Reading for Advent.

I love the run up to Christmas, its and extra special time to curl up and share some magical stories, enjoy time crafting and catching up with friends.

Our Advent reading this year is the Advent Storybook, the story of little bears journey to Bethlehem. The Christmas Mystery a journey through time and countries starting in 1950 in Norway and heading back in time to Bethlehem, to the time Jesus was born, lots of interesting facts added into the story. The an all time favourite, The The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe but the first time L will of heard it, we read The Magician's Nephew earlier in the year and she loved it. I have the BBC series and the film to watch once we have finished the story. We also have a basket full of other Christmas stories to enjoy.

I have enjoyed making some cross stitch Christmas cards and decorations.

I have had a lovely little German paper craft book for a few years and every year I will say I will make something from it, this year finally got round to it. Thoroughly enjoyed making this owl, though it did take a lot longer than I expected it too.

More paper craft fun, making a various different hanging decorations.

The design below, I have made a few times and couple of years ago I put together step by step directions to make this pretty snowflake star.

I have been busy knitting, our lovely local independent craft shop closed down in the summer, so I stocked up on some wool and other craft bits, L wanted some wrist warmers like mine so she can wear them when we play sport.

L chose this stylecraft pattern for the rest of the pink wool.

I have made this sirdar cardi  so many times, it knits up so nicely in whatever type of yarn I use.

L has moved up to the older art group, she was resistant to the idea of change to start with but now is enjoying the different projects we are working on. Last week it was using newspaper and card to make sculptures, L made a lovely dragon, we finished painting him at home.

Catching Up

Hopefully will now get back into blogging regularly, have lots of photos and things to share, then the computer dies on us!! Now have it back from being repaired and caught up and all the jobs that need to be done. Recovery from op is going well, loving getting out and having at least a 30 minute walk daily, still doing my physio exercises 4 times a week, its great but been busy as trying to do all those jobs I wasn't able to do before my op.

So going back to before Christmas I offered to have a couple of L's friends for a couple of art and craft sessions, this went so well that they asked to come every week! So more than happy to share my time with enthusiastic children, so in January we started to meet weekly, using the Greek myths as our theme, will share those in another post. Any way back to December we started with the story of Wilson Bentley and how he persevered until he he was able to record the beauty of the snowflakes. We also read Curious About Snow, which has some beautiful pictures of snowflakes and talks about the science behind them, how humidity and air temperature change their shape. The girls made up their own little booklets with some snow facts in then, then had some fun making gingerbread snowflakes to decorate later.

The girls work so well as a team, I can stand back now and let the 3 of them get on with the cooking, other than dealing with the oven, they are fairly self sufficient with their baking.

Mary Azarian who illustrated the Snowflake Bentley book, makes woodcut prints, I don't have the right tools or knowledge for this so we used the florist oasis blocks instead. They girls carved pictures into them, a pencil works really well for a carving tool, then printed on some brown paper I had saved from various deliveries we had to create their own wrapping paper.

Our second session was based around the story of the little fir tree, well two different little fir tree stories, we started the session of with the girls telling us what they knew about fir trees and deciduous trees. Why they loose their leaves in winter, why fir trees don't, the design of the fir tree and how this benefits the tree when it snows lots. We talked about how the little tree wished his life away, was this a good or bad thing? How much did he miss out on by doing this? Do we ever do this and why do we feel that way. In my Christmas sort out I found some wooden fir trees so they set to work painting and decorating their own xmas trees and made some paper plate wreaths.

 

We also made some origami fir trees, the instruction video can be found here

They also made some salt dough decorations to hang on their trees at home, we made them a few years ago with cornflour to give the whiteness to the shapes, using this recipe.

 A little bit of Christmas sewing, a gift for my Aunt, can add she loved it.

I finally finished L's Rosebud jumper, it wasn't the easiest pattern to follow but she loves it and that is what counts.

Polare bear cupcakes made by hubby and L

 and of course homemeade mince pies.

Days Out and Snow

Last week we made the most of my husband using up his holidays before Christmas and visited a national trust property, one we have been meaning to do for a few years but for various reasons hadn't. Anyway we finally got to see their Christmas displays, every room has a tree set up, I took a photo of a few of them, my favourite is the book tree.

The tree in the main hall.

All set for dinner.

                    The kitchen is actually done out in full 1950s style and this is the kitchen tree.

The woodland walk is all decked out in little fairy lights, it must look beautiful at dusk, we had planned to stay longer and have a lovely walk but there was a bitter wind, to say the least, so had a short walk though the woods.

Lots of benches had carved arms, a mixture of rabbits and squirrels, the girls loved them.

The rabbits have enjoyed exploring/playing with our tree, the love to nudge the ornaments!

Woke last Sunday to the surprise of snow, at 4am there was no snow as that is when O and his friends got in from clubbing, so somewhere between then and 7am it snowed. L and M was over the moon and quickly ate breakfast and went out to play, O got up looked at the snow, tried to encourage the rabbits to go out in it and then went back to bed.

The rabbits decided it was safer to watch the white stuff from the back porch, eventually venturing out, well Rosie managed 3 or 4 hops out before deciding it wasn't for her and Lucy just put a paw in the snow!

We made mince pies in the afternoon to take up to Nanny and Grandad's, this is the recipe I use for the filling.

We've always had one or two bird feeders in our garden but L has been asking to get more, with different food to attract more birds. Within 30 minutes of the feeders being put out, L spotted our friendly robin feeding on her new feeder, she is so pleased, we so far have had sparrows, robin, blue tit, great tit and a long tailed tit.

 Finished the last of my Christmas knitting, well present knitting anyway, loved this self patterning wool and how soft it is to knit with, its one of the rascal range from sirdar.

 Monday we visited friends and met her new puppy, who is adorable, home to make and decorate candles and watch Miracle on 34th Street.

Joining Nicole at Frontier Dreams

Stars and Sewing

The girls and I are loving The Christmas Mystery, what I hadn't realised that the story is based on a journey through history and through countries. Starting in Norway, then heading through Sweden and then on to Denmark. So lots to look up and research if you want to, this morning we had out the atlas looking at the countries and places mentioned and listening to Bach, as his music was mentioned in the story. Wondering where else the story will take us.

The girls have been busy sewing Christmas decorations, L is still working on hers, think she choose the one with the most sewing, bless her.

M and I have been making some window stars

and I had a go at making these paper stars using this origami star tutorial, still rather shocked it worked, ok, I never manage to get the sharp crisp corners that they do but there was so much folding and unfolding before you got to anything that looked like a star. I was doing the what! Really! Its's supposed to go how!! Then wow it worked,much tot he amusement of my girls. They actually had the star around the other way but actually we rather like the contrast of the different patterns.

Oh and of course paper chain making, M still loves to make paper chains and L is getting into the swing of making them.

Joining Kat for unraveled Wednesday