Christmas Stars

So I've attempted our first home made Christmas decorations, they're pretty easy to do to be honest, but I would say they are best made with children above toddler age, unless it's just my small boy that would equal a disaster when put in a room with glue and lollipop sticks!

 

 

Anyway this how to make them yourself....

 

 

Items needed:

 

1) Lollipop sticks (if you don't have them saved from the summer you can buy packs cheap enough from most craft shops and some supermarkets) You will need 10 sticks per star

 

2) PVA glue

 

3) Tinsel approx, 2.5 metres per star

 

4) Christmas ribbon, as much as you like!

 

5) Needle and thread

 

 

So the instructions are basically as simple as the shopping list!

 

1) Place the lollipop sticks on a flat surface, such as a table or large tray, and position them to make a five point star shape.

 

2) Once they are positioned where you want them start to apply glue to the ends of the lollipop sticks where they join to each other, one at a time, and apply a little pressure for a minute or two until the glue starts to set.

 

3) Leave about 20 minutes for all the glue to set, at this point you should be looking at something along these lines....

 

 

 

 

 

 

4) Once the glue is set you're ready to decorate the star. I used tinsel, you just can't beat tinsel at Christmas! I picked some that was made with wire inside so that it could be bent into shapes easily. I also made sure it was a fairly thin tinsel as you can lose the star shape if your tinsel is too thick. So quite simply you just need to start wrapping the tinsel around the star frame. Once you've finished the tinsel shouldn't need securing in place if you've used a tinsel with wire in, if not though you could use florist wire to secure it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5) Finally you need a hook to hang the star with, just cut a piece of Christmas ribbon about three inches long, but it's best to thread it through the star and decide yourself how much ribbon you want. Thread the piece of ribbon through the star and then stitch the ends together with the thread and needle to make a loop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There you have it, your star is ready to hang. If you like you could use some more Christmas ribbon to add a second loop so the star will hang longer or flat on a wall.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting the house ready

It's officially on, the mad race to get the house ready for the 1st December. The house needs cleaning and the furniture needs reorganising so that we can somehow fit my beautuful 6ft Christmas tree in.  Hubster has tried on several occassions to talk me into having a smaller tree, but he failed, for me Christmas is not Christmas without a big tree. So we will be spending tommorow night moving furniture around in the lounge to find a way to make our tree fit. It will fit, one way or another!

So with Sunday being the 1st of December this marks the first of our traditions...

Firstly the tree goes up in the morning, decorated with love, so many of my tree decorations have a story. I have a selection of baubles that once belonged to my Grandad, some that I brought back from an awesome trip to Canada to visit family, special baubles from my childhood, so many with memories of others, very special decorations made by Nephew and of course Small Boy's additions. Finally there's the fairy, she's a woodland fairy and absolutely gorgeous. I searched far and wide to find the perfect fairy and perfect she certainly is. All this tree decorating is always without fail every year done by Hubster, Nephew and myself whilst singing along to our special Christmas album and scoffing a tin of chocolates! I have to confess this year I'm a little worried about how Small Boy and the cats will behave with the tree! Last but by no means least, there's Small Boy's advent calendar. We decided to buy him a Christmas wooden house advent calendar that he will use every year, we'll fill each drawer with his favourite chocolates, although all chocolate seems to be his favourite at the moment!

Once we've finished we go to Whiteleys Garden Centre to visit Santa, last year was Small Boy's first time meeting Santa and he did really well, never cried once, however he did try to pull Santa's beard off! We have a photo taken with Santa, take a leisurely walk around the shop looking at all the beautiful decorations, maybe even buy some then finally write and post a letter to Santa.  Then we move onto next door, the Whitegate pub for lunch, we love it here, the staff are wonderful and the children's menu is great too.

Once we're back home there's nothing better than curling up together on the sofa to watch a Christmas movie with a hot chocolate, especially a Baileys one!