I love looking back over the photos I’ve taken. There has been a lot of sewing, baking and crafting with the children this week, in between a blur of PTA meetings and wrapping presents for my daughter’s 3rd birthday. I made bite-sized gingerbread house biscuits one day as a special sweet treat. There has been the discovery of new sewing patters and decorations for the Christmas tree. We also attempted this lovely and delicious gingerbread tree. In non-gingerbread related news, we had a fun trip to the Science Museum to escape the torrential rain on Saturday and I finished the…
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I’m not going to apologise for another gingerbread-related craft 🙂 With only 5 weeks to go until Christmas we are enjoying our festive crafting. Today I wanted to share the sweet gingerbread men paper garland we made. Equipment needed to make a gingerbread men paper garland: Gingerbread men paper shapes brown acrylic paint and brush glue sticks stickers, pompoms and shiny things to decorate bakers twine How to make a gingerbread men paper garland: First paint your paper gingerbread men brown. You could cut out your shapes on brown paper or card to miss out this step. Set up an…
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I’ve gone all minimalist for November. This month my daughter turns 3 and we’re having a Frozen-themed birthday party to go with her Frozen-themed presents. It’s probably no surprise that some of the colours have crept into our living room and on my mantle. We have ice blue candles standing proud in my great-grandfather’s brass candlesticks. I’ve recycled our Halloween munchkins but spray painted them white to give a fresh new look. The bus blind has been moved to a different room and been replaced by my lovely Orla Kiely stem print vase, a favourite house-shaped tea light holder and…
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My children love to craft as much as I do and we were recently sent a really fun new toy from the world of AmiGami! Each pack includes one animal and everything you need to create your own AmiGami figure. We tried out the Giraffe and it included the Plastic AmiGami Giraffe, 30 AmiGami paper parts, 55 re-useable stickers, 1 curling tool and 6 Pins and Caps. First of all we punched the perforated paper parts from the sheet. Then we pinned them to the Giraffe and held them in place with the plastic pins and caps. Finally we curled…
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I’m sure you’ve noticed my obsession with gingerbread house but it really comes to life at this time of year. In the last week we’ve made a gingerbread tree, gingerbread biscuits, the gingerbread man story stones and today I wanted to share our felt busy bag gingerbread house. The gingerbread house appears in the well-known fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a witch living in the deep dark forest in a house constructed of gingerbread and sweets. The two children survive by outwitting her. Aspects of the story are a…
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We were recently offered the chance to make a canvas by Wall Create. You know I love filling my house with paintings, posters and photographs but I’ve never made a canvas before. Instead of reproducing a photograph I thought it would be fun to use one of my sons’ recent drawings. He drew a picture for his nanny which I loved, so I Photoshopped out his writing (which said Happy Birthday!) and sent off his drawing. My 4 year loves to draw and write – in case you can’t tell, this is our family 🙂 A lovely canvas arrived a…
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The story of The Gingerbread Man is a perfect book for reading at this time of year. It’s a classic fairy tale about a Gingerbread Man’s escape from various pursuers and his eventual demise between the jaws of a fox. The Gingerbread Man There are variations in the characters but our favourite features an old couple, a chicken, a dog, a cow, a horse and a fox. The story is great for it’s rhythm and repetition with the lines Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man! We love crafting around books, they…
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Although I swore I wouldn’t start getting excited about Christmas until the 1st of December I admit I may have slipped. This weekend we were invited to a preview of Get Santa, a festive film which is out on December 5th. It features some brilliant British actors such as Jim Broadbent, Rafe Spall, Joanna Scanlan and Warwick Davis and is a really fun family film. Basically, a young boy finds Santa Claus in the shed at the bottom of his garden after he has crash landed his fancy new sleigh. Santa enlists the boy and his father to get the reindeer,…
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Top of my crafty pile of books is A Year in Crafts by Clare Youngs which contains 52 seasonal projects to make and give. This is a gorgeous book, not only are the projects fun, well laid out and illustrated, but the book itself is a thing of beauty. It’s hard-backed but conceals wire binding so you can actually keep it open whilst crafting. The projects haven’t quite been divided by the seasons but there are 4 handy dividers throughout the book where you can keep your templates, notes or scraps of fabric. There’s also an elastic bookmark to help…
