Christmas cards

We participated in the Christmas card swap organised by Kidscraftweekly as we did last year. It was such a thrill to receive the cards last year and I'm hoping we'll receive at least a few this year too. So far we haven't been lucky - our mail box has been empty - but I realise mail gets around slowly at Christmas time.

I love the Brazilian air mail envelopes with Brazilian colours!

And these are our cards this year. The kids had a good time making them and didn't need much help from me. I did the writing on the other side and they signed the cards. This year we sent cards to Australia and the US.

Christmas gifts

This Christmas we did a secret friend with all extended family members. That way everyone bought just one special gift to a secret friend that was reveiled on the 24th at my in-law's. In addition to that we wanted to make a few little gifts to the kids' cousins.

A green felt bag with a few cars inside for little Eduardo.

Two felt bags with wooden bead armbands for Mariana and Bruna.

And a pink collar for uncle Gilmar's little dog. (I did buy the collar and just added the felt hearts and the beads).

Christmas in Sunday School

Children's Day (Oct 12th) is a big date over here and it's widely celebrated at schools, in homes and in church as well. This year we arrived from Finland so late that I didn't have time (or energy) to organise anything special for my Sunday School group so I promised I'd have something special for them for Christmas.

I made a chocolate cake and put together small gift bags with sweets and these wooden pegs that we painted at home with the kids. Lucas was really good at this and he would have painted many many more. I did fortunately buy some extra pegs that will be given to relatives at Christmas. After they had dried I glued a small magnet on the other side and wrote a little note that says "Jesus was born in order to save you".

New Christmas cards!

We received two more Christmas cards from California and Florida from the Christmas card swap. Thank you!

Christmas tree

We used some empty milk cartons that I had washed and dried. They have a lovely silvery colour on the inside and you can cut stars out of them. We also used some pipecleaners in order to hang the stars...

We then took a dry part of a tree in front of our house and secured it in a flower pot with some sand and some local semi-precious stones...

And we have a Christmas tree outside our house!

This was ever so quick to make and the kids thought it was such a great idea. We will probably come up with some more decorations later on but this is it for now. I'm missing terribly the scent of a real Christmas tree as well as the real candles that we always had on it. It was such a special moment when my mum would light the candles and we'd all just sit and look at the beautiful tree.

Christmas card swap!

This year we participate in the Handmade card swap organised by Kids craft weekly. It was so much fun to make the cards and today...

We received four Christmas cards from Spain, UK and the US! It was just so exciting to see what unknown people had come up with and sent us. The kids were so happy about the cards too!

And these are the cards that left our home and are on their way to Australia, US and Brazil (yes, we actually got an address in Brazil on our list!) :)

Christmas crafting

This was a fairly easy crafting and it gave Luana a chance to show off her skills with the scissors. I got the idea from a Finnish website but I can't remember for the life of me what that was...

We first cut a star and then a spiral. We then glued the star in the middle of the spiral and added lots of little stars. You could use glitter or anything you like to decorate this. We then attached a string on the top of the star and there you are! The kids really enjoyed these and even Lucas showed a lot of patience choosing which little star goes where :)

First cards are ready!

We finished off ten cards for the Christmas card swap. Luana glued the pressies under the trees. These were such fun to make (and easy too) that we might be making more of them... We're running out of pompoms though and I haven't seen any around over here but I'm sure we can think of something else to glue on the trees.

Christmas is on its way...

My head is already full of all sorts of Christmas crafting ideas and I think we'll start today with the kids! I know it's a little early but Christmas cards have to be sent off early if I want them to make it before Dec 24th.

I signed up for the Christmas card swap. We get to make 10 Christmas cards with the kids and send them to 10 randomly selected families. In return we should receive 10 Christmas cards from other families. It sounded so nice that I just had to participate.

edit. We did start indeed! These little Christmas trees were ever so easy and quick to make. The kids could have made many more of them. I simply cut some tree shapes out of green felt and the kids glued small pompoms on them.

Some Christmas decorations I've made out of felt. I'm running out of felt though so for this Christmas there won't be many more of these. They have been fun and quick to make and those really are the main criteria for my crafting at the moment (kids keep me quite busy during the day and I'm ready to pass out as soon as they go to bed...).

First Christmas crafting this year

and there'll be many more pairs of these. I found them on Montessori by hand and thought they were adorable. They were quick to make but I hadn't somehow realised how tiny they were. Also I didn't stuff these but the next pair will be stuffed for extra cuteness.