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