A Morning at the Farm

The days are getting longer and brighter and we have had gloriously sunny weather in Edinburgh this week. This morning we went with our friends on a scavenger hunt to the local city farm, Gorgie City Farm. This is a mere 10 minutes walk from where we stay, so is an ideal destination when the weather is dry and sunny like today. I prepared the scavenger hunt last night and laminated the sheets to make them crinkle and  mud-proof.


On one side there were pictures of thing and animals to find and tick off:

• tractor
• wheelbarrow
• lamb
• pigeon
• guinea pig
• chicken
• pig
• duck

On the other side, there were pictures of things to collect in a transparent plastic bag:

• stone
• feather
• sheep wool
• leaf
• straw
• moss

You can have a look and print our scavenger hunt form here.
Ju was mostly interested in running around and getting to the play park but enjoyed collecting things for the bag. There were lambs and newborn kids (as in baby goats, less than a day old), and the usual pig, cow, horse, goat, rabbits, chicken, turkey, dog and cats.

Scavenged treasure from our farm trip

This afternoon we painted a big farm picture. I drew in black pen the animals Ju remembered seeing at the farm and he painted them using roll-on Pritt paint.

Farm picture

Then we made some daffodils to celebrate St David's day. We coloured in yellow and orange some paper cupcake cases and little chocolate paper cases. We then put yellow and orange pipe cleaners inside green straws letting about 1.5 cm stick out. We inserted the paper cases onto the straw/stem and made some felt leaves.

Paper cupcake cases daffodils

Last Minute Christmas Decorations

So we're spending a few days with family in Norfolk. As we're staying in a holiday cottage, the lack of Internet has prevented me from posting on our activities but not to craft. As we are guests here, the tree is a little bit bare so we have joined forces with my sister-in-law and her children to get decorating.
Here are our ideas for some very last minute decorations:
- wrapping paper concertina
- felt ornaments
- decorated wooden ornaments
- pre-cut foam reindeer and sleighs
- Father Christmas on a lollipop stick
- decorated paper boxes
My lovely sister-in-law brought this great book of Christmas paper crafts which I look forward to using too.

Wrapping Presents Playtime

As I am not the most organised person, I generally leave wrapping presents to the last minute. It then becomes such a chore, as it has to be done quickly and well. Darling Him loves doing it, so he generally has the pleasure of wrapping for both of us (well, I do wrap his, to keep it a surprise). When we wrote down "wrapping presents" as one of our countdown to Christmas activities, I wasn't actually intending Ju to wrap all my presents for me. The aim was to playfully experiment with matching different sizes of paper with different object sizes, to develop coordination with sticking sticky tape while holding paper, and generally discuss the point of wrapping presents at all. Also, did I mention Ju loves folding paper at the moment?

This is what I gathered for today's playful activity:

• jam jar lids
• several packaging boxes of different sizes: small cosmetic box, light bulb box,...
• pieces of wrapping paper of different sizes (use recycled paper from previous years/gifts)
• scissors
• small strips of sellotape (lots!)
• last year's Christmas card, main picture cut into small squares
• hole punch
• pieces of wool

Ju chose a jam jar lid to wrap first, and he folded it up inside some paper. He stuck sellotape, not necessarily on the bits that needed to be stuck together, but more on top of the paper. This allowed us to discuss the point of sellotape in closing any "gaps" and fixing the folds onto the main bit of the present wrap.

Wrapping a jam jar lid

He then cut some paper with his scissors and realised that it was too small for the box he had originally intended to wrap, so he chose one of the smaller boxes.

Ju cuts paper to wrap this box but then realises that the piece of paper is too small

Wrapping paper absorbed him for quite a while and he didn't really get frustrated until the fourth wrap. 

Holding the folded paper while putting the sellotape on is tricky

He then punched one hole in each of the tags and set about threading the wool into the hole to make the tag attachment.

Punching holes through the tags

Threading wool through the tag

Present ready: " I will put it under the tree now"

Wonderful Snowflakes on our Window

Today we were decorating the window in the kitchen, one of the activities still left in our Christmas countdown activity garland. Our themes were snowflakes and transparency of colours. The structure of a snowflake is nearly completely unique, because complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity regimes. However, most snowflakes have a hexagonal symmetry. The vagueness and wonder in snowflake patterns, combined with the fact that there are certain rules to follow, make them an ideal craft project.

Paper snowflakes, plain and rainbow-coloured

We started by folding and cutting an A4 sheet of paper to make a square. Ju loves folding paper and experimenting with cutting through several thicknesses of paper at the moment, so he was very keen to do this.

Ju folds his paper

Because we used standard printing paper, it was actually really hard to cut through the many layers of paper once we had folded it as per this tutorial. Ju helped with the folding, but I had to do the cutting. We folded a square in two to make a triangle, then in two again; then we folded the two outer corners onto the middle line, and folded this in two. Then we cut the outside to give us a wedge. I recommend you look at the tutorial linked above, it's very clearly explained.
Once we had a wedge, I just cut into it to make patterns, and then we opened up the piece of paper. What wonder awaits when the insignificant wedge reveals itself into a beautifully symmetrical and delicate snowflake! And so, we made two paper snowflakes today.

Our two paper snowflakes, before and after unfolding

One of them went up on the window.

We had a little fun laminating the other snowflake, sandwiching it together with some coloured tissue paper. We cut the laminated shape out, and made a hole with hole punch to hang it up. Ju threaded some wool into the hole and we hung it on the window too.

Snowy soft snowflakes

For this, we took some glittery Christmas drape and cut out two large six-pointed snowflake shapes. Really simple, but it looks like fresh, soft, giant snow.

Drape snowflake on the window

Hot glue snowflakes

I have to thank We Lived Happily Ever After for this idea. My hot glue gun and I set to work on the window to create some six-pointed snowflakes by drawing them free-hand, while Ju and Lilo had their lunch (cunning trick to keep them away from the hot glue). 

I put a little bit of silver glitter just before the hot glue set to make them extra sparkly. Drawing the snowflakes wasn't hard, but I found mine were a little bit messier looking than I would have liked. I expect I should get better at it with some practice. As the evening is drawing in, these are looking even prettier as their three-dimensional opacity is reflecting the street lights glowing outside. 

Please note that this is not to be attempted if the weather is very cold, as the difference in temperature between the hot glue and the freezing outside surface of the window could cause the glass to crack. Thankfully we had no such worry. And ours is also a low temperature hot glue gun.

Hot glue gunning a snowflake on the window

My three hot glue snowflakes

We added to the snowflakes a few homemade stained glass effect window ornaments, including the Sharpie marker recycled stained window ornament we made on Day 8. We can now consider our kitchen window officially decorated. It will be lovely to look at our window from the street too. I wonder if Darling Him will notice when he gets home tonight.

Snowflake decorated window

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Clever Christmas Cards

Oops, we still haven't sent any Christmas cards! That explains why you haven't received yours. Today, we're getting on the case and making our own cards. The personal touch means you can customize them to the person whom you are sending them to. You don't need much to make your own cards, but it helps if you saved last year's Christmas cards. Below are some examples of the cards we made. They aren't all there, and we've still got to make some, so I will probably update this page in the next few days.

Recycled cards

What we used:

• coloured card
• pretty shiny Christmas papers
• Old Christmas cards - cut out interesting motifs from them - I find that you can't easily re-use already handmade cards, although they can still be used for making present tags.
• snowflake hole puncher
• ribbon
• glue, scissors
• glitter glue, glitter
• sequins

Recycled cards Ju made this morning

More recycled cards

Snowflake cards

For the snowflake card at the top, I got instructions for making a snowflake from a great site, but unfortunately I didn't bookmark it (sorry!) so can't point you to it*. However, I have since found a page with patterns for making Star Wars snowflakes.... I know... My geeky friends will be getting those for Christmas. Anyway, cutting a weird pattern in a piece of paper that has been folded 6 times is a bit tricky for my 3 year old, so I did the cutting. Unfolding the paper to reveal the snowflake was quite a magical moment. We then glued the snowflake onto a card and made some snowflake holes using the hole puncher.

* [update: ...Or can't I? It turns out I had actually pinned it on my Christmas Craft Pinterest board so actually, here is this very well described tutorial on snowflakes, in case your friends aren't sci-fi geeks and you're looking for something a bit more traditional.]

For the next snowflake card, Ju cut snowflakes out using the snowflake hole puncher and glued them on to a card with some pretty paper and ribbon

Angel cards

We made these on Day 11 of our activity countdown, when we made our pretty snowy landscapes. Check out our blog entry on that day to see how we made them.

Right, and now, down to the write stuff...