More Christmas Crafts and Cooking

We are doing our daily Christmas crafts and Christmas cooking although the time to sit down and blog about it almost always escapes me as we prepare everything for the end of year season. Can you believe it? 2009 is almost finished and what a wonderful, exciting and great year we had.

Here are more creations and cooking we have been doing for the last week or so.

At the end of year presentation night for Josh's tae kwan do, he surprised us by taking the "Best Kihap" in 2009 award and we are so proud of our little boy who is growing up so fast before our very eyes. And of course, tara likes to pose too.

Also, today marks the first day of School holidays and already we are busy with crafts. The kids busied themselves at making the cover for their colouring book and then colouring the first page of the book. Here they are:

Sorry for the poor quality of the last photos, these were taken with the iPhone and emailed for the blog. Till then, have a great weekend.

More Creations

Continuing our handmade Christmas activities, the kids are excited every morning as it is really unusual I let them have a piece of lolly in the morning especially when there is some chocolates in the pockets of our calendar, but Christmas has always been my favourite time of the year and I like the kids to see that and enjoy it as well, just wish that family is closer and that we can spend it with our family as well but our thoughts and love are with them in this festive season.

Here are some of the things we have been busy on,

SSorry for the fuzzy photo, i took this last night. Till next time.

Day 7 -Felt Tree Decoration

This is not a really for the Christmas tree but a part of a book that they are going to put together in the next few days with colouring pages and a song to learn. I like that the kids look forward to the afternoon where we sit down and do some Christmas craft whether it be big or small, hard or easy, quick or takes a long time. Tara keeps on asking me about the calendar all day which sometimes I have to explain how it works, that we can't actually open the pockets until that day is here.

So for today, this is what the kids did with my help (mostly to Tara).

Day 6 - Christmas Pillow

Before I post our craft for today, this is pushed back yesterday to finish the Christmas tree pencil topper that Josh is giving to his school mates, so here it is,

Day 5- Glitter playdough. They sure had fun playing with it too.

I meant to do pillows to add to each of their beds for a long while and now this is the perfect time to do especially as I adore Michael Miller Christmas fabric so much, I ordered a whole bunch of fat quarters of all the Christmas fabrics. This is just one pillow, I used a different fabric for each side.

Sorry for the crappy photos, it was getting dark and I wanted to post the photos today. I used my P&S one too. This one is Joshua's pillow. He picked the fabrics himself and I love that reindeer and sleigh fabric.

This one is of Tara's, as usual she chose pink.

Day 5 - More on Christmas presents

Josh decided to give each of his schoolmates a Christmas pressie this year so we thought the pencil topper is a good one, so we spent the whole day creating the topper and writing Christmas cards for everyone to give away on Monday.

The craft for today has been pushed back a day and i hope we have time to make two tomorrow. See you then!

Day 4- Christmas Felt Photo Stocking

And yet again, another inspiration from Mel. and this one Josh did the blanket stitch around the stocking although after several pin pricks, he wasn't happy anymore.

Okay, I will post one of Tara's as she already misplaced it and won't tell where it is. Till then.

Day 3 - Christmas Arts & Crafts

This is a bit late as we all started late for the third day since Josh had a play over at friend's house and didn't come home until late in the afternoon nonetheless we still managed to finish our Christmas craft for Wednesday although it was way too late to post.

And the results: this one is Tara's

and this is Josh's.

Day 2 - Christmas Crafts

Sorry this is so late, Joshua had a play over this afternoon and we didn't start the craft until after his play over from friends and of course, the day is almost over but anyway, the craft today is an easy one for the kids, all they had to really help was to put the beads on the topper. We made the Christmas pencil topper, of course, inspired byM el.

Since we decided to have a handmade Christmas, I have perused the Internet for ideas and templates, and tutorials and for the most part I get a lot of my inspiration from Mel, she is just awesome, if you are not reading her blog yet, you better go and add her to your reading list, she is a super mum. Here is her blog.

Here they are, we have made a few more for Josh's friends from school for their Christmas presents.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Well, here we are, the first day of December.

Remember we made a promise of Handmade Christmas this year so I started to get everything ready for the kids to do as well as taking on the Christmas Reading program that I wanted to do with the kids inspired by Mel here. Most of our presents are handmade from baking, drawing, Christmas cards to sewing pressies. We put the tree up on Saturday and the kids enjoyed hanging the decorations, it was fun as we didn't get to have a tree last Christmas since we were overseas.

Oh, while surfing through web last weekend, I thought I'd make the kids their very first advent calendar and so on Saturday, I started cutting out the fabric for the calendar, still debating what sort of calendar to do as there are so many out there that are so gorgeous, but knowing that the 1 December is just around the corner, I went for the simplest one, a quilted advent calendar with pockets. Each pocket has some lollies and 2 pieces of paper. One paper tells them what Christmas craft we are making for the day and the other piece of paper tells them what book we are reading today. Here it is:

Here are some more details in the house, we haven't really finished decorating but the kids are already getting excited for Christmas.

And for the CHRISTMAS CRAFTS 2009:

Day 1: Nativity Scene Kit.

I bought this kit which includes the story and as well as making a nativity kit. Since its the first day of the Christmas Crafts, I thought something easy and quick would be good as we assess the time with school and all. Here is the result of our Day 1 craft.

moving slowly

wow, I feel like I've just finished blogging about the party (parties) in October and then again, its December and time to countdown the days for Christmas. This is too quick for my liking although I am excited for the December Crafts and Reading we have planned for this year.

Right, I see that my kids are now enjoying more and more of the craft activities together more than before after spending a few weeks watching 'Mister Maker' so we talked about spending December in Crafts and Reading program. We are also decided it to be a Handmade Christmas, making our own cards, and as much as possible our own Christmas presents. How good is that? I am so excited. Yesterday we started by putting the tree up and the kids had so much fun helping me decorate it while Christmas songs play on the background.

As for Reading, we are going to try and read 25 Christmas stories counting from 1 December until Christmas, at the moment, we only own about 4 Christmas story books so its off to the local library to get some more and hopefully every year we can build our stack to get to 25.

Starting from the 1st of December, it will be an everyday post counting down to Christmas. Keep coming back. Have a great Sunday!