Never knew how much pleasure could be got from...

...making paper snowflakes.

Honestly!

Dd and I have made about twenty today, either from printer paper or magazine pages.
If, like me, you haven't made them since you were six, then Google for instructions.

Go on. You know you want to :)

When the relatives are coming it's time to...

Make mince pies for the freezer...



...and then eat them all up straightaway.

Easy Peasy Christmas bunting

We were in need of some new Christmas decorations and were shown how to make these by another home edder at a home ed group. Really really easy bunting!

First cut squares out of scraps of material. We used pinking shears to reduce fraying, but ordinary scissors are fine too (and the fraying just makes them look authentically rustic!).
The squares don't have to be a particular size (2-3 inches square works fine with thinner fabrics, you can go larger with stiffer fabric (light fabric tends to flop a bit if squares are large, as we discovered!). Vary the sizes and don't worry about making the squares precise unless you are totally retentive.


We used mostly free fabric swatches (checked and silk furnishing fabric samples) so the material was stiffer and worked well.



Use an ordinary running thread to sew diagonally across the square. We used our hand-cranked sewing machine which is evil, but easier for the kids to control than my equally evil electric one. Don't fasten off, just keep going.

Sew a couple of stitches after you come off the diagonal point and then tuck the next square in and carry on going. Having a couple of stitches between squares helps them to twist and spin a little.



We found some shiny fabric and popped that in as well to make it look a bit more Christmassy.


When you get to the end of all your squares just do a few stitches back the other way and fasten off.

You can choose to have short bunting strands and hang them vertically, or do like we've done and make a super-long string of them to go across the room in a zig zag.

The photos don't do them justice, but you get the idea.

Like I said - easy peasy! (And a good way to use up those not-so-nice fabric scraps that you can't bear to throw away)


(Spot the lovely hanging paper Christmas tree we got from Wilkos this year only £1!)

This year's bunting hung above last year's strings of pot pourri and little hand-sewn padded hearts:

Free Christmas Word Search (for non-confident readers)

Free wordsearch with a Christmas theme to download from the currclick here

Nice and simple, so ideal for younger children or non-confident readers. My dd (a just-started reader) has done two of the pages.

You probably need to make an account with currclick before you can download it, but after that it's pretty simple. There are other freebies on the site, plus they are having a sale at the moment, so you might just happen to be tempted...

ok, that was it...

...next stop, Easter.

I'm taking bets on how long til Cadbury cream eggs get in Tescos.

A week, perhaps? That should be long enough to clear the Christmas stock in the sales and get a shelf free.

The cynicism of the middle aged.

Pre-Christmas preparations

The past week (snow, snow and more snow)

Making Christmas crackers:

Melting and then re-freezing:

dd1's birthday:

And then we all got ill and went to bed!

(Gradually recovering and getting ready for the big day tomorrow)

That love:hate thing

So how do you feel about Christmas?

I confess I have a passion for twinkly lights, tinsel, sparkles, warm fires, comfort food, overindulgence, and an obscene blow-out after a year of frugality.

Yet at the same time I feel a sense of unease, a hint of guilt.

I love the idea of an old-fashioned, home-made, it's-all-in-the-thought, Christmas. You know the thing, everyone gathered round the tree sharing a home-made mince pie and one handmade present each.

But at the same time I desperately want to break free from a year spent being resourceful and thoughtful and restrained. I watch tv. I have friends who buy their kids laptops and ipods. And even though I know it's really not in the spirit of an ethical Christmas I want to buy buy buy! I want to spoil the kids! I want them to have a huge pile of presents to get excited over. I want to give them everything they've ever wanted (and more)! And actually I wouldn't mind a few decent gifts myself.

I don't want to budget or home-bake, I don't want to buy secondhand and secondbest. I don't want to make-do, because I do it all year round and I am heartily sick of it.

So all my nice homely good intentions go out the window, and in comes commercial obscenity, frantic purchasing, and an icky feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I wonder, is there a middle ground?

Do you spend Christmas as you spent Christmas as a child?
I assume that the seeds of 'how Christmas should be' are planted in our childhood, mine certainly were.

It's that time of year...

What we like about Christmas...

New pyjamas:

Homebaked Christmas food, prepared under hygenic conditions:

Conversation and old-fashioned family games, played around the table:

The Christmas trimmings:

Frugality, ecofriendliness and non-commercialisation:

Family gatherings and social interaction:

The pitfalls of parenting with non-performing progeny

I acquired some black 'skinny jeans' for free from the local swap shop and ds1 has been living in them for a fortnight now. For the first time ever we have found a pair of jeans that actually fit his legs (and almost his waist when hauled in with a belt!). When teamed with a hoodie and with his long dark hair hanging out he looks like some youff or some mini punk rocker! As he says, 'I'm practising being a teenager'.

It's very cute. Cute that he's playing at being older than he is. Testing it out without having to live it. Yet. But it does make me realise how fast my just-11 year old is growing up and how soon things around us will all be changing. We are on the edge of unknown territory and I'm so hoping that the path over the cliff edge is gentle and with a mild gradient!

At the home ed group on Thursday some of the children put on a Christmas play. Not my children though. Public performance and my children don't tend to mix. Not that I haven't tried...you know, encouragement, gentle persuasion, bribery, and-er-shoving to the front of the stage, stapling their feet to the floor and running away. (Yes even attempts at Pushy Mum persona have been to no avail).

I sometimes wonder how many plays and performances I have sat through that included other people's children, (but not mine). Ds1 sobbed and screamed through 4 years worth of nativity plays at nursery, finally managing to get on stage in his 5th year as a king, (chucking his present at the baby Jesus and legging it as fast as he could off the stage!). Ds2 managed to briefly trudge across the stage as a Gruffalo one year at the Christmas preschoool play, but his first was also to be his last performance. And dd? Well she refused to even entertain the thought of being in a Christmas play. And having the wisdom of a tired mother of 3 I didn't try to persuade her otherwise.

So there I was on Thursday, yet again watching other people's children performing in a play. It would be rude not to watch of course, but without sounding uncharitable I'd much rather watch my own children doing something. Wouldn't you? Another parent in a similar predicament tried to reassure me. 'Well there's a distinct lack of my children up there too,' she said. And then we consoled ourselves with the thought that at least our children hadn't disrupted the play. No, they'd actually been quiet, hadn't wrestled each other to the floor, walked in front of the cast, made rude noises or shouted. We have such low expectations, but, you know, sometimes you just have to give praise where praise is due (and hang on to the small blessings because there aint any big ones coming soon :) )

At the same home ed group we made some Christmas garlands. Dd threaded some popcorn. Well, to be acurate, she supervised me threading popcorn...sometimes I wonder if I have 'slave' tattooed in invisible ink on my forehead (only visible by children). Anyway, back to popcorn string; I was just thinking it would be a nice addition to our Christmas tree, then I turned my back for a minute. When I turned around I saw...

Needless to say, it didn't make it to the Christmas tree :)

We woke up on Thursday to find this:


No, not a child with an oversized mother-knitted crazy jumper!

I mean the snow! Yes snow! Ok, I know it's only a little snow. But it's still snow.

And here are our chucks wondering what all that cold white stuff is (the smaller one at the front is the 'chick' we hatched this year)

So just a little sprinkling of snow. Most of it melted, but a few patches remained, turned icy and hazardous and then topped themselves up with some soggy sleet today. So it's slippy out, but not really snowman material yet. It's funny to have snow so near to Christmas, unusual, kinda nice, in an unexpected way.


So are you all ready for Christmas?


I tackled Tescos today and it was manic, frenzied. 'But there's still 4 days to go yet!' I wailed (not out loud you understand, because then they'd find out the truth about me). I had to stock up on some birthday tea items for ds1 tomorrow and thought I'd get most of the Christmas food at the same time. Big spend. And it's only us to feed. How does that happen? Ah well, at least we'll be able to live on wine and crisps for the next 10 days. A balanced diet.

We've all been laid low by colds, coughs and - in my case - some sort of throaty earry headachey energy-draining hurty thing, so this post has taken about 3 days to come together.

I'm still avoiding the idea that I might need to make a doctor's appt, and instead I'm topping myself up with decongestants and painkillers and getting very familiar with the sofa. [Doctors and hairdressers come in the same category for me i.e. professions to avoid unless there is absolutely no alternative.] With ds1's birthday in 2 days time and Christmas snowballing towards us I may have to concede that I need to be off the sofa and functioning as a mother and organiser and birthday-and-Christmas make happener asap. Cos you know what it's like don't you? If us women don't MAKE it happen, then it just doesn't happen. Social niceties and all that; that's what we were created for. Men were created to avoid communication, start wars and take things apart and women were created to clear up the mess (physically and metaphorically), put everything back together, and make everyone a nice cup of tea and some scones afterwards.

Ok, ok, maybe not. But I'm yet to find a man who actually 'does' Christmas. Would family celebrations of Christmas and birthdays have actually died out if it wasn't for women? I sometimes wonder...

Anyway, talking of birthdays. We had an early birthday party for ds1. His idea, an open mic session for his friends and their families. We hired a hall and I ran around panicking about how I was going to feed lots of people and then, in the end, the evening went very well. With several guitarists, drummers, vocalists and a ukelele player the evening's entertainment was provided and we all ate hot dogs, gateaux and crisps. Here is ds1 on dh's purple guitar, with one of his friends:

And here are some catch-up photos. Our local 'switching on the Christmas lights' evening, when all the museums open late and there is entertainment (sometimes rather random) till late.

The kids waiting for the lantern parade, cameras ready:

The lantern parade:

Our local museum has been 'revamped' and reopened. Here are lots of museum visitors on the newly created stairs, looking down and listening to a community choir:

The community choir:

On the Christmas lights evening we had a look around a display of 'Steampunk' art creations at another local museum. Fabulous stuff. I'd never even heard of steampunk before, but if you want to know more check out the wiki info here

More catchup. ..ds2 dressed up for his first ever cub sleepover weekend (Peter Pan theme). Despite some pre-weekend wobbles he survived fine!

A trip to a science museum with a few other home ed families. Dd never got further than the water area, spending nearly 3 hours just playing in the water.

Dd1 has been doing more modelling at a home ed group. Creating scenery for warhammer, or - in his usual entrepreneurial way- making parts for the other kids scenes and then selling them to them!

The boys went with some other home edders for a snowboarding lesson:

And ds2 was 'invested' at cubs:

He reckons he's going to sew on all the badges himself!

There's lots more to post, but best to get this lot up before my laptop battery flags completely.