Home-Made Christmas Cards

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Before The Boy was born I used to spend hours looking for the perfect Christmas cards which would complement my chosen wrapping paper and the theme of the year. Then along came a perfect little being who looked incredibly cute dressed up in a Christmas costume, and he would be duely photographed and the image printed onto the front of personalised Christmas cards. This year he's going to be three and a half at Christmas and I just can't do it to him anymore; so in addition to traditional Hallmark cards, he's going to be making cards for family this year.

Here are some very simple cards that your pre-schooler can make within a few minutes.

You'll need:

  • red and green card blanks
  • blue card blanks
  • white paint
  • green felt
  • sequins and stars
  • bauble card blanks
  • glue
  • ribbon
  • felt pens

I'm not going to do a ste-by-step guide because the photos really show how self-explanatory the cards are!

One tip: start making them now because pre-schoolers are not known for their ability to sit down for a few hours and make cards, then write them!

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'Counting Down To Christmas' is a craft bloggers link-up held each week in the eight weeks preceeding the big day itself. Each week we will be posting a different Christmas craft activity.

This week the co-hosts are Rainy Day Mum ~ Mummy Mummy Mum! ~ Life at the Zoo ~ Here Come the Girls ~ The Fairy and The Frog ~ Jennifer's Little World ~ Playful Learners ~ Making Boys Men

 This post contains sponsored links. The content is original, honest and uncontrived!

Home-Made Advent Calendar

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I know it's only the 1st of November, but in about three weeks time you'll be grateful that I started these posts early.

Advent: (n) The coming or arrival, especially of something extremely important.

For Christians, Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day where a candle on an Advent wreath is lit for each week leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

For most families nowadays, the word 'advent' used around the festive season conjures up chocolate calendars printed with their youngster's favourite television character, some may have a gorgeous 'traditional-style' wooden tree with 24 drawers in, allowing it to be reused each year. And yes, I said '24' because 'advent' means the 'approach of'. It's a way of marking the coming of Christmas Day, and as such should not have a 25th window. This practise of counting down each day was started by German Lutherans at the beginning of the 19th century. Not such a new tradition hey?

We've been making our own simple Advent calendar to use in a few weeks time when December starts.

You'll need:

  • coloured foam or card numbers
  • 24 boxes*
  • coloured, shredded tissue paper
  • ribbon*
  • 24 'treats'
  • cardboard
  • glue
  • gold paint
  • sequins*
  • scissors
  • paintbrush

Christmas crafts

Set out the numbers into a numberline up to 24.

Christmas crafts

Assemble the boxes.

Christmas crafts

Stick on the numbers to the front of the box.

christmas crafts

Place the shredded tissue paper and a treat inside each bag. (I've used a mixture of Christmas tree decorations and chocolate coins). Tie the handles together with a length of ribbon, long enough to tie off the hanging circles (30cm).

christmas crafts

Draw four circles with an inner circle in them, creating a hoop shape. Cut them out and stick two together. Once dried, paint both sides with gold and stick gold and silver sequins on.

Tie four lengths of ribbon to the first hoop. Cut four double length strips of ribbon and tie them to the second hoop. Gather all of the eight ends together and tie into a knot. This forms the loop to hang the calendar from. From the first hoop, suspend twelve of the boxes and from the second tie the other twelve. If you arrange this in a random order then it makes it more of a challenge to find the numbers.

christmas crafts

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'Counting Down To Christmas' is a craft bloggers link-up held each week in the eight weeks preceeding the big day itself. Each week we will be posting a different Christmas craft activity.

This week, the co-hosts are Rainy Day Mum ~ Mummy Mummy Mum! ~ Life at the Zoo ~ Here Come the Girls ~ The Fairy and The Frog ~ Jennifer's Little World ~ Playful Learners ~ Making Boys Men.

ShowOff ShowCase: The One About Christmas

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As a final acknowledgement to the festivities, the theme for ShowOff ShowCase this week is:

The One About Christmas

Link up your posts, new or old, about your festivities or preparations and share the blog love.

Don't forget to add the badge to the bottom of the post so people can revisit the linky easily, and please take the time to visit some of the blogs linked (or it doesn't really work very well!)

ShowOff ShowCase

 

Our Best Christmas Ever!

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It occurred to me that I haven't blogged about our Christmas Day yet. It's not going to be of interest to many, but is to me.

Normally, Mr. TheBoyandMe gets up first with The Boy and gives him breakfast as this is part of his time with him. However, Christmas Day is special so while The Boy and I played with the iPod and books in our bedroom, Mr. TBAm showered and dressed. Then he took him downstairs for yoghurt while I showered and dressed. I pegged it downstairs and we sat and ate yummy pastries while opening our stockings, all three of them from Father Christmas. The Boy was fascinated that the big man himself had indeed eaten most of the mince pie, but there was disapproval in his voice when he discovered that not all the milk had gone!

Traditional presents in his stocking

Following this, and having had the titbits to keep us going until our proper cooked breakfast, we went into the dining room and his face was a complete picture when he saw the tree and all the presents!

After opening the presents from Father Christmas, we settled down to eat a hearty breakfast. I'd even been to the butchers' and bought proper sausages and bacon for Mr. TheBoyandMe. We wolfed it down, and then all finished opening our presents from each other. I was rather chuffed to discover Mr. TBAM has bought me a voucher from Photobox so I can make a 365 photobook! He also generously gave me a digital photoframe (as I've wanted one for years) and, this is the best bit, a waffle-maker! (I'd harped on two months ago about one but he seriously vetoed it, little did I know what he was planning!). I bought him an electric razor, the usual Private Eye annual, lots of other bits and pieces and a new digital camera (his had broken a few months ago). We normally set a £50 limit, but I suspect we both blew it quite seriously!

The Boy had great fun opening the rest of his toys and hasn't stopped playing with them ever since!

We had a rather scrummy lunch of: deep fried brie for starters; four-bird roast/asparagus & craberry risotto filo parcel, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed swede and sweet potato, brussel sprouts, roasted carrots and parsnips, creamed spinach; followed by christmas pudding two hours later.

Presents from Nana and Grandad followed, a little kip for The Boy, the Queen's Speech, a kip for Grandad, dishwasher loaded, cheese and biscuits on table, groaning bellies, bed for The Boy, more washing up, television, playing with 'toys' and finally bed.

The look on our little boy's face at every moment throughout the day was magical. It has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the best Christmas ever!

Christmas Starts Here

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It's Christmas Eve and we've settled down for our 'new' tradition. A few years ago, someone said in front of me that you can't make a tradition, they just happen. I disagree! Somewhere along the line a thought occurs that this would be a nice thing to do each year, and so this is where they can start.

And so we have started one.

The Boy and I made our Christmas cupcakes.

During his nap, I made our gingerbread house and decorated it. In the future, he will help me.

We've been tracking Father Christmas on the Norad website all day.

We've finished some last minute decorations.

Now, we've settled down in the living room with a picnic on our laps, to watch the best children's Christmas film of them all! Polar Express is a must see at this time of year, and I defy anyone not to be filled with the Christmas spirit watching it. It's been digitally remastered (and in 3D no less) and is a modern classic!

Once this has finished, we'll be hanging our stocking on the mantelpiece for Father Christmas to fill and leaving him a mince pie, glass of milk and a carrot (for Rudolph) on the fire-guard.

Once The Boy has gone to bed, then I will be wrapping his presents, filling his Christmas sack and placing it under the Christmas tree. While I'm doing this I'll be watching 'The Most Wonderful Time of The Year' and consuming a sneaky glass of Baileys or two. I'd normally be watching 'Love, Actually' but I did that last Saturday.

What's your Christmas Eve tradition?

Christmas Cupcakes

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We haven't done any cooking together in a few weeks, and as I had some pretty cupcake cases and stencils that I wanted to try, we dutifully washed our hands, donned our aprons and got down to business this morning!

Adapting a basic fairy cake mix, I added nutmeg, cocoa powder and raisins to make it taste a little more Christmassy, along with a splosh of oil to keep it moist and a little espresso coffee powder to give tang against the sweetness.

The Boy loves mixing everything together and is getting very good at creaming the butter and sugar, then adding the eggs, a little flour, whisking and then adding the oil. It got a little stiff with the flour so I had to give him a hand. Bung in the raisins, cocoa etc and Bob's your mother's brother!

Then while they are cooking for 12 minutes at 200°C, of course what better excuse for a little bit of water play than doing the washing up?

I iced the cakes with white chocolate buttercream and then we used some nifty Christmas stencils from Asda and chocolate poweder to decorate them. Scrummilicious!

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I'm linking this up to the following fabulous linkies:

I Love Cake

The Crazy Kitchen

CreatingChristmas

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