Advent Calendar

1 Dymo label maker + 25 tiny Chinese take-away boxes + a few chocolate gold coins + red ribbon = fastest, easiest Advent calendar ever.

Quickly gobbling our way through the first five days of sweets in one sitting....

Making This

I love a home-made advent calendar.  Unfortunately, as December 1st races towards us, I have yet to unearth mine.  I fear it may have gotten permanently misplaced in our pre-sale de-cluttering frenzy.

Luckily, the clever ladies at Prudent Baby (a new-to-me craft blog that demands further reading) promise that this advent calendar can be made in approximately an hour - which is lucky, because that's about all the time I have left.

By the way, our house is still available and re-priced to sell!  It won't fit in your stocking, but it is the real estate bargain of the season!

Homemade Christmas Gift Tags

And if you get over zealous with your Christmas tree cutting-out, you can always use them as gift tags. 

These worked a treat.

Merry Christmas.

Homemade Christmas Gifts: Magnets

Where has Magnetic Paper been all my life? 

Did you know about this stuff? 

It's golden. 

Just be careful to get the kind with the peel-and-stick backing, and NOT the kind that goes in your printer - according to my research, it will ruin your equipment, and then you'll have to ask Santa for a new printer instead of those (earrings, shoes, plane tickets - fill in the blank), and who wants that? 

10 Steps To Christmas Tree Magnets

1. Visit a store that stocks scrapbooking/crafting materials, such as Spotlight or Lincraft.

2. Purchase a packet of Magnet Paper with peel-and-stick backing.

3. Develop a Christmas tree template (I used the old elementary school trick of folding a piece of paper in half, drawing one side of a tree from the crease out, and cutting to ensure a symetrical evergreen).

4. Trace and cut out as many trees as you need, leaving a 1cm border around each tree. 

5. Peel away the backing from the sticky side of the magnetic paper and carefully stick on your trees.

6. Cut out trees.

7. Apply plain white or other drawing paper to remaining magnetic sheets and scraps.

8. Start designing decorations.

9. Cut out teeny, tiny ornaments and a star for the top.

10. Slip one tree, a star and enough ornaments to cover the tree in a cellophane bag and seal with a festive ribbon.

Other ideas for homemade magnets can be found here and here.

IKEA Gingerbread House

For a sweet Christmas party activity, try this:

Purchase one Anna's Gingerbread House per child.  

The price is right ($8 each) and the gingerbread is delicious.

Truck it on over to Ye Olde Fashioned Lolly shop and unleash the children.  

Mix up a HUGE patch of Royal Icing (powdered sugar + egg white + lemon juice).  

Fire up your piping bags.

Go crazy.

Ours lasted, in their fully assembled and decorated state, less than an hour. 

If you prefer to buy your own, Ikea has (of course) provided an easy template and fool-proof assembly instructions here.

Love those Swedes.

(Hot Tip: do NOT follow the Anna's assembly instructions, which involved melting 200g of icing sugar over a medium flame.  This results in a sticky, molten mess and will leave you with blistered fingertips.  I can barely type....)

Recipe Book: Cull Your Magazines

Cooking magazines are a hit or miss affair.

Some months, I am overwhelmed with inspiration and close them feeling invigorated, brimming with good intentions.

Some months I close them feeling shortchanged and annoyed, no better off than I was before purchase.

Either way, I always close them.

And once I do, it is Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind.

Enter Catherine (again) with another brilliant idea that is already paying dividends.

1. Get your cooking magazines together.

2. Pull out all the recipes that looked good the first time you saw them (but then promptly forgot) and tear them out.

3. Give the harvested remains to the kids for collage or origami.

4. Sift through the pile and identify the ones you might actually make.

5. Slip into plastic page protectors and place in a binder.

I had so many magazines that I had to break the collection down into seasons - one binder for each.

Autumn is looking pretty delicious.

Thanks to this system, we've had two new dishes this week, both of them hits:

• Roast Tomato, Chorizo & Goat's Curd With Baby Spinach and Polenta Wedges; and
• Roast Pumpkin Soup With Pancetta & Parmesan.

Tomorrow night:

• Chestnut & Parsnip Soup With Pear Puree (which I've been meaning to try for a year); and
• Balsamic Mushroom & Goat's Curd Salad.

 Happy sorting.

Photobooth Bookmarks

First, let me say how much I regret doing neither hair nor make-up on the day these were taken.

Given that we had to make a dedicated journey to Adelaide's only genuine, black and white, 1960s photo-booth (located in the basement of the Myer Centre, Rundle Mall), you'd think I could have factored that in, but no.  

In the mad dash up to Christmas, we just barely managed to find correct change and have our pictures snapped.  One set featuring the boys (for CB's side of the family) and another including yours truly, for my lovely husband and parents.  

Cramming into a squeezy space, behind a curtain, with other people is pretty well guaranteed to lead to silliness, but I got the boys hopped up on ice-cream and lollies beforehand, just to be sure.  It worked.

Laminating had to be deferred until after the holidays, due to a miscalculation on my part; apparently, photos can melt when laminated using a standard machine, and must, therefore, be laminated using special equipment at a photo shop.  

Who knew?

Consequently, these have just been posted, but I am hoping that it is the little imps - and not my tardiness - that the grandparents will think of when opening and closing their books.

p.s. This machine is available for hire.  Anyone getting married???  I am thinking 40th....

Ho-ho-hum

I am searching for my ho-ho mojo.

I think it may have gotten lost beneath the mountain of tissues I went through last week.

Felled by a nasty virus, planned advent activities have been dropping off like Tiger Woods' sponsors.  

And with only seven sleeps left till the big man comes down the chimney, there are some that will just have to wait till next year. 

Such as...

making snow globes with my boys, who hold out hope that it might snow in Australia this Christmas...

fashioning really cute gift tags...

whipping up a batch of eggnog popsicles...

decorating the tree with walnuts, and...

stringing a pine cone garland.

We do, however, have a lifetime supply of mince pies and shortbread.  

Got to keep those priorities straight.

image from Nickolas Muray

Mending My Ways

Problem:

2 boys;

7 pairs of pants;

11 holes-in-the-knee and 3 more developing; and

No sewing machine.

You'd think they spend their days crawling, not running.  

Solution?

Iron-on appliques.

 

After scouring the net, I couldn't find any that appealed, so I made my own. 

Very, very easy.  Honestly.  

Have I mentioned that my mother had to finish my home-economics project, because I was incapable of sewing a cushion in the shape of the letter "K"?

Actually, it was a hole (sorry) lot of fun, and much cheaper than 7 new pairs of pants. 

1. Select and pre-wash contrasting fabrics for the applique and patch.
2. Trace the applique design onto the paper side of the iron-on applique material (eg Bondaweb).
   
3. Roughly cut out the applique design, leaving a bit of border. 
   
4. Repeat the process, this time tracing the shape you'll need for the background fabric (the actual patch).
   
5. Place the design on the wrong-side of your applique fabric and iron on.
   
6. Place the patch shape on the wrong-side of your background fabric and iron on.
   
7. Cut out the shapes precisely.
   
8. Peel away the backing paper from the applique.
   
9. Position the applique on the correct side of the patch and iron on using a cool iron.
   
10. Iron the patch onto the garment.
    
11. Sew both the applique and the patch for reinforcement, or you might find yourself screaming at the child who whiled away a long car ride by peeling them off.  

I've had requests for a patch that looks like Fred.  

With only two pairs down and five to go, I'll have plenty of opportunity to pay tribute.  

Cartonlandia

I hereby promise to never inwardly groan when greeted with another of my son's towering recycled box projects.

Because  Ana Serrano just reminded me of how much fun he must be having.  

Just makes me want to empty out all my shoe boxes and get cutting.     

Magical, isn't it?

Little Lady Liberty

How sweet are these dainty Liberty hair slides from Selvedge?
I have delusions of grandeur, imagining that I may be able to recreate them for the little ladies in my life.  
My projects-to-do que is snaking around the block, but with an all male household where the ability to burp or pop-off at will is celebrated daily, I sometimes need a tiny girlie fix.

These should do nicely.