Happy Christmas and farewell to my blog

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas. I know my kids were super excited.

Thanks everyone who has followed my blog in 2012 and 2013, commented on our crafts and offered tips and tricks. I've really enjoyed the excuse to try all sorts of crafts and share our successes and failures.

However, with all the other things scheduled in our household in 2014 I've decided to say farewell to my blog.

Of course we'll keep up our art and craft activities but just won't be blogging about them.

Christmas crepe paper banners

Following on from the Halloween crepe paper banners we made in October, we thought we'd try out some Christmas banners. We bought some red and green crepe paper.

We like the Santa hats and Xmas trees the best but also experimented with heart shapes and candy canes.

Basically just take the crepe paper out of the packet and cut off a portion. Design your shape then cut it out. Make sure you have enough of each shape connected to each other on the sides to keep the chain strong when you stretch it out.

For the Santa Hats we added cotton wool balls with glue ...

... and a "Merry Christmas" stamp on each hat.

Actually I think I like the simplicity of the shiny green trees the most.

Christmas crafting with a handful of materials

You don't need many materials to have fun making Christmas crafts. We made some red and green play dough and had fun cutting out shapes and sticking in beads.

We used the play dough recipe over at The Imagination Tree.

Jasmine also made a lovely Christmas tree collage using scrapbook paper on cardboard.

These are both excellent activities for a rainy day or could be offered as play date activities.

Simple Christmas Tree Decorations

We've been enjoying making simple decorations for the Christmas tree. Pipe cleaners and beads have been particularly popular. The kids have experimented with all sorts of shapes including rings, rain drops and candy canes.

We've also tried threading using a hole puncher to make holes in different shapes. This is a particularly good activity for those not yet capable of proper sewing with a needle and thread in fabric.

 

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!