Holiday Cheer

Our tree finally made it in the house this afternoon and took its place in the family room filling the air with the smell of fresh pine :)

With a bowl of freshly popped popcorn the kids and I got busy stringing long strands of popcorn together for garland...

to be hung along with pretty chocolate balls and candy canes.

It was so pretty this evening as we all sat in the dark with only the glow of the tree to light the room as we celebrated winter solstice and the return of longer days.

I've been promising to share photos of our decorations above our fireplace and the sun came out today and I thought if I don't get some good pictures now we may not get any light again for a while *grin* so here they are :)

I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my son was working on making a cardboard 3D silhouette of Rudolph to hang above the fireplace and it turned out fantastic!! I found it originally on pinterest but the link only gave plans for a very small one that you could print on your printer so he drew a larger one freehand and it must be about two and a half feet high filling in the mantle space right to the ceiling.

Another special ornament I made this year was all due to my lovely blog friend Amy who shared about the Finnish Stars she had made out of fabric and I was completely smitten with hers and had to make some of my own. Oh my word do I just love how these turn out and there are quite a few people on my Christmas list getting these this year *grin*.

I used heat 'n bond between my layers of cotton and linen, I'm not sure if she glued hers together this way, but I found that I could stick quite a few portions of each star together with little squares of the heat 'n bond in one swoop of my iron and the glue layers stiffened it up quite nicely :) They are a bit tedious to make like she had mentioned but after the first couple it seemed to move a long a little quicker but now that I've made eight of them I'm glad to be finished LOL.

Beneath the candy canes and finnish stars, rudolph we placed some of our mini gingerbread houses that we made last year and a few decorative trees and called it complete.

I wanted to keep everything really simple this year so the decorations are really minimal, not to many lights or knic knacs and most of what we used we baked, sewed or made from paper aside from a few sugary items. As I strive to personally keep my focus on the calm joy of the season and on family and faith I find it helps to keep all the surrounding noise of excess items to a minimum so I don't get distracted. So far so good *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Holiday Fun

Our advent calendar is growing!

Each morning one of the children takes a turn hanging a new little decoration onto our tree limb as we get closer to Christmas eve :)

We're still sprucing up our mantle and today my oldest started working on a 3D silhouette of Rudolph the Reindeer that will have antlers, a red nose and will eventually be hung above the fireplace. I knew I had been hanging onto those large pieces of corrugated cardboard for a reason!

The temperature has fallen below zero and we've had a good perma freeze for the last couple of days so both of the woodstoves have been going 24/7 to keep both ends of our home warm. That means an awful lot of firewood is making its way in and out of the basement and the children have been a HUGE help :) Today all three of them went out to bring more in with big brother filling and rolling the wheelbarrow to the basement window and then the younger ones handing it in to him so that it could be stacked up right away and keep the bark mess off the floor just in case we have a repeat of our flooding again.

I've been watching the newspaper for special Christmas choral preformances that are family friendly and free which is a big perk and this Sunday one of the churches in the city is hosting a Christmas choir and I can't wait. I just love listening to the large choirs sing. So beautiful and only a few more sleeps to go *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Christmas Scherenschnitte

I've been having fun making some holiday paper cuts using japanese linen paper. I just love that stuff :)

So far I've got the three wise men, some holly and candles...

Angels singing and of course Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

I haven't done any paper cutting in over a year and have somehow misplaced my nice little craft knife so I had to use a honking huge exacto knife but I'm very happy with how they turned out :)

The next step is to turn them into window transparencies using velum and kite paper to paint color into the open spaces. That way when the sun shines through them they are going to look amazing. I can't wait!

Hugs,
Rosina

Felt Leaves for your Nature Table

Yesterday in my linky love post I shared about the great felt leaves I had found in my bloggy travels and today we got down to business making some *grin*.

This is a fabulous fall project to do with your kids :) The sun was shining again today so we headed outdoors to collect maple, poplar, alder, redbud, oak and other leaves. If you plan on using real leaves and not images from your computer make sure you pick your leaves on the greener side because we had a few that were crunchier and they definitely don't do well when handled by little hands! LOL.

As you can see we didn't strictly stay with fall colors either. L being the girly girl had to do hers in pinks and purples. Hey it's all about personal interpretation :)

Even my oldest son got in on the project and made good use of his boy-broidery skills.

My 4 year old was pleased as punch with his mad tracing skills...

and he was just whipping along with the needle and thread to! I love doing craft projects with all of them. We're nearly to the point where each of them can just see what mama is doing and pick up their supplies and go at it... a few more years and the little guy will be there :)

To personalize our project a little more I thought it would be great to embroider the names of each of the leaves right on them!

These are going to be a FANTASTIC addition to our nature table! Crafting and education all wrapped up into one felty fun project *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina