Christmas fake-Danish-hearts

This post has been linked to learning cooperative ABC&123 - check them out!

This is a close-up of our Advent calendar. These are "real" Danish hearts. You can find a tutorial for making them here or by Googling "Danish heart baskets". They're fun to do if you're old enough, but no good for our five-year old. Also they're much easier with paper than with felt - I know because we tried felt last year. But here's what I'm talking about today:

This is our Advent "wreath". Cute, and much easier! We got ours from Ikea, full of tea-lights. Now the tea-lights are hidden it looks much better.

Here's what you need. Well some of what you need. Old wrapping paper or craft paper in various colours - we used both. Scissors, pencil, ruler, template...

You can use the template for making real Danish hearts too - click on the picture if you want a better look. To make the template, we used the bottom of a wine glass and then extended the sides till they were the same length as the diameter of the wineglass (you can see I've marked the identical lengths "A"). To make our decoration we needed to cut out four hearts from plain paper (any colour would do) because I wasn't sure about Froglet gluing stuff directly onto the backdrop. And for some reason I started drawing six. Never mind eh.

Don't worry about that little mark on the template where it says "plus a bit"- that's not relevant here. It just shows to make the cuts a bit longer so it's easier to weave the strips together on a real heart basket.

Here I'm cutting out the template from the coloured paper that we're using to decorate our hearts. Whatever colours you like - we always used red-and-green when I was little.

Cut out the semi-circle and then divide the square into equal parts - I think sixteen would be more traditional but we chose the easy option and did nine. Froglet only cut the little squares out because I don't really trust him with curvy lines yet for something that's actually going to be in the middle of the table for a month! Yes I know. One day I may be less of a perfectionist.

Glue your cut-out paper onto the plain paper heart, making sure your child knows to alternate the colours like a chess-board. Then stick your heart onto whatever you're using it for, if you didn't do that directly. I glued ours on a piece of gold wrapping paper cut to more-or-less fit around the inside of the Ikea candle vase...

Turns out I didn't measure that carefully enough and the vase is wider at the top than the bottom so it doesn't sit quite flat. But at least my semi-circles are well-cut-out. :-)

Advent activities - Week Three

The last week of school was a busy time

Baking and cake decorating

Sewing, knitting and crocheting
Ironing new patches on very old jeans
Reading Christmas books
Playing with friends
Building with Lego
Sledging in the wonderful foot-deep snow on the hill outside
And wondering whether Christmas will actually be spent where we intended...

Christmas cake shared with dear friends...

...who brought us this lovely gift

First gift from Froglet opened

Second gift adorning the shelf
in a beautiful bag he decorated himself at school

"We three kings of Orient are

With our psychedelic camels we travel afar...

...Field and fountain, moor and mountain

Foll'wing a felted star!"

Didn't Froglet do a lovely job on those camels?
Wooden shapes from the DIY store which he coloured with felt-tip pens and glitter glue.

Advent activities - Week Two

Froglet's wrapping paper made at school...

"Mummy, it has to go on the wall, Miss said so!"

Scones, strawberry and rhubarb jam...
with our advent "wreath" behind them...

We give thanks to Ikea for the flat-packed gingerbread house...
and to God for the fun we had decorating it...

A reindeer with handprint antlers to adorn the front door...
although he seems to prefer the floor...

Toilet roll snowflakes, painted pearl and white, strung together for a garland...
much prettier than our blinds outside...

Waldorf-style shepherds...
with misshapen sheep...

And we still have time to hide in boxes too!

Advent activities - Week One

Advent calendar finished and hung up...

Tree decorated with unbreakable baubles, to the great delight of one small girl...

Some Christmas cards made...

New Jesse tree acquired (last year's died) and Holy Family settled beneath it...

Great concentration is required for making jingle bell necklaces...


Pipe-cleaner, beads and bells for a lovely jingle bell bracelet/tree ornament!

I know I've finished my advent list for this year (and yes we are doing all those activities so far - and some extra too! and photos will follow eventually) but here's one to save for next year:

Winter Crafts and Activities for Little Ones from Rhythm of the Home

(I like the one partway down about making felted balls with a bell inside, which I would pair with re-teaching my youngest "Jingle Bells", but there are other things to do with small children too.)

Rhythm of the home is the newest blog on my list and I love it! So many amazing ideas for crafts or food... two of my favourite things. :-)

Advent activities list

Did you know Orthodox Advent has already started? For the Eastern churches (including Byzantine Catholics and perhaps others I don't know of), Advent is a time of fasting similar to Lent. A bit different to what we're used to here, and Priest's Wife over at Fear Not Little Flock has a rather lovely post about how she intends to celebrate it, following the Proverbs 31 model. Check it out! :-)

Here in the more Western tradition, I have finally organised my advent activities list. Not quite the same as last year's, and I think it's a slightly different set of Bible verses each day too, as there seem to be different variants of the Jesse Tree. (You can see the set we used last year here) The verses are not related to the activities in the slightest this year however!

Update: I've linked each week to the post showing (some of) those activities now that we've done them. This post is also linked to ABC&123's Show&Tell series - for lots of other great Advent/Christmas/general activities, check out their site!

First week of Advent
Sunday 28/11: Put up Christmas tree (no reading)
29/11: Make Christmas cards (no reading)
30/11: Get out Jesse tree, Christmas bookshelf and red postbox*; read a Christmas story (no reading)
1/12: Make Xmas cake (Creation: Gen 1:1-31; 2:1-4)
2/12: Learn Jingle bells (Adam and Eve: Gen 2: 7-9, 18-24)
3/12: Make jingle bell bracelets (Adam and Eve cont.: Gen 3:1-7, 23-34)
Saturday 4/12: Make stable and Waldorf-style Holy family (Noah: bits of Gen 6 and 7)

Second week of Advent
Sunday 5/12: Bake scones, have cream tea (Abraham: Gen 12:1-3)
6/12: New Christmas book about St Nicholas (Isaac: Gen 22:1-14)
7/12: Candlelight dinner (Jacob: Gen 25:1-34, 28:10-15)
8/12: Public holiday - Make gingerbread house (Joseph: Gen 37:23-28, 45:3-15)
9/12: Learn Away in a manger; Reindeer paper plate craft (Moses: Ex 2:1-10)
10/12: Make toilet roll snowflakes (Samuel; 1 Sam 3:1-18)
Saturday 11/12: Make Waldorf shepherds, sheep and angel (Jesse: 1 Sam 16:1-13)

Third week of Advent
Sunday 12/12: Make felted star, eat gingerbread house (David: 1 Sam 17:12-51)
13/12: Buy gift from World Vision (Solomon: 1 Kings 3:5-14, 16-28)
14/12: Learn the Holly and the Ivy (Joseph: Matt 1:18-25)
15/12: Paint a Christmas tree or possibly some holly (Mary: Luke 1:26-38)
16/12: Open red postbox, hang up cards; make ironing-bead ornaments (John the Baptist: Mark 1:1-8)
17/12: Take Christmas card to school, eat mince pies (Jesus is Wisdom: Ecclesiasticus 24:2, Wisdom 8:1)
Saturday 18/12: Make Waldorf wise men, centurion, star, camels (Jesus is Lord: Ex 3:2, 20:1)

Fourth week of Advent
Sunday 19/12: Toast crumpets, play Christmas tree game (Jesus is Key of David: Isaiah 22:22)
20/12 Make felt crowns, hang stockings** (Jesus is King of the Gentiles: Psalm 2:7-8, Eph 2:14-20)
21/12: Play out nativity story with Waldorf figures, celebrate Christmas (Jesus is Emmanuel: Isaiah 7:14, 33:22)

* the Red Postbox, constructed out of an old nappy (diaper) box, red paint and some cotton-wool "snow", is where we keep Christmas cards that arrive so we can open lots and hang them all up on the same day. It's a tradition I carried over from my own childhood. I don't expect to get very many this year because we are absolutely rubbish at sending any out ourselves!
** A few days early, yes, but we will be away visiting relatives over the actual Christmas period so we are having our own celebration at home and with friends first using our own traditions.

Things I want to do/make by myself!

Pinwheel bobby pins - I think these would be a cool gift for my little niece.
Danish* heart baskets for Christmas decorations. We used to make these with paper as kids, now I'd like to try with felt.
Finish my knitted blanket for the kids when in the car. It's only taken me a year so far...

That's all for now but I shall add to this list as time goes on, and put a link up in the sidebar like the joint crafts one.

*Random facts about me: I lived in Denmark as a baby, when we would divide our time between Germany and Copenhagen with my dad's job. I then studied Danish at university and lived in Copenhagen on my own for a year. Would love to go back. And the bulk of my translation work is now from Danish to English.

Open Ended Art

Yes it's another blog carnival! I came across this blog when reading a post by Susana from Our Homeschool Fun:

Her carnival is about Open Ended Art, which is basically when you give your child the materials and then get completely hands-off and see what results. The more specific principles can be found here.

Last weeks topic was Puffy Paint. There is a recipe involving flour and water on the site but I'm not keen on using flour in craft materials because of maggots and stuff so I had a scout around and found a different recipe using shaving cream and glue instead. It's 2 parts shaving cream to one part glue. Mix and add food colouring as required.

We put in the food colouring first, with the glue. Froglet chose blue and yellow and we tried not to mix it too well, but in the process of trying to get it into a squeezy bottle it all got thoroughly mixed anyway. We discovered that our squeezy bottle was bit large for this sort of thing. Next time I would just make the white mix in the big bottle and then squeeze a bit of it into several small bottles along with a colour. But we would need small bottles, which I haven't managed to find yet.

You can see some rice got stuck to this one!

After the first couple of pictures we decided to add some more yellow colour (straight into the bottle, which Froglet then shook a bit) and some green glitter. We could have put in more really, then it would be more noticeable.

Several days later the paint is still puffy but a bit wrinkly as it has shrunk. I'm late posting, of course, so didn't get in on the McLinky, but we enjoyed doing this and will definitely participate again! This weeks topic will be Tissue Paper.

Crafty Tuesday 1: odds and ends

In crafty Tuesday this week:

A follow-up to the flower printing of a couple of weeks ago.
Making handprints and bubble-wrap prints for the Engineers birthday.
Papier maché pen holder.

Read on if you're interested in how any of these went!

Perhaps you remember our printing with wildflowers activity. I made a bunch of knapweed prints and then didn't like to throw them out afterwards but didn't know what to do with them. Well on Sunday we had church-at-home (this happens when Nutmeg doesn't wake up at a suitable time to allow us to get to church) and were reading about the parable of the beautiful pearl. That was the inspiration for this:

Froglet glued the flower-print-pearls in such a neat row on his crown! We used school glue applied with the end of a cork.

On to our next craft: for the Engineer's birthday, we made some very simple handprint pictures. All you need is a strip of bubble-wrap (preferably a couple of inches wide), paint and hands. Oh, and paper.

Paint the bubbly side of your bubble-wrap...

Print it along the edge of the paper... all the way around...

Then add your handprints and voilà, a lovely picture for Daddy!

We've been working on this papier mache pen-holder for several weeks now. The Engineer thought it looked like fun so he got involved in this one. We used a glass as a model, wrapped cling film over it and then started layering on the newspaper using a glue-and-water paste. No flour as I don't want it to get maggots or anything unpleasant like that. As you can see it's a messy business! Froglet's fingers are a bit small for squeezing the paste out of the paper.


After the first few layers we let it dry and discovered that the glue had got inside the clingfilm and was making it all stick to the glass! A tense few moments ensued while I pried it off. Then we applied new cling film and a new, clean, glass before adding more layers. The same thing happened again, but eventually we had enough layers to remove the glass altogether. Then we trimmed the rim and did a last layer of white printer paper, folding it over the rim .o as to get a nice smooth edge. We tried using kitchen roll first but found that it was very hard to squeeze the paste out without it all falling apart, and when it dried the newsprint showed through as if it weren't there at all.

Now it is all hard and white and makes a satisfying hollow sound when you tap it, but I've not been able to convince Froglet to paint it yet. That will be for next time.

Our crafts next week will be bird-themed - if you know any good ones please share!

Crafty Tuesday

Writing a post doesn't take very long, but finding photos and editing them takes too long to do while Froglet is about.

But on Tuesdays, Froglet has a whole day at nursery. He eats breakfast, lunch and zvieri there, and then I pick him up for dinner at 5. It's important for him to go to nursery here so that he can learn the local language, which is more of a dialect really, before hitting school in 2010, at which point he will have to start learning one of the official languages too. We began sending him for a full day when I was pregnant with Nutmeg, so that I could have some time to rest both during pregnancy and after the birth. It's also nice for Nutmeg to have me to herself for a day (although she always fusses more on those days - maybe she misses Froglet?)

So, as I have several hours relatively free while Nutmeg naps, Tuesday is now going to be the day when I post about crafts, starting next week. If I remember to stick to that!

TP flowers

So we have been having a very crafty time here. It has got to be the wettest June since records began. Or at least since we moved here. There is new snow on our mountain today - what is that all about? It's not even a very high mountain!

However, more rain equals more crafting time. So I dug out a post from Her Cup Overfloweth (yes I know, but she has such great ideas!) about making stars or flowers out of loo rolls. Empty ones, of course. I've been collecting for a while with this in mind.

A bit blurry but you get the idea.

The tutorial can be found here. Unfortunately my photos of Froglet painting the finished product are on Zia's camera, currently en route to the UK, but here's what we did with them when we had finished:

The Engineer got back from Florida late on his birthday.

I cut out the letters from an old cereal box and Froglet painted them with his beloved paint roller so I could stick them to paper and hang them up. The string is hemp (I didn't notice when I bought it) - it smells lovely!

A crafty post

I keep meaning to take part in the ABCand123 summer picnic, but never seem to get around to it. However, finally we have done something that fits in with this weeks theme of crafts. Today Froglet and I went for a nature walk to collect flowers and leaves to paint with. We got some daisies, milkweed (possibly), knapweed, clover flower and leaf, buttercup leaf, ground ivy leaves, and various grasses and flowers - perhaps you know the names I don't? (If you can see them!)


On getting home I had to feed Nutmeg so was unable to participate, but I set it all up for them and even made a sort of paintbrush with some of the grass-heads:


Froglet insisted on using the new paint roller that I got him on a whim last week. Here he is hard at work:


Here's what he achieved:


And here's what the Engineer did:


And I did some experimenting of my own later:

The lefthand one is knapweed and the other a daisy.

The inspiration for this came from A Mommy's Adventures (dandelion prints, featured last week on ABCand123), so I can't claim any credit for an original idea.