Aunty Anna's Toilet Tube Nativity Scene

Going to squeeze this final Christmassy post in as Aunty Anna & Poppet's amazing Nativity scene couldn't go unmentioned!

I was glad to finally have a use for our large collection of empty toilet tubes! Aunty Anna cleverly rounded and then stapled the tops of the tubes to create the nativity characters. A cream circle was then stuck on for a face to which Poppet added details such as hair and facial features, using her Usborne touchy-feely Nativity book for guidance.

Drawing on Mary's hair

The craft box was then raided to clothe all the main figures, with outfits made from paper, felt, fabric, elastic bands, ribbons, paper doillies, lollipop sticks, goggly eyes and glitter. They did this over two days and Poppet had a lot of fun making them.

Very intensely showing off a shepherd, clothed with felt, ribbon and an elastic band.

Inside the stable

Aunty Anna brought with her a cardboard box that she had turned into a stable for her classroom. Little promptly crawled inside it and surprisingly fitted! One of our walnut babies from the Christmas tree became baby Jesus. We added animals from our toy animal collection (queue much debate as to whether there should be pigs in there or not). I strung a little set of battery operated fairy lights inside the stable, and we put a star Christmas tree decoration on the top. Aunty Anna made a little manger from a toilet roll tube.

The Magi, with lollipop stick arms

Poppet clutching Mary, a Magi & Joseph

Playing with the Nativity scene

 

Poppet loved playing with it; she would get Mary to ride the donkey, sing lullabies and carols to baby Jesus (or sometimes the walnut baby was named after her new baby cousin), and fly the angel around. When she asked us what noise a donkey makes, we said 'heeee-hawww!', and when she asked us what noise Mary makes, we said 'I'm having a baby!' So her nativity play was punctuated with 'heee-hawww' & 'I'm having a baby!'. It was very cute! 

Poppet's favourite, the Angel, with paper doily wings.

We have packed it all away to bring out next Christmas, and hopefully many Christmases to come! Thank you Aunty Anna!

Poppet: 3 yrs

Little : 1 yr 3mos

Homemade Christmas Potpourri

I love the smell of Christmas. At home my mum always buys the M&S Christmas potpourri which is amazing but I wanted to have a go at making some myself because it seems really simple.

This is what I used to make it:

Pinecones

Dried orange slices

Cinnamon sticks

Cloves

Star Anise

Cinnamon oil

Baubles
Gold laquer spray paint

I spray painted the pinecones gold and once they were dry sprinkled them with cinnamon oil and sealed them inside sandwich bags for a week or so. The smells fades after a while so I top it up by sprinkling on some more cinnamon oil every now and then. You can also buy bags of ready scented pinecones which would make it even easier. I put everything in a bowl and it is now sitting in our family room filling it up with a Christmassy scent.

Unfortunately the potpourri is also really popular with the girls especially Little who takes a grab and run approach.......so I am now missing most of the dried orange slices (her favourite to take away and chew on) and a few cones.

Poppet: 2yrs 11mos

Little: 1yr 2mos

DIY Wreath

Assorted shrubbery from Grandad

This was my first ever attempt at making a wreath for Christmas and I am so pleased with how well it turned out! It cost me exactly nothing to make; everything was either lying around our house or garden (well most of it was from Nana and Grandad's garden!) and hopefully will make our home look nice and Christmassy when I eventually figure out how to hang it on the front door. 

Grandad arrived bearing gifts of conifer, holly and some shrub with red berries, and he had also knocked up a wreath base using some insulation tubing - I have still to turn this into a wreath but plan to do so shortly as I have loads of greenery still to use.

Our two wreath bases: insulation tubing on left and coat hanger & hanging basket liner on right

Poppet had already seen a picture of a wreath in a Christmas story book we had been reading her and asked "What's that?" so she had a rough idea of what they looked like but she liked seeing one appear before her eyes! I started off by bending a wire coat hanger into a circle with Poppet's help, leaving the hook intact so we could use it to hang the wreath up when it was finished. I had an old hanging basket liner that I tore roughly into three pieces and then wrapped around the coat hanger, securing it on by wrapping twine round it.

Together we then attached bits of conifer all the way round the wreath, just by pushing the end under a bit of the twine. We kept doing this until we had quite a good layer of conifer built up, Poppet was really good at this bit!

I was surprised at how long she was able to concentrate on it, I didn't need to try and keep her interested she just wanted to help.

After the conifer we had a search around the garden to see what other greenery we could turn up, and came back with some rosemary sprigs that we tucked into the wreath as well. Poppet kept coming back with little sprigs of weeds saying 'Here's some thyme!' (a herb she knows well because she has some in her garden) but I managed to avoid having to put any weeds into the wreath!

Wreath in progress

I then started adding pieces of holly and red berries and this is where the swearing started as I kept spiking myself on the holly. Understandably Poppet was from this point onwards reluctant to help attach the greenery and preferred to have a more background role just observing "Watch the spiky bit mum!"

I had sprayed our pine cones gold and scented them with cinnamon oil so Poppet loved taking them out the bag and sniffing them. We tied a few pine cones to the wreath as a finishing touch and declared it "all done!"