Monday again and only 9 days til Christmas. Hope you’re all feeling super organised! Although I haven’t made as many handmade gifts as I wanted to there has been lots of Christmas crafting. Our house is very twinkly and pretty and the tree is beginning to lean with the weight of decorations. Over the last week we’ve made wreaths, a styrofoam snowman ornament, gingerbread sun catchers, Liberty baubles, apple and cinnamon muffins, upcycled toy ornaments and personalised baubles. We’re all enjoying wearing Christmas jumpers this year. I have a sparkly gingerbread man, the 4 year old has a beautiful Fair…
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For the final time this year I’ve teamed up with some European children’s activities bloggers to co-host a Countdown to Christmas organised by Rainy Day Mum. Every Monday we have a different prompt to inspire our festive crafting – this week’s theme is family fun. Don’t forget to add your crafty post to the linky at the end of this post! This time of year is all about family fun – we’ve been wearing our festive jumpers, listening to brass bands play carols on the High Street, attend parties and festive lunches whilst the excitement builds up to Christmas Day.…
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One of the things I love about this time of year is the opportunity to be really creative. Mobile Mini challenged us to help out Santa by designing a portable grotto that can fit within a storage container. Now my 4 year old loves his Playmobil cargo truck and cargo ship as it comes with a couple of shipping containers. He loves these toys and can often be found using them to ‘ship’ other toys around the house. I immediately knew this was the challenge for me. Of course my first thought was to create a gingerbread-inspired portable grotto for Santa.…
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Greetings and welcome to the festive edition of what’s on my mantle. My house is looking quite pretty. We have strings of lights everywhere to protect us from the gloom that seems to descend by the time we get back from the school run. As well as sharing my mantle I thought I would also write about some of our Christmas decorations. For the first time we are experimenting with a large light feature. Yes. We have our very own reindeer. We’ve managed to position it between our wooden shutters and our huge bay window in our lounge. The children…
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Our Christmas tree is looking amazing this year. It’s full of decorations, some traditional ones we’ve had for years and lots made by the children. One of my favourite is our Styrofoam snowman so I thought I would share how we made it with you. Equipment needed to make a Styrofoam snowman ornament: two styrofoam balls (one small, one medium sized) Bostik Glu Dots Ribbon Pipe cleaner Pom poms Foam stickers Beads How to make a Styrofoam snowman ornament: Glue the two styrofoam balls together using a Bostik Glu Dot, place the smaller ball on top of the larger one.…
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I have a really simple project to show you today – how to make a snowflake ornament from wooden clothes pegs. they are super sweet and make great decorations for indoors or outside. How to make a simple clothes peg snowflake ornament: You will need 8 wooden clothes pegs, a glue gun and silver paint. The first step is to remove the metal spring from each clothes peg. When you have done that paint them, I chose silver and gave them two coats as my clothes pegs were a bit tatty. Take the two pieces of a clothes peg and…
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I’m so excited to be able to offer you a really fun giveaway today in partnership with the bi-annual Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day. I have two lovely craft kits up for grabs. For a festive craft activity, this Make Your Own Gingerbread Decoration Kit from the Hobbycraft Christmas range, allows you to create your own handmade decorations! This pack contains everything you need to make three adorable gingerbread characters and a house for the Christmas season. Simply follow the step by step instructions inside to create two gingerbread characters and one gingerbread baby plus a beautifully decorated house, all…
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As well as the handmade gifts I’ve already told you about, I’ve also made a few personalised gifts this year. I can’t reveal too much as my family read my blog, but I really enjoyed designing a calendar with a different photo for each month. Stuck for stocking inspiration? I made some personalised keyrings and mugs too using my favourite photos. I made all these products using Snapfish, an online digital printing service. You can even personalise your baubles which would make a great keepsake which you could add to every year. I was thinking of starting an annual Christmas…
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As much as I love thinking up new crafts to make with the children sometimes it’s really nice to open a ready made craft kit. We were recently sent a box of Christmas craft supplies from Baker Ross and one of our favourite activities was making up their Christmas Gift Box Kits. The kit contained enough supplies to decorate three festive gift boxes – three circular boxes with foam stickers – and my children loved making them. My 4 year old was happy to follow the picture on the kit packaging. He’s good at following pictorial instructions, probably due to…
