Christmas presents

The Keeper of the Needle

Well the gift giving has been and gone, well mostly anyway we haven't as yet caught up with a couple of groups of relatives but most have been seen and gifted as it were.

I made a bunch of felt play food for my brothers twins but forgot to photograph them. I may do the boys some to so if I do I'll take pictures of those which will invereably turn out completely differently :)

I do love that I have a family who appreciate hand made things. We gave Tom's family mostly hampers which were a mix of bought and made items, mostly of an edible nature and got thanks for taking time to make things! I know many who like to make things have far less appricative family.. and I honesly think in such cases give the handmade items to your friends who will love and appriciate them :)

I am also luck enough to have family who make me things !

You can see where it get it from as they included these items from my mum and the wonderful little person at the top is by my brother's very talented partner and mother to his wonderful little boys. Isn't it just adorable! She has started selling as few pieces on folksy as Feythcrafts and also on DaWanda .  She also has a blog.

Let it snow

Life seems to have been full of people being ill recently, nothing serious just the normal round of early winter illnesses abut it has meant pretty much all my making time has been take up.. well not making things!

I did make 6 costumes for school but was feeling so ill myself I didn't take photos. Just basic tabards with stencilled snowflakes but they seemed to go down OK.

Hopefully I will have more to post about soon though most of what I have in the process of being made will have to wait till after christmas to be posted in case the recipients read this blog!!

Sledging last year.

We had a few flakes of snow for real but nothing like the 6 inches our friends farther south got much to Noddles discust as he wants to go sledging again  like last year! Trestump was quite mistified by the snow though and didn't seem to be sure if he liked these funny fluffy but cold things that were falling on him!

Advent calenders of the none fattening sort.

We have a lovely wooden advent calendar Noodles gets to do each year. Each drawer has an ornament in it which then gets hung on the little wooden tree that goes with it. This year it is rather crammed on a shelf to keep it out of the way of Treestump but it is still fun and hopefully next year they will both be taking turns or perhaps I will make Treestump a fabric one to save arguments.

I've finally got down the workshop a tiny bit a couple of weeks ago and hope to do so again tomorrow, Treestump being off nursery due to inflamed throat and ears last week didn't help but he is better now. I did manage to help Wookie with a rabbit project.. The brief was a life like looking rabbit who's neck could be broken! This is for a school play apparently. There are photos on the Mandala Studio Facebook page. Wookie did most of the work on it I just helped on hand sewing, stringing the legs and generally trying to get the limbs to sit right, his airbrushing makes a huge difference to it though as without it the flat colour of the fake fur made it obviously toy like.

Tomorrow I  have some tabards to make up for Noodles school for the reception class play.. I don't have kids in reception currently but Noodles ex-teachers from year one moved to that class this year! I suppose making them end of year sewn gifts did rather put me in the spotlight for such requests :)

Anyway back to advent calanders and there are a few on line ones you might like to check out if you like making stuff or just looking at nice things.

For anyone into minitures the AIM advent calender has a project a day and so far they are wonderful..
Made in the UK also has a simple project each day ranging from biscuits to kids costumes to sweet little bags.
Tempus Fugit and NBK are both giving away scrapbooking elements everyday which go together with each other and are lovely and wintery. Currently you can still download everything from the start of the month.

(edit to add another one)
Kids Craft Weekly does a wonderful range of weekly newsletter on fun kids activities and has an Advent issue.   Two in fact the other is here or just click on newsletter in the menu to see them all..

Now a couple of pretty ones
Circles of rain has more traditional one in that it has pictures each day, though the photos are less traditional in content :).
I love this one at Stamping Mathilda it's so creative!


and Finally as the Beeb say.. dont' forget Norad's Santa tracking page for the big night ! They too have a form of advent calender and games to play