Christmas mail

Happy Thursday everyone, i hope your week is going well. My daughter and i seem to be having a week full of play dates which is lovely...tomorrow i really must catch up on all those jobs!

The other night i was tinkering away in the craft room, and came up with this!

It was such a special time with my kids, writing to Father Christmas, so magical that i couldn't wait any longer to scrap it! no sketches or challenges used, just me , myself and my ideas.

Hopefully Father Christmas will have received his letter by now and will bring a nice toy on Christmas eve :o)

I  really must write my Christmas list now, to include things like a hand held hoover for the car, a veg steamer for the kitchen, a mini sewing machine for my layouts or a new mixer for baking...all highly exciting...but would make my day lol! oh, plus the spa, Ferrari, cruise round the world...!

what do you want for Christmas?!!

preparations

Hello and welcome to my new members :o), I will pop over and see your space too, I love linking up with people!

We love getting ready for Christmas in our house. It is almost more fun than the day itself. The anticipation, the yearly family traditions, the school nativity, and of course Father Christmas himself, HO HO HO!
With only 5 1/2 weeks to go & one pay day to go, this is what we have been up to these last two weeks...

The munchkins have written their letters to Father Christmas...very important if we don't want them to change their minds on present ideas 3 days before the event. That did happen last year!! One wants pink peppa wellies, the other a pirate ship...can you guess which is which lol! This yr was the first year my son actually wrote his letter without any help, so cute,  one for the scrapbook! ...(watch this space!). We posted our letters to the North Pole and believe they will have arrived by now for the elves to start making their toy.

On a more crafty note, my son has finished his entry to the school "Christmas colouring competition"...no peeking! I will put up his marvellous pic (i'm not biased obviously) after the event.

We have had our Christmas photo shoot, courtesy of moi, ready to go on the front of our Christmas Cards (watch this space). Can you guess what she is yet?!

And ....I am also in the middle of knitting our Christmas decorations. Very thrifty of me I thought, coldteaandsmellynappies.co.uk  would be impressed don't you think?!

I'm not entirely sure how I am going to use them yet...for the puddings I wondered about an afternoon game, (we have 9 for Christmas day) of "hunt the pud". They are hollow underneath so I could stuff them with a chocolate truffle or a little cling film wrap of sweets. The stockings are either the start of a garland for the fireplace or for on the tree to put chocolate coins in...

Next week is the Great British pudding bake off with my friends, when we'll make our own Christmas puds, yum! Well, how have you been getting ready for Christmas?

x

pumpkin madness

Hello Everyone!

Who had a great half term then? We did, and I didn't want it to end :o( !! We had just the right balance of catching up with jobs and having relaxing family time.

One of the fun things we did was a local pumpkin trail. We'd not been to one of these before. Most of the shops in the town had pumpkins in their windows and each had been given a name. The challenge was to find all the pumpkins, list the names and then enter a prize draw.

It was really good fun, the weather was sunny and the kids were on top form. The pumpkins were so creative, from Harry Potter to Humpty Dumpty.

I hope they do it again next year!

I am linking this layout up with http://www.lifepaperscrapbook.com/ as I used their fabulous sketch. Materials used: Bo Bunny Apple Cider collection and various stickers.

Hope you had a great half term too.

x

If i could have just one room meme

I've been tagged by the lovely Gina at Cold Tea & Smelly Nappies in her meme
http://www.coldteaandsmellynappies.co.uk/if-i-could-have-just-one-room/

"If I could have just one room"...Cor, this got me thinking! One room all to myself?! No kids? Wow, anything , even if its not a kid friendly place...?!

Well I would defiantly have to go for shabby chic lounge. A very impractical, white, cream, splash of purple, pretty place..... to sit, knit, read and slouch :o) Can I go there now please?!

http://www.pinterest.com/pieceoflittleme/lounge/

It would have to have a chaise longue, fresh scented flowers, a sunny gorgeous sea view ,candlesticks and lots of lovely knick-nak ornaments :o)

I can feel myself relaxing already! What kind of room would you have?
x

apple day jam scrapbooking

Good morning all, and its half term , yippee! Phew. We have survived our first ever half term at big school. I don't know who is more tired, me or the kids lol! Hopefully lots of fun times this week to photo and scrapbook.

Here is my latest layout. Its of my first ever jam making success! My first attempt at jam making, blackberry jam, solidified over night :o(. However, this apple day jam is still going strong and tasting yummy. Hooray! Made with apples fresh from a friends allotment.

Materials:

apple cider papers : Bo Bunny  2012

wooden tree : Hobby Craft

buttons

gems

punched leaves

borders and phrases: Bo Bunny

alphabets: Crate Paper and We R Memory Keepers

oven glove brads

Ranger pearls

Tim Holtz distress ink

Tools:

leaf punch

Techniques:

inking

tearing

punching

ranger pearls

I was inspired by the scrap365 sketch challenge :http://sketchbook365.blogspot.co.uk/ and have entered it into the competition.

I hope you like it

x

Apple Day

Hello!

So who celebrated Apple Day this Year then? Apple day is traditionally on October 21st. The first one being held in 1990 in Covent Garden, London.

We have done various things including National Trust events and Coast &Country side events which have included cider tasting, juice making, apple throwing games, apple story telling...etc but this year we decided to have our own apple weekend at home :o)

We have 2 apple trees in the garden but they are still too young to produce much fruit, (only 4 yrs old), but a friend had given me 3lb of cooking apples from her allotment so I thought i'd make some jams! You can see the results above. This is the first success I have had with jam (mine tend to solidify overnight) . Hurrah! I have even given one to a friend, so we shall see what the verdict is. 

We also had some old apples left in the fruit bowl so we did some apple painting and printing with them. The kids had great fun.

We combined our apple day/weekend with some conker and leaf hunting. We collected 123 conkers, that was good counting practice for the kids! We made leaf rubbings, conker animals, conker collages, conker rolling with paint and some other ideas from pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/pieceoflittleme/conkers/.

I love taking the kids outside for the weekends and helping them to have fun in nature. I think too many young kids seem to spend time indoors on computers or in front of the TV.

What did you do for apple day?

x

101 Uses for innocent big knit hats

Well, not quite 101 uses, but there are a few I can think of off the top of my head! I am looking forward to purchasing some hats to help raise money; wouldn't it be so funny to see your knitted hats at your local supermarket...not much chance of that I suppose!

At Knit & Natter last night we knitted/crocheted some more to send away. We now have 13. Not bad for the first year of participating I think. Whether you've knitted or not, please do buy a hat, you will be raising valuable money for Age UK which is a fantastic charity  http://www.ageuk.org.uk/.

So, what can you do with them once you've bought one?

Here's a fun list of ideas!

1. Use them as egg cosys for boiled eggs or easter eggs

2. Stuff them with cotton wool and play skittles with them with the kids.

3. Use as mini dolls hats

4. Fill with chocolates or sweets and put in the children's stockings at Christmas.

5. Decorate the top of your mug tree with them

6. Place one on the top of your kitchen roll holder

7. Get matching ones for bathroom shampoo and conditioner bottles

8. Put on the top of kids classroom water bottles

9. Brighten up your washing up liquid bottles with a fruity melon one

10. Buy several and make into a garland for the kids bedrooms

11. Put an "I Love You" message on one and pop the hat on your partners desk.

Have fun with your hats
x