Cat and Eilir Day 12

Snap! Today we have mostly been making 'thank you' cards to fill the rainy day and to give Eilir regular screen breaks - some of them under protest (see photo)!

We picked some of our favourite photos of him and his brothers from 2013 (some used earlier for Grandad's card/frame), and played about with the limited captioning ability of my Linux notebook.  Eilir chose the thought clouds and the wording of the thoughts. We shared the cutting and sticking, putting one picture on the front of the card and a second inside.  I delegated the writing task to Eilir (he got the presents after all!).

Cat and Eilir Day 11

Pomanders

This was a long-term project started at the end of November/beginning December when we were away in Ironbridge. We took away with us oranges and cloves to start these smelly festive decorations off. It was one of the first things Eilir had said he wanted to do for the twelve days challenge (remembering them from two years ago). This time I did a bit of research on the 'proper' way to do them, i.e. rolling them in a fixative spice mix etc and leaving them to dry for a couple of weeks.

Initially I did two and Eilir one - he again modelled his one on one of his 'happy face' characters. When we got home Eilir loved mixing up the pungent spices (ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and orris root powder) and rolling them around in the concoction.

We then left them to 'fix', getting a lively waft of Christmas spices every time we  passed.  Unfortunately two of them developed some neon green mold after a fortnight and had to go in the compost - so much for preserving them properly!

The last one is still going strong, so today we decided to make a couple of fresh ones to add to it to make a table decoration for a festive get together tomorrow. Team work was employed here with Eilir making the holes with a toothpick and me filling them with cloves. He broke up the toothpick to make eyes to finish. The little one is supposed to be a hedgehog.

Cat and Eilir Day 10

Last minute gift wrap

Inspired by some left over flat wooden Santa novelties from our snow globe making, we decorated two plain brown paper parcels with Christmas Eve night scenes using felt and acrylic paint pens and then sticking on our Father Christmases.

On a third parcel we went for random Christmas symbols (as per your average seasonal wrap). Eilir chose to draw a Santa hat, stocking, reindeer and the now obligatory penguin!

Cat and Eilir Day 9

This multi-media project started with Eilir getting a piece of homework from school to design a cover for their Christmas carol night programme. Eilir came up with some drawings (pictured) but was not that fussed on them or the activity.

He was however loving the rehearsals for the concert itself and was forever singing them at home. A particular favourite was 'Silent Night', which he desperately wanted to learn how to play on the piano. Luckily he sat his first piano exam at the beginning of December, so the pressure was off at the end of term, and I could ask his piano teacher to teach him 'Silent Night' during his last two lessons. He is very proud of this and plays it for anyone visiting.

The video is our duet - he finds it too difficult to play and sing at the same time - so apologies in advance for my singing! We've been singing it together for weeks.

Cat and Eilir Day 8

 

Crackers

Another project that required a bit of time to collect the required materials (this time toilet roll innards and the middle section of a roll of wrapping paper).   By Sunday we had enough to make four crackers.

We filled the middle roll with a chocolate bear and a joke (provided by Eilir and copied down on scraps of wrapping paper by me). We then rolled this up together with two additional rolls either side in wrapping paper (ends of roll and some recycled from last year), Eilir holding, me taping. Using wrapping ribbon we secured the middle section, tying one end each on every cracker. There was a pretty equal division of labour on this activity, we even rolled them up together!

Eilir liked the smaller, neater crackers best (the ones made from the wrapping paper roll, which was a narrower tube).  The same evening we were visiting some friends, so decided to take two with us for pulling. The first pulled easily (Eilir winning), the second was more like a tug-of-war with Eilir's friend eventually gaining the upper hand and Eilir landing on his bum!

Cat and Eilir Day 7

Snow globes

We had this idea a few weeks ago when we first got our Christmas box out of the attic. One of our Christmas decorations (a very tacky ancient plastic snow globe that was probably picked up in a charity shop but nonetheless Eilir loved) had cracked, so I had promised we'd make a new one.

It took a couple of weeks to use (and finish with) some appropriately sized jam jars to be washed out and labels scrubbed off. We then rummaged for bits and pieces of broken Christmas decorations that wouldn't mind being immersed in water, glitter, and some polystyrene balls that had escaped a beanbag.

We did the Father Christmas first, and realised the polystyrene floated on top permanently. Eilir had to keep adding more water for it to be effective. Second came the yellow star which filled the pot, (but that was how Eilir wanted it).  He chose gold and silver glitter for the snow. Last of all he decided that he wanted a non-Christmassy one so that he could keep it all year round, which he filled with lots of multicoloured glitter and some coloured beads to make a kaleidoscopic effect when shaken. He was very pleased and has been turning them regularly ever since.

Cat and Eilir Day 6

 

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree(s)

This year we had two Christmas trees to decorate. Our rather large chaotic one (at our house), which Eilir and I decorated with the bits and pieces collected and made over the years (including some that I made with my eldest son 16 years ago as well as a new one star Eilir made this year!).

The other was a whole family project - my Mum's living tree that she has been fretting over for weeks. Hers is a small living one that I bought her four years ago. She didn't want to bring it in too early for fear of killing it and also couldn't bring it in herself due to mobility difficulties, so Rixon (aka Eilir's Dad) went over early on Saturday morning to bring it in from the cold and lift it into pride of place in the living room.

The second phase of the mission involved Eilir and myself as the follow-up troops in the afternoon, dropping in to decorate it and the room - climbing and reaching all the places my Mum can't get to.

Eilir likes my Mum's tree because it is short, fat, and misshapen. Growing in a pot on the patio means it has no competition for light, so it grows outwards not upwards! Eilir particularly liked attaching string to bags of chocolate coins that my mum had bought him so that they could hang on the tree.

Cat and Eilir Day 5

 

My mum came up trumps again by baking us a traditional Christmas cake and covering it with marzipan ready for icing.

I put together the royal icing mix and started the whisking - it needs a full five minutes or more, so called Eilir down towards the end (knowing he would get bored otherwise). He got right into using the whisk, making patterns in the icing and dripping it off the beaters back into the bowl (with lots of toilet humour references).

I must have been a bit out with the quantities because the icing wasn't as stiff as it should be, but we dolloped it on regardless (with it running off the sides creating a pleasing melting ice effect).

I had bought coloured icing to decorate play-dough modelling style. Adeola's boys may have a thing about reindeer this year, but for Eilir it seems to be penguins! He started with the first penguin, while I made a tree. I suggested a water pool, which Eilir took over and then completed with the head of a swimming penguin popping out of the water. Eilir was pleased with inventing a technique for the eyes (putting some white icing on the end of a skewer and pushing it in to the black icing and then pulling it out to leave a black central hole with white outline).

We kept returning to it to add finishing touches (originally the penguins didn't have beaks or feet!), and finished it off eventually with Christmas hats and a sprinkling of pink shiny sugar to give it an icy effect. It's now far too good to eat!

Cat and Eilir Day 4

 

Grandad's Christmas card (come New Year card/frame)

 

No Christmas box this year as my dad (aka Grandad Leigh) is not coming over to visit this year because he's in the middle of moving so his presses will have to wait until the new year. We thought we'd make a more post-friendly collage card instead. Eilir chose pictures from old cards and cut them out. He rejected most of the ones I picked (the only one making the final cut being the goose that he deliberately stuck upside down).  He did the gluing and chose the tinsel border, but couldn't be bothered with attaching it, so I got to do all the stapling. He wanted tinsel borders on both sides, so we decided to make it multipurpose and made the flip-side a photo frame with a New Year message underneath (we were also hedging our bets here in case it didn't arrive in France in time for Christmas!). Our excuse is that New Year cards are more the French tradition for festive card giving anyway ;-)

 

 

 

 

 

Cat and Eilir Day 3

New paper chains

Apologies for a repeat of a previous 12 days activity from 2011, but Eilir was very keen to do this again. It's funny how kids latch on to the familiar and want to return to activities they've enjoyed, turning them into new family traditions. We used our original ones again last year but they were looking pretty tatty when we brought them out of the attic this time round.

Eilir has a character that he created that he draws everywhere (and on everything) called 'Big face' (see the Christmas card he made me), so he was especially keen to have a paper chain version. It took a few attempts to get it right (his first one was overly complicated with added speech bubbles etc that made no sense when cut out), but he was really pleased with the final result. I made strange skating girl shapes, which Eilir added to with a snowman and a smiley face wearing a Christmas hat (that looked like funky mushrooms when cut out).