Christmas Fun 2010 - Week Four

Christmas Day is nearly here.

This is the last week of Christmas Fun for the year.

The linky will remain open for a few days after Christmas so you can all share your Christmas Day activities.

Please link up below.

Christmas Fun - B's Christmas Trees

Remember when B created his little papercraft Ferris Wheel and Fountain, which were both completely initiated and finished by him, with zilch input from me!

Well he's been at it again, this time though, spreading a little Christmas Cheer.

Sorry, the photo isn't great, but how gorgeous is his little Christmas Tree. Once again it is only about 7cms high (not sure what it is with the miniature size of his creations) but it is complete with presents and a tree skirt and looks delightful on our entrance hall table Christmas display.

He also put together this Lego Tree, well what's a Christmas without Lego anyway! It stands roughly the same size as the papercraft one.

Aren't they just the cutest. :-)

What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to lately? Don't forget to link up each week between now and Christmas and share all of your fun Christmas ideas. Crafts, Recipes, Handmade Gifts, Traditions and anything else you enjoy this time of year.
This weeks Christmas Fun Link Up can be found here. Check the Christmas Fun link up for this week for more great ideas and to add your links.

Christmas Fun - The Nutcracker Story, Craft, Christmas Window and Animation

We read the story of the Nutcracker this week. It seems to be the year for the Nutcracker.

Last year we decided to make the journey into the city to see the annual department stores' Christmas Window Display, the children had a great time and so we have continued with what may become a new tradition for us and ventured in (by train this time) to see what the window had in store for us this year.

The Nutcracker.

This photo isn't great, the sun was still up (just) and the windows had a lot of glare. This is the Candy Land scence.

Whilst shopping for a few last minute christmas items we stumbled across some wooden nutcracker dolls on clearance. At 50% off I couldn't walk past them. So the children spent the afternoon painting their very own Nutcrackers. They are a great size too!

We then went hunting for other Nutcracker things in our christmas box. We found a disney dvd that had a short nutcracker animation and also watched this one on you tube.






Plus we found some printables online, this one at Printables 4 Kids are paper dolls to be coloured and these over at Kid Sapiens are full colour.

What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to lately? Don't forget to link up each week between now and Christmas and share all of your fun Christmas ideas. Crafts, Recipes, Handmade Gifts, Traditions and anything else you enjoy this time of year.
This weeks Christmas Fun Link Up can be found here. Check the Christmas Fun link up for this week for more great ideas and to add your links.

Christmas Fun - Folded Magazine Tree

This is thanks to our very talented Art Teacher who came along and ran an 'Art in the Park' workshop with the kids. A pretty straight forward paper folding exercise, but can be a little tedious and time consuming. It took B a full hour just for the folding alone, so I would recommend this one for older children and those with more patience. B aged 9 completed this entirely on his own, although was a little over it by the end.

Supplies are simple - a magazine, craft glue, spray paint and a few tree decoration.

Start with the cover of the magazine and fold the page inwards forming a triangle as shown above.

Now fold the same page again, in towards the spine, the neater and more accurate the folds the better the end result will be. Yes there will be a piece of the page hanging down over the bottom of the magazine.

Simply fold that piece up on top of the folded page. Glue it in placee (the small folded piece that you just folded up that is) if wish, although not neccessary. Personally I would, but only use a small dab of glue you, don't want it seeping through and sticking magazine pages together.

Continue on with the same folding technique for EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. IN. THE. MAGAZINE. This is where you need some time and patience. The thicker the magazine the more folding required. Finally, when you feel like you simply cannot fold one more page,

You will end up with something resembling this. Already looks pretty cool doesn't it! You will need a small amount of glue to hold the two outside covers together.

Grab your can of spray paint in any chosen colour. Obviously in this instance a christmas colour such as gold, silver, red or green would look great. And spray, making sure you get in between the pages of the magazine. Remember to do this outdoors and watch where the breeze is blowing otherwise you may end up with overspray all over you!

Then you are free to decorate in anyway you wish. A grouping of these would look really nice as a centrepiece.

What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to lately? Don't forget to link up each week between now and Christmas and share all of your fun Christmas ideas. Crafts, Recipes, Handmade Gifts, Traditions and anything else you enjoy this time of year.
This weeks Christmas Fun Link Up can be found here. Check the Christmas Fun link up for this week for more great ideas and to add your links.
 

Christmas Fun 2010 - Week Three

Wow all of these ideas have my head spinning. Really all of the crafts, fun, activities and traditions are amazing.

Thanks to all of you for linking up and spreading the word, what a wonderful resource for ideas for next Christmas.You are all such fun clever crafty mamma's!

Are you ready for Week Three? What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to this week?

Please share with us by adding a link to your blog post below. Don't forget to link back to us here in your post so others can find all of the super cool ideas you mamma's always come up with!

Actually don't forget to check the original post for all of the Christmas Fun details and to grab the button code.

Please make sure you are linking back to Christmas Fun in each of your posts. Any non Christmas links will be removed. Thanks for participating!

Can't wait to see all of fun!

Christmas Fun - Sweet Treats

Each year we always decorate and eat BEFORE christmas some sweet treats. Some years it is more than others. This is a year of less. Since we are heading away on holidays before Christmas and knowing how much sweet stuff the kids will consume whilst away I decided to keep Christmas treats low key this year.

They all decoarted giant Christmas Tree Gingergbread Cookies. We cheated wth store bought ones, but they were huge, so that made up for the lack of homemade ;-)

And decoarted our Gingerbread House. This is an all afternoon affair and one we saved for when C was napping. It was nice to do something with just the bigger kids.

Now we are just hoping that it will stay intact until Christmas Day.

What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to lately? Don't forget to link up each week between now and Christmas and share all of your fun Christmas ideas. Crafts, Recipes, Handmade Gifts, Traditions and anything else you enjoy this time of year.
This weeks Christmas Fun Link Up can be found here.

Christmas Fun - Ornaments Show and Tell

Jolanthe is hosting an Ornaments Show and Tell and it got me thinking about our tree and in all honesty our ornaments (bar a few) have no real special meaning, except that they adorn the tree and look all pretty with the lights shining on them.(sad but true)

This is one tradition that I personally haven't really encountered or heard people talk of until I started blogging and saw it mentioned last year. Is that an Aussie thing or not? I have no idea!

I've been reading the posts over at the Ornament Show and Tell and some of them brought a tear to my eye with the stories they hold. They really are special treasures and hold real meaning to their families.

So whilst our tree looks all pretty and could nearly pass as a department store tree (I did say nearly the decoarting skills certainly aren't that good ;-) ) it doesn't have that sentimental factor. Until now, that is!

I remembered that on our honeymoon (10 years ago) I saw these adorable little hand made, fabric ornaments in a store in Malayasia. In fact I can still picture seeing them in the window now. At the time I knew that we had a small hand me down tree but no ornaments back home, and it was only a few short weeks until Christmas. These were light enough to carry home with us and filled our little tree just nicely.

Over recent years they have remiained in their box, especially since we purchased our large tree with those 'department store' decorations. Our honeymoon ones just didn't look as grand anymore. mmmmm Christmas Tree snob or what!?!

Not this year. This year they are on our tree and looking at them brings back all of those wonderful memories so thank you all of you blogging mamma's for sharing this one tradition with our family. It will be one that we will continue to grow and build on in our home now too.

What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to lately? Don't forget to link up each week between now and Christmas and share all of your fun Christmas ideas. Crafts, Recipes, Handmade Gifts, Traditions and anything else you enjoy this time of year.
This weeks Christmas Fun Link Up can be found here.

Christmas Fun - Shrinky Dinks

This is the first time B and K have experienced the wonder of watching those little pieces of plastic, shrivel, curl up and shrink in the oven.

Only to flatten back out again, with colours that are so superbly intense and shiny.

These were a kit and a simple colouring and cutting activity, but the joy of seeing them in the oven was worth it. We hole punched them all before they went into the oven and would look great on a mini tree or with some beads on a christmas bracelet. I don't think either of them have decided what they will do with them yet.

What Christmas Fun have you been getting up to lately? Don't forget to link up each week between now and Christmas and share all of your fun Christmas ideas. Crafts, Recipes, Handmade Gifts, Traditions and anything else you enjoy this time of year.
This weeks Christmas Fun Link Up can be found here.

Summer Holiday Journalling

Free Printable Summer Holiday and Vacation Journal Pages

We are packing our bags, slapping on our hats and sunscreen, gathering our tickets to head off on summer holidays. Please, please, please give us some sunshine, we really need it.

I decided to put together some quick Summer Holiday/Vacation Journal Pages for the children to complete. They are relatively simple in nature as I didn't want to dictate to them what information to include. I want their memories to be theirs, not what I have asked them to remember.

I have included a small amount of clipart and will also take along some stickers that they can decorate the Summer Holiday/Vacation Journal Pages with.

These will be great for an end of day activity or if some quiet time is needed or dare I even mention it, if we do get rain aahhh!!!

Each page is a double, so there is enough in this file for Two Printable Summer Holiday/Vacation Journals.

There are a couple of pages to complete during the days before we leave, the Cover Page, In My Suitcase I Packed, Send Postcards To and On Holidays I Would Like To (in fact that one might be good to do at the airport whilst we are hanging around waiting to board the plane)

Then there are a few variations on Things We Did Today pages, plus a page to draw a Map of the Holiday place, since my kids love to create maps. I will also take colours and maybe even some watercolours so they can draw a Holiday Picture or two.

I want to allow the children to choose how much or how little writing they do in their journals so the main pages are blank, but I have included some lined writing sheets (in full page and half page sizes) that can be glued to the main pages if the children wish to write on them.

I've printed the journal pages on slightly heavier card, have copies of the clip art ready to go, stickers, glue, pencils and any other smaller supplies they might need all packed and ready to take with us.

If you would like a copy of the Printable Summer Holiday/Vacation Journal Pages you can download them by clicking here.