Homemade decorations

With the kids getting excited about Christmas coming we've been digging out a few favourite decorations from storage before we go into full decorating mode, including these red glass candle holders and string of pretty lights on balsa wood circles from Ikea. And we've also made a few homemade decorations lately.



Inspired by the projects in this newsletter, and many others on all those great craft blogs out there, last week we made our first handmade advent calendar.

We stamped the Christmas tree (getting tired of that one!) onto the fronts of small envelopes, then stamped the date, added some fine red glitter, put a small peg onto each one then hung them on a length of string. I suddenly realised late last night that it was the last day of the month and at least one small person would be very excited about opening the first one this morning. It was my job to fill them and I found this the only non-fun part of the activity. I couldn't think of anything to put in them apart from lollies and chocolates, which would have been fine with the kids of course, but not so fine with me. I already feel like I spend a considerable amount of time listening to repeated requests for treats. Does anyone have any ideas? Maybe a handwritten note promising some sort of activity? Hmm, sounds like too much prep and follow up. Oh dear, I can see the lollies now...



I'm hoping advent calendar making will turn into an annual event, as it was fun making it with my big girl (the littlies are too little to tackle this one), and maybe next year's can be more purposeful and less sweet!