Day 14: Truth in the Tinsel Advent Experience

Day 14... the stable because there was no room in the Inn...

Yesterday was a gloomy and very wet day despite the fact that it is summer so when we realized we had to go outside for twigs for our crafts we started to despair.  Not for long though... because we're really good at improvising ;)

As we were eating our morning fresh fruit snack I looked at the twigs on the bunches of grapes we were munching and had a light bulb moment... ting!

So we gathered our supplies... some craft sticks, glue and our 'creative' twig substitute...

And made this delightful little stable...

Fridge Magnet Notebook Tutorial

I had this idea a few months back and stored it in the back of my mind to make for Christmas presents for two of my sisters and my sister-in-law.  So I thought I'd put a tutorial up incase anyone else wants to make a frugal Christmas present for a loved one.

The supplies you will need are:
3 small notebooks
1 A4 sheet of thin wooden board. I used a decoupage blank I found in the craft store.
Scrapbook paper. You could also use a photo or a little picture your children drew or painted, this will be a perfect option if this gift is intended for doting grandparents.
2 pencils
Embellishments of your choice

You will also need one of those plastic book binders you get at the print shops. A size that your pencil will comfortably fit into. 

And a magnet sheet...

Now on to the crafty goodness... take your wooden sheet and cut it into 3 equal pieces.  I asked my Dad to do this on his rotary cutting machine.  Sand the edges with sand paper until smooth.

Take you pencils and with a scissors make a groove then snap it into two...

Sand the ends to make it smooth.  Now you have 4 small pencils out of 2 large ones...

Cut your coordinating scrapbook paper, photo or art into squares to fit the top of your piece of board...

Cut your book binder into sections of three...

Now on to the gluing.  Heat up your glue gun and get rid of the kids i.e. put them in the room with play dough while you work with the glue gun on the kitchen counter far away from little hands.  Glue the notebooks to the bottom half of your wooden sheets...

Then glue your scrapbook paper squares onto the top half...

Now glue on the sections of book binder (this is to hold your little pencil)...

Embellish your scrapbook square as much or as little as you like...

Then take a moment to admire the beauty of your embellishments... 

Lastly glue on your strips of magnet...

And you're done...

For the gift tags I used little window cards...

and glued in little squares that I embellished with beads...

And made three of them for the three gifts...

Now all that's left to do is to wrap and admire your handy work...

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  Have fun.

I linked this up to...




and...

Day 13: Truth in the Tinsel Advent Experience

Day 13 was Bethlehem so the kids made the cutest little houses out of egg cartons.  This craft was extra exciting because it was one that Jane could join in on.

They painted their houses and made little black dots for the windows with black paint.

Andy and Jane's finished ornaments...

Day 12: Truth in the Tinsel Advent Experience

On Day 12 we did a cute 'I spy jar' relating to the census where Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to be counted.  I thought it was a really excellent connection between subject and craft the rice grains being the many people and Mary and Joseph being amongst them.  Ours turned out rather hilarious but fun none the less :)

Their treats were Woolies eggs.  Andy got the dinosaur egg which to his delight contained the skeleton of a T-rex's skull and a small packet of sweeties and Jane got a Hello Kitty one with a hair clip and sweeties inside :) 

Jane asking for hers to be opened...

 

Andy coloring the rice in a bag with gel food coloring and a bit of hand sterilizer cause we didn't have rubbing alcohol, which I thought was an excellent tip given in the book.

Feeling the rice before setting it down to dry...

In the mean time Andy took all our pipe cleaners out of our craft box and made rings out of them then using the lid of the craft box he went around selling his wares...

I of course bought some because who could resist such beautiful jewelry...

Our supplies for Mary and Joseph were rather unusual.  I of course couldn't find the permanent marker when I need it so we opted for thin black tape.  For the heads we used a bunch of plastic balloons from the cake shop.

We cut pieces of tape for the faces... told you ours came out hilarious...

Our i spy container on the tree...

Days 9, 10 and 11: Truth in the Tinsel Experience

We seem to form a patteren of not getting the time or oppertunity to do our advent crafts over the weekend.  Which is understandable seeing that weekends are always jam packed with family fun :)  But we did however make the time to have our advent treats.  On Sunday Andy pulled our a slip of paper out of the stocking on which I drew a gingerbread man indicating that we will be baking gingerbread men as his treat for the day.  He was so excited and had great fun decorating them.  I did most of the baking of coarse because the kids prefer to eat cookie dough while occationally helping.  The icing part though was done very enthusiastically by all (including Mommy). :)

So Monday is a crafty goodness day of catch up.  This morning we made Joseph for Day 9.  I didn't have the correct shaped peg called for in the instructions so we used craft sticks for the legs and a round Christmas ornament for the head. I glued it with hot glue...

Joseph with Mary and a felt heart on our tree...

Day 10 was about Joseph's dream so Andy made this pillow stuffed with cotton wool.  I inserted an eyelet for easy hanging and we glued the bottom shut with fabric glue...

This Mommy is a decluttering Mommy so unfortunately we didn't have magazines lying around to cut up.  I did however have scrapbook paper which we cut some letters from.  I didn't like the lowercase j in the front of the name of Jesus so I just filled in a capital J with a marker :) 

We glued a pipe cleaner to the back to hang it...

We had so much fun this morning!  My lounge floor needs a good sweeping now cause Jane has to join in on the crafting fun by 'sorting' through our craft box while we are busy and Andy loves cutting up the little bits of left over materials into tiny pieces :)

Andy is really happy cause it's school holidays so the neighbour kids are all at home.  He's busy right now having a lovely morning picnic under the shade of a big tree with 2 of his friends.  I so fondly remember my own carefree summer holidays!  Okay enough day dreaming... got to go do those dishes... and sweep the floor :)

Day 8: Truth in the Tinsel Advent Experience

Andy's reaction to today's treat... Wow, sugar-free lollipops :-)

Luckly the kids see the sugar free lollipops I buy from the health shop as a treat and seeing that it contains no artificial ingredients or sugar there is no Mommy guilt attached to giving them. :-)

The craft for today was to make a sun so we cut out a sun from the template given in the book using fun foam and Andy 'painted' glue onto it...

While Jane tried to get up to have a better 'look' (somehow toddlers, glue and glitter don't make a very friendly combination - don't ask me how I know that)! ...

He then sprinkled golden glitter all over his sun...

We inserted a brad and proudly pegged it onto our tree...

Day 7: Truth in the Tinsel Advent Experience

The little stocking for Day 7 contained a map and following the directions Andy discovered a beach sand castle mould bucket with a rake, sand sieve, spade, sand mould and 2 packets of soft gum sweets shaped like sea animals.  Jane played with her packet of sweeties for a while and then was allowed to eat half a sweet :-)

Now Andy wants to go to one of his favourite places... the beach :-)

Day 7's scripture reading, discussion and craft was about Mary singing so we had to decorate a CD.  Andy wanted to do sand art so we collected the supplies including some shiny paper to cover the back of the CD.

Andy doing his sand art...

The finished ornament...

And the shiny back...