Merry Christmas break

Well, I have been totally swamped these last few weeks.  When, oh when, will I learn to follow my own excellent organising advice to get things done ahead of time!!!  Anyway, I have been very light on posts lately for various reasons I will expand on later and I am flying back to Australia for Christmas in approx. 10 hours!  Woo hoo!!  Home for Christmas.  Really looking forward to it and praying for cooler than 40 degree heat while I am there.

So, a big fat MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone.  I have no idea if I will get a chance to post anything for the next four weeks so if I don't, see you back here in mid January.  Chau!

Joy to the world

Here is a little ornament I have made as part of a gift for someone.  I am managing a couple of homemade touches with some store bought gifts too.  This ornament is made from air dry clay (rolled out and cut out with a cookie cutter) which I poked the lettering into with a skewer and then let dry.  After it was hard I painted it white, sprinkled glitter on while the paint was wet and filled in the holes with red paint.  I then used red and white bakers twine to hang it.  I totally forgot to take photos for a tutorial for this so will do that with my next ornament.  Don't you love this font?  I first saw it at Chez Larsson where she used it in a great project on a plain white cushion (which I totally plan to copy very soon).  It is called superpoint from www.dafont.com.  Which reminds me, if you haven't had a look at Chez Larsson, you are missing out big time.  Get over there and check out all her great stuff!  Benita is the queen of organising so of course I love it.

Quick chair update

Outside of all the advent fun (I will get to that later) I managed to squeeze in a quick Ikea hack.  Well, half a hack.  I added some scrapbook paper to the seat of this plain kiddy chair with Mod Podge (my new BFF).  This photo shows how the chair looked before on the left and the right one has the paper obviously.  I love it and will do the other one tomorrow hopefully.  Simple but effective.  Here is a detail of the paper - how cute is this??

So, our advent days so far have included a family movie night, going out for ice-cream, visiting a big Christmas decoration store and choosing their annual decoration, visiting friends and we plan on heading to a small science museum on Thursday.  Tomorrow I might do the first treasure hunt for them.  I am guessing that would be preferable than a piece of paper announcing a dentist visit tomorrow, ha ha.

Advent days 1 and 2

I love this idea over at The Crafty Crow.  She shows what Christmas book they are reading every day for advent and the craft they did that day.  I thought I would try and do this on craft days too.  Although, after searching through my kids' extensive library I could only find 3 Christmas books!  That is not going to keep us going for long!  So the book feature will include many non-Christmas ones too obviously.

For Advent day 1 we didn't read collectively but the craft was to make gift cards for the teachers and I didn't worry about taking photos of that one (this activity was only for Princess E as Lord A is not at school yet - he got a chocolate instead).

For Advent day 2 we read 'Madeline's Christmas' (by Ludwig Bemelmans) and our activity for the day was family art night.  I got this idea from The Artful Parent and she got the idea from SouleMama.  Basically I just put a very large piece of paper on the dining table after dinner with coloured pencils and felt pens and then everyone took a turn naming a theme to draw from.  We had Christmas symbols, oceans, trees, flowers, dogs, funny scenes (that was an easy one! lol) and rain.  The kids particularly loved seeing Daddy drawing and it was a fun activity to do together.

Now, what to do today.....

Day one of Advent!

Well, I retrieved my advent boxes from last year and surprised the kids with them today.  Now I just have to think of all the activities to go in them!  Here is my starting list:

- Make ice-cream
- Visit a different beach for shell collecting fun
- Treasure hunt (as in put the first clue in the box and have them find a little treasure somewhere in the house/yard)
- Make Christmas decorations for our Christmas tree branches (some dead branches I ripped off a shrub in our yard - I am not setting up the big tree this year as we won't be here for the day)
- Go to a fancy cafe for afternoon tea (hmmm, still thinking on this one....)
- A picnic in a park/at the beach
- Themed country food days (only a couple - don't know if I could organise more than that)
- Make a cup and button game (suspend a ribbon with a button on one end from the bottom of a cup and they have to try  and catch the button in the cup)
- Various baking exploits (incl. gingerbread men)
- Go bowling
- Visit friends

 and probably lots of recycled ideas from last year.  What do you do for an Advent calendar?

....and the Winner is

ZACHSGRAN!

Congratulations to Zachsgran (as well as Zach!) - commenter number 6.  I will send you an email today to get your details.  Watch out for more giveaways here because your chances are very good!!  Ha ha!

Thanks CSN stores for offering this giveaway too.  I am sure young Zach will enjoy the Doctor's kit immensely!

p.s.  I used Random.org for the draw but can't work out how to get the picture of the number generator on to my blog!  Any hints would be appreciated.

Giveaway in time for Christmas!

WIN ME!

Yay, a giveaway in time for Christmas!  I don't know about you but I do a reasonable amount of my shopping online because of my location.  It is quicker, cheaper, easier and the selection is better for where I live (no offence Uruguay!).

I was recently contacted by the lovely people from AllModern (CSN Stores) who have offered to send one of my US or Canadian readers this super cute toy Doctor's bag that I think would be a great present for some little person you might know.  I love that this one is made from all environmentally friendly products too.  If you want to skip my rundown of fun things I found go to the end of the post for the giveaway rules!

You should see some of their other cute kid's stuff.  How about this gorgeous and simple little Noah's Ark giraffe by Koko Company?  So adorable!

This Groovy musical instrument set by Wonderworld is adorable too.

I really like this narrow to wide puzzle by kid O.

and don't get me started on how much I love this 'Sparrow' storage bin by DwellStudio.

But, I have saved the best for almost last.  While I have been looking around their AllModern stores I came across THESE.  They are Herman Miller Limited Edition Walnut Tops.  These weren't in the kids section by the way!  Oh. my. gosh.  I LOVE THEM.  Seriously, I want them very badly.  Just because.  Saving my pennies for these!

Last, but not least, you should go and check out one of CSN's other online stores http://www.holidaydecorationsdirect.com/.  My tree theme for the last few years has been red and white pretty much exclusively (until I get sick of it - no sign of it abating just yet).  I thought these (yes, these, because I always buy at least 3 of each design!) might look nice in my collection.  Isn't this gorgeous?

Red Gingerbread Frosted House Ornament

Aaaaanyway, as you can see, I was quite impressed with their selections and I could go on and on with items I found that I liked.  Let's get down to the giveaway!

The giveaway is open only to US and Canadian readers (sorry everyone else!).  Shipping is included.  If you would like to win the toy Doctor's set just leave a comment here between now and Sunday evening (comments close at 9pm my - Uruguay - time which is 6pm New York time).  Check the time for your time zone!  It will be earlier in the day for you if you live towards the west coast.  Make sure you leave a contact email if it isn't in your profile.  The winner will be selected by Random.org. and will be announced on Monday, 31st November.

Disclaimer:  I have not received ANY compensation by way of money or products for posting this giveaway.  I was just happy to pass on a freebie for my readers.  I do not have personal experience of shopping with this company but plan to in the near future!

Christmas sacks

This is how I am going to be using my printable Christmas paper this year for little gifts for my friends (maybe I will stuff them with some decorated cookies).  I made the little sack just like my gift bag with one change.  I didn't bother folding the top edge of paper down to reinforce for hole punching as I just folded down the top twice using the peg to secure (like a little lunch sack).  I then cut out a tag shape and used my snowflake stamp.  I love how these turned out!  My other ideas include card making (of course), present wrapping, printing on card to make gift tags, ball ornaments and paper lantern ornaments.  I might even try to make those gorgeous little origami boxes I have seen around the place.  I would love to see other ideas for the paper too so make sure you let me know how you use it.