Crafty

I was blessed with a number of plants this Christmas.  The Poinsettias came in regular brown pots and I didn't have anything to put them in, so I've decorated them all Christmassy.

This one was in a basket, but I thought it needed jazzing up a bit.

The next two came in rather nice pots, so I didn't need to change anything.  Does anyone know what the white flowers are in these two?  The flowers in the second pot are much bigger but seem to be of the same variety.

Chatterbox is upstairs with the flu, poor thing she was so feverish last night, I was a little worried.  She is still hot this morning but not as bad and is a little more cheerful.

Squidge has been busy in the meantime.

She is teaching herself to knit here.  It involves a great deal of getting very cross and frustrated and I'm not allowed to help! :)

I'll get my latest two Advent posts up later on today.  I must get on we have a dentist appointment.

Homemade countdown calendar and update on kitchen

I made a Christmas countdown calendar today.  It's stuck to our mirror in the living room. I had some blue card, which had been given me a while ago.  I LOVE the colour and the texture is great.  I created a frame effect by putting some purple paper bordered with silver paint pen and then more blue card on top. You can't tell by the photograph but it has a bit of a decoupage effect as I used sticky pads rather than glue to stick everything together.  The pudding is a clip art picture I found on the 'net.  I cut it out of brown paper and then used white paper for the white sauce, pink paper for the plate and of course red and green paper for the holly.  There is a touch of green glitter glue on the large holly and it is all finished off with the silver paint pen.

We haven't put up our Christmas decorations yet.  When do you put up yours?

~oOo~

The decorating (painting and papering) in the kitchen is finished now - yay!  I'm just waiting to be sure the paint is dry before I hang the curtains.  We had a bit of a set-back though.  We have laminate wood floors in the kitchen.  Yesterday after running the washing machine I heard a squelch noise as I walked across the floor.  Water seeped up between the laminate planks.  I called my Dad (hubs was at work) and we discovered that we've had a drip from a pipe behind the washer for a while.  Under the flooring water was everywhere.  It's warped all the planks.

I could have cried.  I'd finally got the kitchen looking nice and then the floor is ruined.  *Sigh*  I will have to put up with concrete floor now until we can sort it out.

BUT - God is with us, He cares for us.  Despite my homemaker despair, I know that I have everything in Him.  He is in control.

Lol, the fact is the flooring we had down was the remnants of flood damaged flooring from Hubs' parents' house.  They had a flood a few years ago and we got all the pieces that weren't damaged. I thought that was quite funny that those that escaped their flood were damaged by our own little flood!

22 Days 'til Christmas!

Christmas is coming,
The goose is getting fat
Please put a penny
In the old man's hat.

If you haven't got a penny,
A ha'penny will do,
If you haven't got a ha'penny,
Then God bless you.

Christmas card designs

My church asked me to design a Christmas card that we can send out with service times on. At the time of designing the preaching had been all about the sacrifice that Jesus made leaving His throne in Heaven to be born in a manger (basically a feeding trough). That He came to suffer and die and we can forget this in all the glitz and cosiness of a modern Christmas.

The first card that I designed is the one you can see on the right with the baby Jesus in the hay but shown on the cross - obviously not nailed to the cross but shown with the cross as the background to show what He was born to do. But this was after some consideration deemed a little too sensitive and could be misunderstood. So I then very quickly designed the second one which shows the baby Jesus in the feeding trough or manger. I tried to get the effect of a stone trough (based on some pictures I found of 1st century feeding troughs)...but I am not entirely happy with the aspect of the baby in the manger. It doesn't quite look right to me. But I didn't have time to correct the picture as they needed printing.

The Like Sunshine in the Home is obviously not emblazoned across the originals! :)

The Bible text is from the NIV John 6:38  "For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me".  I didn't add the verse this was done on the computer at church, but I think it looks good and it's a wonderful scripture.

Autumn activities and traditions

We made Autumn box gardens. It was Squidge who insisted we made these, she'd got the idea from one of her library books. Squidge and I had lots of fun collecting all the leaves and twigs and whatnot. Once Chatterbox saw Squidge's box she wanted to make one too!







Perhaps this will become a new autumn tradition.

Speaking of autumn traditions, when I was younger me and my mum used to make Jack O'Lanterns with swedes (no I don't mean Swedish people I mean rutabagas which are known as swedes (swedish turnip) over here!). This is the first year I've bought pumpkins. I thought they'd be solid like swedes, so I planned to make soup or whatever with the innards. So I was very surprised to find they are pretty much hollow! The Jack O'Lantern is a product of an old Irish folklore tale (well as far as I know it is!) :) In case you're wondering, I know the Jack O'Lantern is now associated with Halloween, but we just made these for fun.



Another Autumn tradition is the game of conkers. We collected loads after church from the horse chestnut tree across the road from church. It's very hard to collect conkers in heels! We used some to decorate the garden boxes and we saved some for the game. Hubs is going to get us some string.




Lovely and shiny aren't they? Horse chestnut isn't edible. You know I've never had sweet chestnut!

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

Rainy day

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's been a grey dreary day. The rain has not ceased to fall since early morning. But there's something lovely about sitting indoors in a warm house with a cosy lamp on. Fussing a dozing cat whilst reading. I've also cleaned Chatterbox's room and posted a letter. We then caught up on some school homework and reading. After lunch it was time for the rainy day stalwart of every mother - painting.

I LOVE this sort of day.

We painted rocks and eggs. I tried to get the egg out of the shell by piercing a hole in both ends of the egg and blowing. Firstly I find that a bit yukky and had to spray the egg first with antibacterial spray (obsessive me) and then I blew as hard as I could. When I started to see stars and everything was turning black I decided to just make a bigger hole in the bottom of the egg and shake the stuff out! It's OK. We'll just arrange the eggs so you can't see the hole. :)

Chatterbox's stone

The Finished products:

Some more painting:

by Chatterbox

by Squidge

Squidge (age 6) is very good at painting. Here is her 'Monet' picture done at school:

Here are Chatterbox's 'Monet' paintings also done at school when she was 6:


Aren't they clever? I should start a gallery, lol.

Pom poms

How to make pom poms...

Use thick card from a cardboard box. To create neat circles you can use a compass or do what I did, I drew around a tin of plum tomatoes and used a 2p coin for the middle

Start with the wool pointing outwards from the centre and make sure you manicure your nails before taking close up photos! :)

Just keep on wrapping in wool.

Do not threaten your cat with wool, they WILL attack.

Once you can't really wrap much more wool around the card cut carefully around the edge

Take a length of wool and tie tightly in a knot between the card circles. This is to hold the shape of the pom pom and stop bits dropping off.

Remove the card circles carefully and voilà!

A fun project for little fingers.