October 30th 2015 - decorating for halloween

We eventually arrived at my best friends house yesterday, after a very long journey that took over an hour longer than usual and had the kids fighting more than usual in the car.

She had made a start on decorating for halloween but had left most of it for me to do as she didnt have the patience.

I raided the cupboard under the sink for bin bags and found both black and white (yes!) aand set up cutting them into strips, tying 2 together with a knot so that we could use them as a creepy door cover.  Some went up really easily to door frames but we had to staple them to the arch in the kitchen wall as tape and blue tak wouldnt hold.

they looked better in the dark and they did feel creepy asyou walked through them as they stuck to your face.

We (I) also covered her hallway, stairs and landing in spiders web stuff.  This was left to me to sort as she knew I had done my house with it last year and i managed to spread it thin and wispy.

 
















My friend changed all her light bulbs to red or green, and we added a few other bits like fabric spider webs, spider nests that I made, mummy wrapped dolls and skeletons, and the kids allcarved pumpkins.

(this pic was from saturday night party when we put the fake candles in them).

I think at this point we were just about ready decoration wise.

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).