I love you to pieces

We made some lovely little homemade gifts for my children to give to their grandparents. They painted jigsaw pieces red and we stuck them on a canvas we had painted blue with the phrases 'I love you to pieces' :)

Gingerbread collage

Playing with gloopy glue is just the best!!! We  had lots of fun decorating some paper gingerbread men with random bits and bobs.

Homemade glue recipe

1 cup of flour 

 ⅓ cup of salt 

1 ½ cups of water 

1 tsp of vinegar 

Mix the flour and salt in a sauce pan.
Add 1 cup of water and mix into a thick paste without any lumps
Add the rest of the water and stir until the paste is smooth.
Add the vinegar and put on medium heat until it thickens.
Cool and transfer to a air tight container like a jar.

The glue will keep for a few days at room temp or a  month if stored in the fridge.

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Hanging Reindeers

I love making these cute little hanging decorations with the kids. They ooze personality and are just adorable little keepsakes.

First of all cut a circle about the size of a side plate out of some brown card.

Fold in half and cut along the fold. One half will be used to make the cone for the body and the other to make the reindeer head. 

Take a piece of wool or twine roughly about 6 times the length of the card and fold it in half. Make sure the loop at the top is long enough to hang onto a tree or door handle (take in to consideration that a head needs to be stuck onto the top also) and the two ends need to be longer than the curved edge in order to stick feet onto the ends. Place a knot just below the straight edge as shown in the picture above.

Roll the card into a cone and glue the edges together to make the body. (making sure the knot is secure under the point so it can't pop back through)

Draw a head on the remaining semi circle, glue to the top of the cone and add accessories.  We used a bit of lighter coloured card for the tummy and some red card for a nose. We also attached googly eyes and tied some extra thread onto the bottom of the hoop to attach some bells.

We also made one out of felt :) Below are a few we made last year. These were more basic but still looked fab!

Operation Christmas Child

We made our shoe box today for Operation Christmas Child.

There is still 3 more days to send in your boxes, for more details check out their website: http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/

Homemade Christmas decorations

I spent the evening hand stitching some Christmas decorations :3