) was a very wonderful thing indeed. I fell a little bit more in love with my new (/second-hand) iPhone, which has a Westfield App that allowed me to find the stores I wanted to go to, and even showed me how to get to them! Love technology!

After we had had our fill of Westfield, and crossed most things of our list, we hot-footed it over to Ikea for a few more bits and bobs. How is it that I can never seem to step out of that place without spending an inordinate amount of money? Then it was dinner with Aunty Janeen before we went back to the northern side of Brisbane for the real reason for our trip: a visit with our wonderful friends (and Mayana’s wonderful Godparents) Daniel & Katherine.

They have just bought a very cute little home, and we enjoyed seeing it and spending time with them. It’s been a while, but they’re the kind of friends that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, we always just pick up where we left off. Love it.

On Saturday afternoon, we went along to a Christmas event that Dan & Kat’s church runs at a local school oval. It was great fun, with lots of free stuff for kids (face-painting, animal farm, pony-rides, jumping castles, Christmas craft etc) and entertainment (JC Epidemic, music, clowns & Christmas Carols). It was a great community event, and had a really good time… especially Mayana!

In the Christmas Spirit and ready to have some fun!!

Face painted! (One of Mayana’s favourite things to have done, and about the only time I’ve ever seen her sit still).

Visiting the Animal Farm with Kathrine. She kissed every single animal in there. Including the pig. On the butt. The duckling made a much nicer picture.

She also brushed every single animal in there. Including the turkey.

Mayana rode a pony called Macky. She was a little disappointed that she didn’t get to hold the reigns, but had a lot of fun.

The two Maysies

We also happened to bump into my mum’s cousin and his wife and kids, who were also there soaking in the family atmosphere. It’s been a while since we’ve seen them, and their gorgeous little boy Eddie (who was only a few months old when we last saw him) is now over one, and such a cutie. Their daughter Maya is a couple of weeks younger than Mayana, and they had a lovely time together, punctuated by many cuddles and kisses.

On Sunday, we took Mayana to Southbank to have a swim at the ‘beach’. It was quite cool, so she was the only one brave enough to get in, and it didn’t last for long – as much as she insisted she wasn’t cold the blue quivering lips kind of gave her away.

A lovely picnic in the sun soon warmed her back up again.

As did playing on Daniel, The Human Slippery-Slide.

Then it was time for a stroll through the markets, before our final stop in Brisvegas: Max Brenner. Oh my.

Mayana was most impressed with her Baby-Cino, which came not only with TWO marshmallows, but a plate COVERED in chocolate.

Which she proceeded to get pretty much all over herself.

But it was worth it for the beautiful smile!

Then we waved goodbye to Daniel & Katherine, to scoot back to the Coast for Christmas with Grandma Suki & Grandpa Ron!

We sang some songs, because that’s just what we do when my family is together. I love this photo, and the look us sisters are giving our baby brother who clearly just played a dud chord.

Grandpa cooked us a delicious BBQ dinner..

While we soaked up the views.

We exchanged gifts and ate delicious dessert and just enjoyed each other’s company.

It was certainly a very full weekend, but full of awesomeness and happy memories.

I’m playing along with Lou for Point + Shoot. You should too!

Food + Art

Who said you shouldn’t play with your food anyway?

I came across this fabulous idea on Pinterest a little while ago, and finally got a chance to try it out. Peter and Mayana have their last Mainly Music for the year tomorrow, and have been asked to bring a plate of food to share.

Last week Peter whipped up an epic batch of biscuits (easiest recipe ever: 500g butter, 1 tin sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup sugar, 5 cups self-raising flour). He froze it into about 5 lots and has been baking it in batches. So he used some of that biscuit dough to make some Christmas tree shaped biscuits. Then I made a simple icing of about 1.5 cups of icing sugar and the juice of 3/4 of a lemon. I spread it onto the biscuits and let it harden.

After dinner, the fun began.

I set out three dishes with red, green and yellow food dye, and a handful of cotton-buds.

And we decorated!!

Mayana thought it was awesome!

Two of her favourite things, ‘making art’, and biscuits!

And before we knew it we had a beautiful, colourful and creative batch of Christmas biscuits ready to take to Music tomorrow!

It was so lovely, the three of us doing something special all together, making memories. We’d quite like to make this an annual family tradition.

Super-easy, lots of fun, and kept Mayana fully focussed for nearly half an hour. The perfect toddler activity. You should give it a try!!

Christmas Day in Pictures (and a few words)

You know you’ve had way too much fun when you plug your SD card into your computer and realise you’ve hardly taken any photos. We did have a wonderful day though, so here are the moments we did manage to capture…

Our Christmas table… can you tell who decorated it? 

No, we didn’t eat the baubles for breakfast. And yes, my dad did make that joke.

Mayana played the part of Santa’s Lachlan’s Lil Helper. He would pick a present from under the tree, and she would deliver it to the appropriate person, then return the scrunched up wrapping paper to Lachlan’s bag. 

This was Mayana’s first present of the day. As soon as she saw the colour she knew it was “Wiggle Dor-y” (aka Dorothy the Dinosaur).

They’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since. 

Even our 11 year old Jack Russell, Jack, got in on the fun. And same as every year, his present was no sooner ripped open then it was buried in the back yard for later.
 

Mayana LOVED her present from “Grandma” Suki & “Grandpa” Ron. She kept it around her neck while she opened all of her other presents.
 

Jordan & Bethanie spent the better part of the afternoon assembling the lovely dollhouse Jordan got Mayana.
 

I made my first ever Pavlova (from scratch), and topped it with cream, crushed crunchie bar, a raspberry coulis and frozen raspberries. Yum!

Alexie made a delicious rocky-road themed ice-cream pudding cake. Yummo!

And in case you were wondering, I was very spoiled this Christmas. I got a gorgeous ring and dress from my secret santa (my mum!), and my husband totally outdid himself, and got me a hair dryer, mini hair straightner, and a Wii game I wanted. He asked Mayana what she wanted to get Mama, and she replied, “Ummm a cup of tea”. So they went and chose me a gorgeous glass teapot.

It was a lovely day, I just can’t believe that Christmas is all over for another year!

I hope yours was as wonderful as ours x