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Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts

Monday, 28 December 2015

December 26th 2015 - Boxing day sales

Me and my my sister decided that we were going to hit the boxing day sales up town.  There are a few shops that she wanted to go to as the stores are not local to where she lives.  We thought we would only be a couple of hours.....6hrs later and a missed lunch we finally came home.  She had spent a fortune, me not so much but we had nothing worth while to show for it! lol!

December 24th 2015 - christmas eve

It's christmas eve!!!  The elves have left the kids a christmas eve box like they do every year.  In it is a craft, a dvd, a book, pjs, bubble bath, snacks, stockings and elf socks.



Not sure who is more excited me, my sister or the kids!!!   I have never known my sister to be this excited.

Her and my eldest son went to the cinema this afternoon to watch the new star wars movie and the younger 2 watched a dvd on tv and had popcorn to go with it.  Once my sis and son were home they got into their new pjs, we all had snacks for tea and watched the dvd.  They then put their stockings upstairs and all went to bed very excited!

December 23rd 2015 - Sister

My sister lives over 5hrs drive away from us since we moved north few years back.  Sadly we dont see each other as much as we would like to due to her job and our money situation.  SO today is a good day as she came up to stay with us for christmas.

This pin is sooooo us:
december 23rd 2015 - Sister Wall Art Sisters Digital Art Print by RoseHillDesignStudio:  

I'm hoping that in the near future she will also move up here with us, not in my house as 1. it's not big enough and 2. we would kill each other after a week!  Here's to a good few days and christmas together.

Monday, 21 December 2015

December 18th 2015 - Last day of school

Today is the last day of school and my kids are anything but calm.  They are bouncing off walls, hyper as an anything and on a countdown to lunchtime when they finish!

I don't envy the teachers if anyone elses kids are as bad as mine are.  BUT on a good note it means we are all home for a couple of weeks for beating each other up/fighting/argueing quality family time!

Thursday, 17 December 2015

december 16th 2015 - UV/Glow in the dark party

For the SJA christmas party this year we decided that we would do a UV/Glow in the dark party.  Back in July the cadets did a sponsored silence to raise money to buy the glow sticks and things that we would need.

They made t-shirts with UV fabric paint a few weeks back that they were going to wear on the night.  When the members arrived they were all given UV face paint (if they wanted it), glow sticks, finger lights, glow glasses etc and were taken to where the disco was (normal disco lights only at this point).  Once everyone was there and had thier bits n bobs we turned the UV lights on.  The reactions from the kids as their clothes n things started glow properly was brilliant.

Everyone had a great time and Santa was in his grotto for a short time and gave them each a present.





Wednesday, 9 December 2015

December 8th 2015 - Beauty & the Beast

My local community centre organises day trips for the local residents during the summer holidays and then at Christmas to the Pantomime.

Tonight was the Christmas Pantomime.  A local theatre group were putting on a production of Beauty & the Beast.  Over the years I have seen most of the pantomimes - Jack & the Beanstalk, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Mother Goose, Snow White etc but I have never seen Beauty & the Beast.

It was brilliant.  The boys sat and watched it and joined in.  Sadly myy lil man ended up going home with Daddy at the interval as he was going hot n cold, shivering, very pale and felt sick.    I was not able to take any photos though.  However 2 of the cast were running around with a selfie stick taking photos of them and the audience.



Tuesday, 1 December 2015

December 1st 2015 - Smells like christmas.....

.....it smells like christmas they say!  Makes your house smell nice they say! 

Errrrrr....... NO IT DOESN'T it STINKS!!!

I can safely say that adding the ingredients to either a pan of boiling water or slow cooker and leave on low makes your house smell nice and of christmas is a load of rubbish.  I added the ingredidients to water and put on the hob and left it.  Within 10minutes my house smelt horrible and I was feeling sick.  I turned the hob off and put the pan outside in the rain!

I have had to light scented candles and spray air freshner to try and cover the smell up!  This is most definately a pinterest fail!!!



BUT on a good note it's decemeber 1st and this means only 24 sleeps until santa comes!!!

Monday, 30 November 2015

November 30th 2015 - Christmas gift box

I have spent today playing about with bits of paper and cardboard trying to make christmas gift boxes for my SJA cadets to make on wednesday night.

I did have a tree shaped box that I planned to use but when I printed them and tried to make 1 it didn't stand up so the template shape is wrong.  So I had to look for a replacement.  The replacement works ok and I have printed them off ready.

Each box will have a couple of sweets placed inside them.

Sunday, 29 November 2015

November 28th 2015 - Workington Winter Wonderland

Workington is a town near where I live, it has more shops than where I live so we go over quite alot.  Today was the towns Winter Wonderland and Christmas Light switch on.

It was very cold, very wet and very windy.  This meant that many of the planned events throughout the day had to be cancelled for safety reasons.  A lot of the stalls couldn't stay as the wind kept blowing their goods around or actually demolishing the gazebos.  The local theater allowed some of the stalls to move into there for most of the day but not all of it.

It was a real shame about the weather but there was still lots of people about in the town which is good.  It was nice to get home in the warm afterwards.

Thursday, 26 November 2015

November 25th 2015 - Christmas Crafts

 I was at the school for family learning today and we were doing Christmas Crafts and making things that could be given as gifts.

There was loads of options for them to do.  They had the option of making tree decorations from sewing kits, making christmas pictures, and many more.

Lil man made a reindeer from brown paper and added magic reindeer food to it and needs to sprinkle it on christmas eve.

The middle one made a christmas bauble but as this was still very wet it got left at school to dry and 1 of the teachers will give them out later.

Lil man decorated a mini treasure chest and said that him and Daddy are going shopping for a diamond ring me to go in it.

They both  made snowman countdowns to christmas.  This confused lil man as he thought it was from today and didnt realise it was from dec 1st, but we explained he was fine.

The boys also decorated cakes as melted snowmen but these got eaten.

We also made candy cane star decorations which involved a hot glue gun to fix them together and to fix the decorations onto them.

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

november 24th 2015 - jazzing up xmas jumpers

A couple of weeks ago I bought the kids xmas jumpers and although they have designs on them they are very plain and boring!  So I asked the kids if they wanted them made better and they did.  So today has been spent jazzing up the jumpers

Here are the 2 original jumpers:

 

To modify the 1st 1 lil man asked for a santa hat to be added, so I took 1 small santa hat, stitched it together and then to his jumper.




Lil man thinks his jumper looks good and is now ready for xmas jumper day.

The middle ones jumper wasn't such an easy task, well it was but it just took longer to do as I had to wait for bits to dry.  He wanted the baubles on the reindeer to look more 3d, I did think pompoms but it didn't look right so I decided on bells!  

I only had gold effect bells and they didn't look right so I set about painting them with blue nail varnish:


They had to have 2 coats and I was only able to paint the tops and then the bottoms each time because of placing them down to dry.  Once both coats and all of the bells were done I set about attaching them to his jumper with black thread in the same place as the sewn on ones are on his jumper.


so now when he moves he jingles.  He did ask about them going on the back as well as it's the back of the reindeer but we decided not to as they may dig into his back when he's sat on a chair at school.  Again he is happy with his jumper.

Sunday, 22 November 2015

November 22nd 2015 - toilet roll yule log

 I'm sure by now you are aware that my lil man loves making things, and especially likes using toilet rolls.  Today he came downstairs with 2 toilet rolls and asked what he could make.  He was told to wait 5mins as I was helping his older brother with something but I had an idea for a Christmas craft with them.

5mins later, we are working on making pages to print out and collecting our supplies to make the toilet roll yule log.  To make it you will need the following things:

toilet roll tube
double sided tape
pictures of holly (or plastic holly)
birchwood effect printed paper (if you do the whole of an A4 sheet it will cover 2 tubes)
fake snow (optional)
glue (optional but needed for snow)
robin
paper plate
stapler
scissors



supplies and printed birchwood paper and holly.











Cut the paper in half so you have 2 pieces.  place a line of tape from 1 end to the other on the tube.  put 1 piece of the paper over the tape and wrap all the way round (you may need to cut it slightly smaller).  Make sure both ends are fixed with tape on the tube, you shouldn't be able to see anyvof the brown tube now.  If your paper is longer than the tube you can tuck the excess into the open ends of the tubes.

Take the stapler, the wrapped tube and the paper plate, fix the tube to the plate with the stapler on the middle of the tube so they are no visible from the top.

You next to cut to out the holly.  we flipped our picture b4 printing so that we could double side it but you dont have to.  As ours is double sided I taped them together before we cut them out so only cut once.   Lil man folded our leaves slightly so they had shape rather than looking flat.  We then putt a small piece of tape on the underside of the berries and stuck to the middle of the tube.  This was then stapled as they kept falling off with tape.






Sadly this was as far as we got as we realised we didn't have any robins to fix  into the middle and we cant add fake snow until we have the robbins in place.  I have ordered some robins and they should be here in the next few days.

Friday, 20 November 2015

November 18th 2015 - Snowman card

As there is only a few weeks until Christmas we are doing Christmas crafts at St John Ambulance for all the youth members as part of their craft badges.

Tonight the Badgers made Snowman Christmas Cards like the link shows.  I had made them all scarves from plaited wool, cut out triangle noses from orange paper, added  googly eyes to the bag along with plain white card.  I showed them the card I had made and left them to do them how they wanted.

Some added christmas tape others added buttons etc.  They all looked really good and i'm sure whoever they were written to will love them.


Monday, 16 November 2015

November 16th 2015 - personalised christmas sacks

As I live along way from my family they send me money to buy the kids christmas presents.  Over the years I have bought paper and plastic santa sacks and they don't last.  This year I have decided that I will make them personalised christmas sacks.

I have bought 3 packs of pillow cases and some christmas ribbon and I am going to make my own sacks.  My friend is going to make me some "labels" from material that I can attatch to the sacks so that we know who they are from.




















above are the blue set before I start to make them.  Below are the red set which I have started:


Tuesday, 10 November 2015

November 10th 2015 - Christmas cupboard

I wish I had a Christmas cupboard like this one:






BUT as my house is not big enough to have "spare cupboards" that I could turn into my own christmas cupboard/grotto I will have to make do with what I have!

I have spent a good 2-3hrs in my small storage cupboards sorting out what I have for christmas and for who and what I still need to get.  I took everything out, sorted it into groups and put back.  I will need re-take out to wrap and then mix up so not all of 1 persons ends up in 1 bag!

Sunday, 18 October 2015

October 17th 2015 - paper book folding

I have spent today again trying to come up with easy crafts that are suitable for both boys and girls for my St John Cadets to do that are not the "normal" cut and stick kiddie crafts.

I have a pile of books upstairs that are going to the charity shop, so I decided to try and make a paper book folding christmas tree.  Looks easy enough so I had a go.

The insctructions I found were in German so I had to hunt for some in English asn translation didn't make sense.

Anyway, take a book and remove the cover and take out about 60pages leaving the glue on the spine, the more pages you use the thicker the finished tree will be but it will take longer to do:





From here you need to start folding pages like you would to make a paper airplane!  Make sure you have the spine to the left when you start as its easier.  Take the top right corner and fold down to the spine and crease so its a sharp fold (I use and old store card):




Then you need to take the section and fold onto itself so that you get a thin point at the top and airplane shape, again crease so its a sharp fold:




You will notice that the bottom of the folded page sticks out below the bottom of the book, this also need folding.  If you bend it down over the rest of the book you will get a fold mark, using this tuck the bottom bit upwards so that it is hidden under the 2nd fold:




Keep folding the rest of the pages in the above way (it is time consuming but worth it):




Then once you have folded all the pages you will need to staple the 1st and last pages together to make it as a cone shape and it will look like this:




It is now upto you if you decorate it or leave it plain.  I am going to add a glitter paint to the folded part of each page that makes the tree and add some sparkly stars and a pom pom to the top.

please make sure if doing with children that the books are suitable incase they decide to read any of the pages!  I had planned to use the books that I have upstairs for charity shop but as I made this 1 I realised they are NOT suitable and will still be going to charity shop, so I will be going to buy some more suitable ones (maybe from the kids/teens section).

Friday, 16 October 2015

October 16th 2015 - Christmas Candy Sleighs

I know it is only October and we haven't got as far as Halloween BUT I needed to sort out some craft activities for St John Ambulance including 1 week where they are in uniform which means no paint, glitter or glue or anything that would make a mess.   Yea not the easiest of tasks in the world!

Then I remembered the Christmas Candy Sleighs I made for the boys teachers 2 Christmas's ago - they were very easy to make and used double sided tape.


These were the ones I made for the teachers.  They look pretty good and the teachers liked them.

Que me going shopping for sweets and chocolate to make them.  £19.81 later I have everything I need to make a new demo version and enough sweets for 19 children to make sleighs - that work out at £1 per child - when you put it that way you cant really complain especially as 4 bar kit kats are 79p each in my local shop.  The sweets were from b&m, home bargains and poundland, all in multi-packs.

Take 1 huge pile of sweets:

And  split them to what you need - 1 kit kat, 2 twix bars, 2 maoam blocks, 1 orange segment, 1 choc santa and 2 candy canes:





And you are almost ready to make the sleighs.  You also need 2 pieces of christmas ribbon and either double sided tape or sticky glue dots.




Step 1. Take out your kit kat and 2 twix bars.  Place the Kit kat right way up on the table.  Take 1 of the twix bars and a glue dot to each end on the back, then push down onto the back of your kit kat.  Do the same for 2nd twix and stick infront of the 1st one. You can add a sticky dot between the 2 twix bars to keep them together.
 


Step 2. Place kit kat on the table.  Take 1 of your 2 maoam bars, add a glue dot to each end of it on the back and stick on top of the twix bars.  Do this for the 2nd maoam as well.  You can add a glue dot between the 2 so they stay together. 
 
Step 3.  Place your kit kat on the table.  Take your orange segment and put a glue dot on each end on the base.  Stick this at the back on top of the maoam blocks. 



Step 4.  Take your Santa and place a glue dot on the base and 1 on the back about half way up.  Place Santa infront of the bars on the kit kat. 


Step 5.  Take 1 of the candy canes, put a glue dot on the top near the straight end, a glue dot in the middle and a glue dot near the curve.  Stick this to one side of the base of the kit kat.  Do the same for the other candy cane.  The curves need to be at the front near Santa. 








Step 6.  Take 1 piece of the Christmas ribbon.  Place a glue dot in the middle of the kit kat on the base and place the middle of the ribbon on it.  Take the ends up and over the sweet “parcels” and fix with a glue dot on the top.
 
Step 7. Take the other piece of the Christmas ribbon, tie both ends of the ribbon together in a knot.  Place a glue dot just infront of Santa and fix the knotted it to it (leave the knot to flap about like reins).  Take the rest of the ribbon under the front of the sleigh, stick to the glue dot from 1st ribbon if possible and bring up the back of the sweet “parcels” and fix on the glue dot on the top.
 
You now have a sleigh with reins. 

Some websites say to make these with hot glue or super glue - i dont reccommend this as the glue melts the plastic wrappers of the sweets and ends up touching the sweets making them un-eatable.  Therefore it is safer (especially if being done with children) to use double sided tape of sticky glue dots.

Saturday, 10 October 2015

October 10th 2015 - Christmas shoebox appeal

A few months back I picked up some fluffy socks and gloves in a sale and put them up ready for the Christmas Shoebox appeal.  Today I have sat and worked out what else we are going to put into the boxes.

The boys at infant/junior school do 1 box each as their school takes part  in it.  As with previous years we try and do 1 boy and 1 girl (and then what ever the 3rd child wanted).  I still need to buy quite a bit and need to find 2 boxes, but I still have plenty of time.

So my lists are as follows, those with line through I already have:


BOYS
GIRLS
Fluffy socks
Fluffy socks?
Bug puzzle game
Gloves & hat
Comb
Brush, Bobbles & clips
Notebook
Notebook
pens
pens
Sweets
Toothbrush & toothpaste
Gloves & hat
Skipping rope
Robot jigsaw
sweets
Toothbrush & toothpaste
Girly jigsaw
Soft teddy
Soft teddy

Monday, 5 October 2015

October 5th 2015 - tshirt 2 pillow

October 5th 2015 - tshirt 2 pillow

Last year myself and a friend in USA did a christmas gift swap based on Elves.  It was great.  We decided that we would do it again for this year.   Just after christmas last year I picked up a baby tshirt that said "I Elves they have magical powers".  My friend doesn't have a baby so this may seem like a strange thing to buy for her.  However, I had plans for the tshirt.  And that plan was to turn the tshirt into a pillow.

I started off  by cutting the long sleeves to just below the arm holes (as you don't need long sleeeves or extra pieces of material as they will just get in the way.)  I then stitched up the arm holes and along the base of the tshirt:















 I then started to stuff the tshirt via the head hole and pushed it down into the tshirt.  The stuffing is from a quilt I bought for this type of craft.  Its cheaper to buy new quilts and rip the stuffing out of than it is to buy bags of toy stuffing which is exactly the same thing!  Once it was fully stuffed I stitched up the head hole.

And have a finished pillow.




I forgot to take pics as I was working hence why its all a stuffed pillow.  I think it's nice and i'm sure my friend will as she is Elf mad!

Sunday, 11 January 2015

January 11th 2015 - Happy Birthday Hubby

JANUARY 11th 2015 - Happy Birthday Hubby

Today is my hubby's birthday.  The day started off well for him, our friends who we had spent the weekend staying with back in our home town of Peterborough cooked him (and me and kids) a full cooked english breakfast! (I just hope they don't expect this when they come and stay with us lol!)  From here we had to load the car of our things ready for the drive home.  Once the car was loaded and we had said goodbyes we headed to see my sister who lives about 8miles away.  This was great as we didn't get to see her over christmas due to ill health, so hubby didn't get birthday presents BUT christmas presents!!!  He actually got his birthday present on christmas day - my sister sent me some money to buy beers/cider for over christmas and 1 pack was hubbys birthday present.  Well after seeing my sister we nipped into my nans, not far from my sisters and stayed with her for an hour before we hit the road back home. Sadly hubby is the only driver and so he spent 5hrs of his birthday driving back home!

My inspiriation for today's pin is found here blue birthday cakes.  Due to being tired from a busy weekend of drinking and visiting and the long journey I will add a pic tomorrow of the small cakes I made for hubby.