Merry Christmas!!

To believe in making wishes and have faith that they can come true

To believe that you can find some joy in everything you do

To believe in giving gladly for no reason, just because to believe in LOVE

That's what it means, to believe in Santa Claus.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Folks!!

Christmas has always been special since the past 4 years now.. after our little one was born. There is something magically innocent about Christmas, and I feel it much more than ever, all around me, now that we have moved to a Western continent. London has been all 'Christmassy' ever since Halloween... anywhere you go, you see only red, white and green - decorations, crafts and activities, food ideas, gifting, home decor ( I once even saw toilet paper with the snowman and reindeer print!). Everyone is gearing up for their biggest event in the entire year - the holiday season - to be together as family, to pray for warmth and good health, its the season to be happy together and spread joy!! And add to it the wonderful romance of winter:-)

Now I've been impatiently waiting for some snow here ever since winter set in. No luck as yet, and I'm told that it doesn't snow heavily in London and it could be just be a couple of times that it might happen. This has made me more anxious - what if I were to miss the snow if it ever happens in the middle of the night?? So checking the scene outside the window first thing in the morning and last thing as I wind up at night is something like a ritual for me now. I hope to be rewarded for my wait soon!

My little doll has 3 weeks of holidays for Christmas here and this set me off on a mission to look for creative activities to engage her all day. Turned out - it isn't a very easy thing to do. You see, arts and craft did not mean much to me as a child and though I like to see my child colour her heart out now, I realised that it is not something that would come easily to me. To think of things to do, to organise stuff that is required, the most difficult part being getting her to be involved in the entire activity without losing my patience and... and especially to handle the panic inside me when I see the mess all around.... yes ma'am, that is an important part of trying to promote creativity in a child - the mess!! It is going to happen!

So I finally hatched a plan to blend the two very exciting ideas - preparation for Christmas and craft! I decided to make by hand all the decorations that go on the tree! Hmmmm... mighty plan? You can say so! Yep - my mother would faint with shock (but be happy later on) to know that I shopped for yarn and needles among other stuff from felt to foam, acrylic to water colours and embellishments to fancy paper. And we were ready!

Since I did not want this post to look like a craft activity page, I've created a separate post to write in detail about the labour of our love :-) You can find the link at http://sabkuchrama.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/christmas-craft.html  :-)

I am attaching some pictures though of some decorations that we made. We managed to do this with a lot of inspiration from the blogs of super creative moms across the globe! There are so many talented creative beautiful people out there!! :-) Thank you all for getting someone like me involved in making colourful, pretty creations  - I hope to channelise this new found energy and enthusiasm in exploring and opening up a whole new bold, creative world for my pre-schooler!

This is a very cute Xmas tree that we made from tissue rolls. Simple to make, doesn't require too many things and very beautiful!

And we put up all together to make the prettiest Christmas tree!! It made us so so happy!!! :-)

It was completed with a reading every evening of the Nativity story and a reiteration of the wish-list from Santa :-) He even visited us in our dreams!! So, we decided to put up the Nativity set as well that we purchased last year.

And that made a very memorable Christmas! :-) Meeting friends, chilling out totally at home, watching movies, Christmas party at school, Christmas party at daddy's office, my first Boxing day shopping experience and of course- the true spirit of happiness is in giving, isn't it? The playschool gave us the opportunity to do that - all the children were requested to bring what they can to make other children happy - they took the children over to the community centre to make the donations -  all culminating into a magical, beautiful Christmas. Like someone so aptly quoted - "Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas!" 

But for our little one, the one who inspired us to learn something new and truly celebrate the spirit of Christmas - the belief that Santa would come visit her - was the most enchanting of all. She waited for weeks trusting that Santa would visit because she had been a good girl and Santa wouldn't disappoint, however busy he was. I lived that dream with her every single day, smiling happily to myself thinking of the joy that awaited her. She even got up at 4 am on Christmas day because of a dream that Santa had come - ohhhh, there was so much love and longing in that sweet little heart, it would overwhelm us at times. It is so beautiful to be a child at Christmas... I quote again - "There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” (Erma Bombeck (1927-1996), American author and humorist).  

And let me tell you what else is beautiful. It is beautiful to be a parent who gets to see the delighted face of his/her child, first thing on Christmas day, to want to believe that magic does exist in the world. To be reminded that we can bring so much joy to our little ones with simple acts of giving, sharing and the gift of togetherness and love.

I do not think Santa Claus comes down the chimney - he comes in through the hearts of beautiful innocent children. 

Wish you all a very Merry Christmas! :-) 

Christmas Craft!

This has been our first Christmas in the UK and we celebrated it in style! With our new found love and energy to create beautiful things at home, this Christmas involved a lot of craft! :-) Yes, most decorations on the tree were self-created between my girl and me. We had a lot of fun making them and we made full use of the 3 weeks of winter term break that we had from school!

So here goes our list of beauties!

1. Christmas buntings  - 

Simple and sweet... decoration with coloured papers! All we did was write out the letters in different coloured card paper and stick them on to contrasting coloured paper and cut them out to make them double-coloured. We strung them through a satin ribbon and hung them up with blu-tac!

For this, we cut different coloured papers in long strips and make circular bands while interconnecting them. I could have left them plain as they were colourful and pretty by themselves but since I wanted my girl to actively participate, I gave the strips to her to draw/colour/shade them as she pleased. If you looked closely, you will see smileys, cycles, gardens, flowers, snowmen, moons and stars and even people on them! :-) She soon got bored though, and so I connected the rest of them plainly.

2. Cardpaper Christmas trees - 

The first type is pretty simple - cut out a tree shape on green cardpaper and let your child drawout her favourite fruit/flowers on them. When done, insert the tree shape into 2 tiny slits on opposite corners of the topside of a tissue roll.

For the second type of tree, which I picked up from http://www.outnumbered.be/craft-creativity/paper-christmas-tree/,  my girl tried some folding which did not quite come out right so she ended up just sticking on the stars to the tree. All you need is a medium sized green cardpaper sheet, tissue roll cut in two with tiny slits on the sides and some glitter glue n stars or anything else that you might want to spruce them up with. Fold up the card paper sheet into small folds, join them at the top with strong glue and stick the fan end of the tree into the 2 slits on the tissue roll. Voila! Your christmas tree is ready!  Simple and beautiful, isn't it? 

3. Hand print wreath - 

This was again a very simple activity... A Christmas wreath - which people put up on doors to welcome visitors and offer goodwill, their circular shape representing a symbol of eternal life. Traditonal wreaths are made up of fir twigs and tiny branches, wild holly, pine cones, satin ribbons, what not! This is also a popular craft activity with loads of ideas on the internet. I picked one up with handprints on green cardpaper arranged in a wreath shape. I twisted the idea a little bit and sat down to make handprints of all the 3 of us on different coloured paper. Again, my girl was allowed to show her artistry on the cut-outs, before I connected them to form this beautiful wreath. I created the holly and the bows with foam pieces leftover after some other craft. Don't you like it too? :-) 

4. Painted pine cones - 

This seems to be a very easy job, but boy oh boy! This is a tiresome job! My girl played truant - she picked up a loadful of these pinecones from the garden and came home to colour. She didn't even finish a single one! I had to do them all by myself and had to actually sit up late one night. I used acrylic and metallic finish paint on them.The beautiful and romantic outcome at the end of it was what made the effort worthwhile! :-) You can hang them on your tree like decorations by sticking on a ribbon sling on top, though I also used most of them to decorate around my Nativity set (photo below)

5. Assorted traditional Christmas decorations -

These were my first experiments with felt, foam and..... sewing! Now again, I am not the kind of person who can sit in one place and do something that involves concentration and precision. Thats why sewing, knitting, crochet (I still know very little about the difference between knitting and crochet!) are not activities that I thought I will ever get close to doing! But there I was, sewing up stars, snowmen and X-mas trees, candy sticks and baubles! Though, I'll admit that there is very little sewing involved, and that too the kind with a decently big needle and yarn involved, which is relatively easy. And I was pleased with the results too! 

There wasn't much for my bundle of excess energy to do, so all I could let her do was to decorate the creations with buttons, embellishments and glitter glue. I just left her alone with the supplies and this is what they ended up looking like :-)

6. Farm animals with felt - 

This was my most enterprising work! Farm animals with felt! I even learnt a new sewing style, called.. ohh.. what was it called?! Ohh yes.. Blanket stitch! (at this point, I can actually visualise my mom's I-cant-believe-it shocked face! LoL ). This idea was picked up from http://www.freekidscrafts.com/felt_farm_animals-e1943.html  I hope you can make out the animals / birds in these! :-)

7. Lady bug with Air Drying clay - 

This was an activity lifted straight from Mister Maker! Air drying clay, a spoon, ear-buds and colour! Thats all... aren't these pretty pretty ladybugs?

8. Tissue roll X-Mas tree -

This is again an activity taken from http://www.outnumbered.be/craft-creativity/creative-christmas-activity-with-toilet-paper-rolls/. Here, I had to take a lot of help from my dear little girl. She had to colour all the tissue rolls green inside and outside. My job was only to even out the colours, stick them together and put the baubles into them. I added the star and the satin ribbons to give it a richer look. I loved this artwork greatly! :-)

And all of these came together to make the prettiest Christmas tree!! It made us so so happy!!! :-)

It was completed with a reading every evening of the Nativity story and a reiteration of the wish-list from Santa :-) He even visited us in our dreams!! So, we decided to put up the Nativity set as well that we purchased only last year.

There are my pine cones making up part of the outside of the stable! 

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!! :-) 

Do send me your comments and suggestions and I would love to also hear of more creative ideas from you!! :-)