Candy Cane Reindeer

When I saw these over at Sugarplum Creations I knew that the kids would love them. I mean come on, they love candy cane's, so add in a bit of reindeer and crafting fun that is oh so simple and who isn't going to enjoy them!

I set up a mini work station for these so the kids could come and go and create at their leisure.

Now they are hanging on the tree waiting to be given to friends to spread a little Christmas Cheer.

Mini Gingerbread (Biscuit) Houses

The last couple of years we have made Gingerbread Houses from those cute little kits you buy at the store. One day we will advance to making them from scratch, one day we will.

I'd be lying if I said that the house decorating experience has always been a joyous one. With one house and several hands and lots of ideas, let's just say that things can get a little heated, during the decorating marathon.

I simply wasn't up to dealing with that this year. However the kids have looked at the kits every time we've walked past them in store and the fact that this activity was becoming a bit of a tradition for us was playing on my mind But not once have they asked to buy, I knew they wanted one though.

So I decided we could make these little Mini Gingerbread Houses, out of Arnotts Nice Biscuits. They are a near perfect rectangle and coated with sugar, so great for mini sweet houses at Christmas. Surfer Dude got right into his decorating.

Now we could have spent a great deal more time on these, cutting the biscuits to fill all of the roof space etc, but this was very much a, "here's the materials, let's see what you come up with" project. Lego Lover started his off with having the walls going the long way but found attaching a roof too difficult so he pulled his apart and redid it the same way as the others.

Once again, an activity that is right up Fairy Princess' alley. She took great care in her work and was sitting at the table perfecting her masterpiece long after the boys had left.

So for a couple of bags of lollies, a packet of biscuits and some icing, the kids got to decorate their Christmas Houses after all.

They are sitting on the dining room table waiting for Daddy to arrive home, that's if they last that long!

Christmas Fun 2011 Week 6 - Gifts Gifts Gifts

This is it, the last week, Christmas is really just around the corner.

All of my gift wrapping is complete YAY! No late Christmas Eve wrapping for me ;-)

This week, we are looking at Gifts, gift ideas, and of course those extra special handmade gift options.

Have you written a post about your gifting? Link it up below.

Don't forget that you can still link up all of your other Christmas posts into the link lists below:

• Christmas Crafts
• Christmas Lessons
• Christmas In The Kitchen
• Advent Activities 
• Traditions

Oh and don't forget to grab a button so you can link back to the Christmas Fun linky on your blog and specific posts. That way everyone can share in the fun and ideas.

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A huge thank you to all of you that have linked up. These ideas are inspiring to everyone.





Christmas Gift Ideas



Christmas Traditions




Christmas ~ Advent Activities Links



Christmas In The Kitchen Links



Christmas Lesson Plan Links



 
Christmas Craft Links

Christmas Fun Round Up - So Much Inspiration

Have you had a chance to look through all of the inspiration over at Christmas Fun? So much cool stuff there. I wanted to take a moment to share some of my favourites.

Loving these giant snowflakes from You're Not Lost You're Here.

Glue snowflakes, so simple, but simply adorable, Rockabye Butterfly.

Making math fun for this time of year, aren't the penguins adorable. Walking By The Way.

More cute Christmas learning from Walking By The Way.

These interactive, wing flapping angels are simply delightful. From We Bloom Here.

Creekside Learning has an awesome list of Advent Activities and a neat Character Trait Advent Calendar.

A book a day is a tradition the kids will surely never forget, by Live, Learn, Love.

Calico Angels

In addition to crafting at home, we've enjoyed some fabulous crafty activities at the school we are registered with during their extra curricular days.

These cute little Calico Angels look adorable on the tree. I really wanted to share how to put them together, I think you could easily work it out by the finished image though.

I did consider pulling them apart completely to photograph, however I decided to only partially do that.

Materials List:
2.5cm Styrofoam Ball
Calico cut in a circle approx 30cm across
Gold & Silver Paint
Gold & Silver Glitter
Star Stamps
Silver Pipe Cleaners
Silver Curling Ribbon
String
Gold, Scrunchy Paper
Fine Point Marker
Pinking Shears

Cut the circle of calico with pinking shears and use the gold and silver paint to stamp around the edge, sprinkle with glitter. Allow to dry.

Place the styrofoam ball in the centre of the calico and gather at base of ball. Loop a piece of silver curling ribbon, which will be used to hang the angel on the tree. Attach it to the back of the angel with string used to tie off the calico at the base of the styrofoam ball.

Glue silver pipe cleaner around the top of Angel's head and draw on her eye's and mouth (see the first image).

Cut the glittery gold paper into a strip approximately 7cms wide and 30cms long. Twist in the middle to make wings. Wrap silver pipe cleaner around base of ball (head) holding wings in place, wrap and twist the pipe cleaner twice around.

Shape the ends of the pipe cleaner to make little arms for the angel.

Hang her on your tree. These are so simple and sweet.









Linked at
Sugarplum Creations
It's Playtime   
TGIF 
Sharing Time
For The Kids Friday

Christmas Books: Oliver Moon's Christmas Cracker

This cute little book is from Usborne, Oliver Moon is a Junior Wizard and Usborne have several other adventures about him.

"Oliver Moon loves Christmas - sledging with his best friend, Jake and eating loads of yummy minced eyes. But this year his family is going to stay with his horrible cousins at Toadstool Towers and Oliver's not looking forward to it at all. Will a magical Christmas cracker save the day?"

And mean his cousins really were! Setting Oliver up to take the blame for things they had done, but Oliver rose above them in the end and had a wonderful Christmas afterall.

This short 92 page, 6 Chapter book would be perfect as a child's early entry into chapter book reading.

Authored by Sue Mongredien, there at least 6 other stories written about Oliver Moon and his wizard family. We read this is in one quick sitting, not that that's how I had it planned, but no one would let me stop reading ;-)

Whilst I read the kids coloured from pages printed at this site.

Don't forget to visit Christmas Fun, for Crafts, Advent Activities, Traditions, Cooking and more.

Popstick Christmas Tree Frames

We made the cutest little decoration this week. It was kinda tricky deciding what I would call them - Popsicle Stick Christmas Tree Frame Decoration is just way too much of a mouthful lol!!

So let's forget the name and get onto it shall we.

I chose to use the wider craft sticks as I felt they would be sturdier, with a larger area for gluing and decorating.

Glue three together to form a triangle (the tree). I did these ahead of time so that the glue had almost dried by the time we were ready to decorate them.

Paint with gorgeous tree green on both sides and allow to dry. Or if, like us, it is a pouring day and there is no chance they'll dry anytime soon, grab your hairdyrer and blast them dry.

I gathered a few sparkly decorations and some white craft glue and let the kids at it.

They glued, glittered and decorated their triangle trees.

Whilst the glue sat drying we went to find some suitable photographs that would fit into the triangular shape. I needed to print them out wallet size if that is of any help. It still leaves some white in the background but depending on your image you may not have that to worry about.

I used the triangle tree to trace the shape around the photograph and then cut well within that line as I didn't want any overhanging pieces of white card.

Once the glue is all dry and the decorations are staying put, I flipped them over and glued the photograph to the back. I dug around in our card scraps for a piece suitable for the tree trunk and glued that on also.

Found a piece of ribbon and glued it in a loop at the top so we can hang it easily on the tree.

The next step is not necessary but we decorated a second tree and glued it to the back. We needed pegs to hold them altogether and left them overnight to dry.

The next morning we hung them on the tree. We love them!

I did think that we could have added a magnet to the back instead of the ribbon and they would be cute grandparents gifts.

Have you added your Christmas crafts to the Christmas Fun Link Up yet?









Linking this at TGIF  and the Holiday Kid Crafts

Pom Pom Christmas Garland

In continuing with our efforts for a handmade decorated tree,we put together some pom pom garland today to replace tinsel.

I needed something simple, that wasn't messy and quick to put together. This is what I came up with and best of all Fairy Princess did it all  :-)

A few bags of sparkly pom poms, needles and some fishing line.

Fairy Princess chose to work with a pattern using all four of the coloured pom poms.

Simply tie off the fishing line at one end, so the pom poms don't slide off and start threading. The one trick we found is to ensure you get the needle right through the center of the pom pom. You can tell the difference in the ones that aren't right in the centre as they move about the garland more easily.

The center of the pom pom is much more dense than the outer edges so after threading a couple it's quite easy to tell if you have it in the centre or not before you continue to push the needle all the way through.

We need to finish off a couple more to fill the tree but here's the first one, it's looks very pretty. Relatively subtle, very unlike the overbearing power of tinsel.

Totally loving our hand decorated tree. We completed a few more crafts today, I'll get those up when I can :-)

Don't forget to check out Christmas Fun, loads of ideas and be sure to add yours over there too.






I have linked this over at Sugarplum Creations and It's Playtime

Foamies Tree Decorations

We are certainly looking like we are going to achieve our target of a completely handmade tree this year. Especially when the kiddo's get into the craft box, unbeknowns to me and start churning out their own creations to hang on the tree.

These are christmas puffies, I guess you could call them, a bit of glue, pop sticks and some pipe cleaners and these look really cute hanging on the tree.

Simple, cute and made with love by little hands.

Don't forget to visit the Christmas Fun link up for ideas and to add your own posts.