Striped paper Xmas trees

I've seen a few different versions of striped paper Xmas trees on Pinterest. With all the piles of scrapbook paper in my cupboard, I just had to give this a go with my daughter. It was very easy to set up. Basically I just cut out strips of different coloured papers. Jasmine then trimmed them to make the different levels of the Xmas tree and stuck them on a large background paper.

I think they would make great cards.

Or just something cheerful and Chrismassy for the wall ...

Santa's house

The kids and I embarked on a box collecting mission this week with the aim of making a Xmas village. We found all sorts of different sized boxes and put them in a pile in our playroom. Somewhere along the way, the kids decided they would prefer to make Santa's house than a village.

In addition to boxes, we used Quicksticks silver tape, coloured paper, stickers, foil and some Xmas decorations. The kids had a fabulous time and were distracted from the horrible rainy weather.

The kids even made a bridge and used some Xmas coasters for stepping stones. I'm not sure it would meet an architect's standards on beauty or structural quality but most importantly the kids love it.

Brown paper advent calendar

 
I saw a homemade advent calendar on Pinterest recently with star shapes cut out of brown paper. We decided to make something similar. Instead of using the star shape we used our Xmas cookie cutters to make angel, tree, flower and gingerbread man shapes.

I traced the shapes and cut them out. Jasmine then helped me write the numbers 1 to 10 and stick on some string.We used baker's twine in red and white and pink and white.

I wasn't sure where to hang our numbers for our 10 day count down to Xmas. We could have used a ribbon or a coat hanger but since we have a lovely wire card holder in our kitchen we decided to hang the numbers there.

When we get closer to Xmas (still a while to go I know) we will cut down the shapes one by one until there are none left and Xmas has arrived. Yay!

Artkive - digital storage for artwork

Now that Halloween festivities and my kids' birthday party have been and gone I can do a bit of sorting and tidying before the surge of Xmas crafts and other activities are upon us.

My kids share a room so that we can have a spare room to use for playing, crafting and storage but for some reason we still seem to end up with "stuff" all over the place. I can never find anything when I need though I must say I am quite good at finding things today that I needed yesterday. Is this something that happens to all of us? Or just me?

My kids have a drawer each in our spare room cupboard for their Kindergarten artworks but this is rapidly filling up. So you can imagine my excitement when I was recommended a mobile app for storing kids art digitally called Artkive- http://www.artkiveapp.com/

I downloaded the Artkive App for free via the App store. It is really easy to use. I take photos of the kids artwork with my iPhone or iPad and then artkive them into different albums. So far I have just created two kindergarten albums - one for each child. You can give each artwork a title, date and description if you like.

Maybe at the end of the year I will print off a book. This could make a fun gift for someone. It will certainly be a neat way of storing their fabulous first drawings.

I highly recommend this App.