Day to Day

Christmas Eve.

 

I thought I'd pop back in to load up some photos from our Christmas gift opening tonight.  There has been great excitement all afternoon and tonight Bella was finding it especially difficult to get to sleep - around 10pm she was still wide awake in bed.  It's just gone 11pm now and it's awfully quiet down the other end of the house, so I'm hoping she's sound asleep and dreaming of all things Christmas.

Well, I'd better pop up this post and snuggle into bed myself -  no doubt we'll all be up at the crack of dawn.  Merry Christmas! 

The Christmas elf.

 

Introducing the little Christmas elf.  I really didn't have time to make this costume.  Bella announced on Saturday night that she desperately wanted to be an elf and asked if I could make her an outfit.  We'd had a full on day of baking and crafting, so the answer was no.  She went into meltdown mode, crying and sobbing explaining that she had wanted one the day before but forgot to tell me and how cross she was feeling with herself for not speaking up sooner. 

I explained that sometimes there just isn't room to squeeze everything in and talked about all the fab festive things we'd been doing over the day.  Finally there were smiles again and Bella appeared an hour later with her own costume:

I should have taken a photo of the back of this costume - she cut the top up (permission was asked first) and laced it all up the back with shoelaces. Hilarious. 

She still ached for me to sew her a costume though, so the next morning I found some leftover lime green felt in the cupboard, red felt scraps, Christmas jingle bells, red pom poms and whipped this up for her. I do mean whipped up too - pretty much no neat straight seams anywhere to be seen.  We revamped a pair of scuffed shoes with a hot glue gun and some red pom poms too - they made cute elf shoes.

 

The completed outfit was met with a truck of load of "I love it, thank you so, so much mummy"

She wore it all day Sunday and it hasn't been back on her since.  But, who cares right??!  There was so much excitement when it was finished and maybe one day she'll tell her children about the day Mum made her an elf suit and how excited she was when it was finished. This really sums up why I craft - a love of making special gifts for others and seeing the enjoyment when they receive something handmade.

I might not be back again until after the new year, so I hope you all have a lovely Christmas.  Thank you very much for your kind comments throughout the year and for stopping by and reading - it always astounds me how many people are reading my little old blog.  

Stay safe, Melxx

Cousins @ Christmas.

We had a pre Christmas dinner on Sunday at Bonnie & Oscar's house.  I sewed the elf costume that Bella is wearing in the morning before we went - more photos later, it has cute pom poms and bells along the bottom edge and we revamped some toe scuffed shoes with pom poms too. 

Anyhow,jJust a quick post tonight - more tomorrow :)

 

Oh Christmas tree + Blythe Christmas.

I have a teeny weeny Christmas tree display happening this year.  I was going to add a couple more fabric trees to it, but last night stumbled across THESE and decided that I needed one to pop on the wall behind the trees. 

Mine's a little different - I used gauze for the tree, beading for the baubles & blanket stitched the edge:

 

 

Then Bella and I worked on some special Christmas items for her Blythe doll (Ruby).  Rich still hasn't quite finished Ruby's doll house, so she's been slumming it on the floor in Bella's room - she has her own little corner.

We wrapped presents for Ruby to pop under her tree too - Bella sewed the teddy bear herself & the necklace was part of a discarded decoration.  There was also some paper bunting to be sewn:

Ruby's tree is holding little felted balls that Bella and I made together last summer.

It still wasn't feeling quite Christmassy enough though, so I whipped up a festive bed cover for her too.  I used some more of the my super cute fabric from Retro Mummy.

I think she's ready for Christmas now!  Not long to go either - just 6 sleeps left.

Shopping.

Today we went shopping.  Not just your ordinary, everyday kinda shopping.  Shopping for a porta-loo (porta-potty) ready for our summer camping.  That's exciting stuff when you're used to using a fly ridden drop toilet, usually containing a mosquito or two (or in summer, twenty million of the suckers).  There was also a whole lot of begging from the kids to buy everything else in the store - including canoes, boats and every piece of camping equipment known to mankind.

They settled for a new winter hat (for Bella) reduced to $5, a sweet (and on sale) new camping chair for Bella because she's grown out of the old one, t-shirt for James (bargain $15) and the amazing porta-loo.  Roll on camping!

After lunch there was a little present exchange between Bella and her best friend, some afternoon stitching (Bella's own hand drawn bear design) and a double batch of rum balls.  A great first day of the holidays!

P.S.  Sorry - no Christmas craft today, tomorrow with fingers crossed.

School is over.

School is over until mid February! Hooray!

We had lots of sweet treasures sent home - reindeer mask, handmade goodness for the tree, school books to sort through all in a sweet bag to hold everything.

 

And while Bella was enjoying her final day of school, James spent the day entertaining his cousins (Bonnie & Oscar) while I cleaned and baked.

And some top secret mailing was sent off for my Tarisota secret santa.

 

Beach & baking - plus a little in-between.

We're going to try and spend more hours at the beach this summer and since the weather is warming up down here now, the kids have already been for quite a few dips.  We usually go after dinner - Rich runs the beach, I walk the beach and the kids splash along behind us in the water.  That was yesterday.

Tomorrow is Bella's last day of school.  I relish this time of year when I can have both of my two home and hang out with them over the long school break.  James has been off for a few days already (he's in high school) and today we had some errands to run, last minute shopping to do, Christmas day t-shirt buying for James (yep, he chose another polo shirt Kama! LOL).  There's this teenage thing happening at the moment too where James walks two metres behind me every where we go.  It's okay though because I can remember walking two metres behind my Mum when I was a teenager too!

We were checking out the lolly department in Coles in the above photo - buying sweets to make THESE.  This afternoon after school we made 50 of them ready to take to school with Bella tomorrow.  They are so cute!

Oh and there has been some pre-holiday games creating happening at home too.  Bella made her own board game the other night.  She worked on it by herself for two hours solid.  It's a little bit like Pictionary (okay a whole lot like Pictionary only much cuter). 

 

There are a whole lot of rules written on the side of the board game.  She's made a few complicated games in the last year or so that have the most elaborate instructions.  But, this one is really playable and quite a simple concept.  We call her 'the maker' at home.  Bella can make anything when she puts her mind to it.  You know, I always wanted to make things when I was little, but I never quite knew how to construct them or hold them together etc.. Bella does. She knows her way around a hot glue gun, needle and thread, makes up her own knots to hold things in place, can fold a piece of paper in a million pieces to get the design she's after.  I cannot wait to see what she'll be creating in another 10 or 20 years time!

Christmas necklace.

Remember my fabric necklace that I made last month? A couple of nights ago I had the urge to make a Christmas one for Bella.  I let her choose the fabric - she chose well too, settling on a yummy Christmas print from Retro Mummy and then I whipped it up on the sewing machine.

And here's Bella (with a slight cold) wearing her new necklace and being officially awesome!

Christmas wall art + creamy caramel recipe.

Introducing my new wall art:

This idea wasn't mine, I found it in the Christmas issue of Inside Out magazine and fell in love.  Yesterday Bella & her friend Claire worked on painting the pictures for me - with a little help from James and Claire's little sister Eva.  We used some beautiful paints by LuminArte that have the most divine shimmer to them when dry.  The girls added glitter and sequins too.  I just love it.

 

Here's the creamy caramel recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup caster sugar

90g unsalted butter

2 tablespoons golden syrup

1/3 cup glucose syrup

1/2 cup sweetend condensed milk

How to:

Grease a 19cm square cake pan (we lined ours with baking paper after greasing).

Combine sugar, butter, syrups and milk in saucepan. Stir over low heat without boiling until the sugar and butter have dissolved.

Bring to gentle boil - boil, stirring for about 7 minutes or unti the mixture is a caramel colour.  Allow bubbles to subside; pour into pan, stand 10 mins.

Cool before cutting - we keep ours in the fridge.

Recipe source: Women's Weekly Sweet

The Christmas angels.

A couple of weeks ago I came across THIS sweet tutorial for making dolly peg Christmas angels.  I bookmarked it to do with Bella and today we finally found time to do some crafting. We changed a few things due to lack of supplies - green sequins, pink hair, golden paper wings, but gosh she's so cute and looks adorable hanging on the tree. 

Bella's friend Claire was over, so they made three angels each.

While I helped the girls to work on these, James set about creating his own evil angel with giant pincers (that's teenage boys for you).

 

We also worked on a huge paper Christmas tree for the wall, but I'll share the finished photos of that tomorrow. 

Oh and the post wouldn't be complete without sequined cuteness:

 

Thankyou to those that asked for the creamy caramel recipe - I'll share that tomorrow too.