Season's Greetings !

To my family and friends , may all the joys of the season be yours.

 Happy Christmas and best wishes for a wonderful New Year .

Christmas Preparations . . .

Plenty of baking, making and crafting going on around our house lately. How about you?

We have made many, many of these candy cane cuties for the youngest one's school friends . . .

and lots of shortbread packs for the middle child to bake and take.

I have sewn some very sweet little bird ornaments . . .

and made Irish Cream for the primary school teachers.

Packaged up in pieces of fabric and matching ribbon, they looked lovely - and every part of the gift is

re-usable, so they are green too!

 

I have also made a bunch of Christmas cards using the easy (and free) instructions and printables from here.

Still plenty of baking to go, and some decorating as well. I'll check back in with more preparations soon !

P.S. "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." Alexander Graham Bell

Purple Haze . . .

I made a purple topper for our rainbow tree last week, over a couple of days.

I used these . . .

I already  had everything except the plastic star ($2 from the cheap shop) and the purple glitter paint (also $2 from the cheap shop - I'm the last of the big spenders!).

First, I glued some braid around the edges of the star to give it some interest.

 This took ages to dry, so I couldn't do the next step until the following day. Yeesh!

Then I painted the whole lot with the glitter paint, which didn't turn out as well as expected. This is after 3 coats, and actually looks darker in the photo than in reality. The 'paint 'is more like clear glue with purple glitter in it.

To add some depth to the colour, I mixed up some leftovers to make the best dark-ish purple I could without having to buy anything! I painted over the lot, and then added another glitter layer once it was dry. Phew.

Finally I was able to add a hessian flower and a ribbon bow . . .

and get it on the tree!

P.S. "Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, 

they are all 30 feet tall." Larry Wilde

The Rainbow Connection . . .

A couple of weeks ago while chatting about Christmas I asked the kids
their opinions on a colour theme for this year.
( There are some of our decorations we haven't seen for a while
and I thought it was time for a 'multicoloured' decorating season. )

Eldest son suggested we decorate the tree in a rainbow pattern -
not just multicolored all over -
so that's what we've been up to this weekend.

We started with some new coloured LED lights, which are really bright!

Penny helped!

Then we sorted all our decorations into colour groups, to see what we have 

the most of. (If you want a rainbow pattern, you'll need lots 

more of the colour at the bottom than at the top.)

Our 'roygibiv ' became ' ivroygb ' (going from indigo at the top to blue at the bottom) 

and we used gold for the yellow. (Does anyone have yellow decorations? 

In all my boxes I don't have a single one!)

I tried just eyeing the sections of the tree, but it wasn't very effective
so we came up with this method:

I marked off a triangular section with vertical pieces of string, then added horizontal pieces
to make *6 even sections. (Our tree is 180cm tall, so I used a tape measure to put string
every 30cm.) *I put indigo and  violet into one section.

This worked really well. Once the marked off section was finished, I removed the string
and continued right around the tree with each colour, using the completed section as a guide.

The end result - pretty! 

. . . though I still need to find or make a purple topper.

Once the lights are on the rainbow is not as obvious, but it's still pretty . . .

So now we have a different look for day and night. 

Great idea, number 1 son!
 *Just as a reminder, you can see last year's 'luxe' tree here, 2010's blue, green and red one here
and 2009's aqua, red and white one here.*

P.S. “The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.” Anon
P.P.S. I'm linking up to Sarah's Christmas Tree Party here, so go and check out some truly beautiful specimens!