Merry Christmas!

The last couple of days have been filled with last minute Christmas preparations, shopping and wrapping.

We've had a slight change for Christmas Day and now have some extended family joining us for Christmas brunch - we'll total 16! Some of my last minute preparation for our tables today included adding some Christmas ribbon to my candy jars some and some cute Christmas circles from A Little Delightful to our cups for brunch (the cups with lids and straws are for the kiddies and will also feature at the Little Guy's birthday party in a couple of weeks).

Signing off for a few days now for Christmas and a little trip with my family.

Merry Christmas!

Reindeer Food

Here is a quick and easy gift for the special little people in your life:

The cute bag topper is from Crafty Carnival.

Ingredients for reindeer food:

- 1 cup of oats

- 1/2 cup of white sugar

- 1/2 cup jelly crystals (I used half red/half green)

Now Santa will be sure to stop at your house Christmas Eve!

Christmas Gift Packaging

Some Christmas packaging for you today:

Homemade rocky road with a cute candy cane ribbon from Spotlight

These little treats are for my work collegues this week:

Bag topper created in photoshop using this free digital scrapbooking kit from Two Peas In A Bucket.

And I finally finished the gifts for the Little Guy's daycare staff:

The little name tags were also done in photos shop using this free Christmas digital scrapbook paper from The Shabby Princess.

I still have a couple of gifts to wrap to go under the tree but otherwise I am all finished for Christmas gift giving.

Christmas Card

This year I wasn't sure if a Christmas card was going to make it's way out of our household and into the post. The Little Guy is very challenging to photograph at the moment - he loves the camera and wants to hold it. Luckily on Saturday morning I gave him a christmas decorative sign to hold and managed to snap a few good shots. The photo card is based on a Becky Higgins template to which I made some text adjustments and the end result was this:

Last year I designed a photo card and adhered it to some blank cards and wrote a personal message inside. But this year pressed for time I have just sent out the photo card itself. Hopefully next year I will have the Christmas card ready much earlier!

And here is another great shot I captured of our gorgoeous Little Guy:

The Playroom

We recently did a big shuffle of room uses in our house and now the Little Guy has a dedicated play space which he is loving (and we are loving having no - well almost - toys in the living area!).

Here are some pics of the finished room:

Expedit unit from Ikea and storage tubs from Kmart.

Gorgeous tissue poms and wall stickers.

I have to thank the Big Guy for his tissue fluffing abilities as he did the blue and grey ones for me. I started with the small white one and wasn't very successful. He seems to have a knack for it!

A close up of the framed print

Here are some details of where I purchased all the lovely things in this room.

The tissue poms were purchased on Etsy through Party Poms.

The cushion cover is adorable and came all the way from The Netherlands! Purchased from Etsy store Red Stitch.

This is a close up of the frame print purchased from Imaginart - they also have an Etsy store. Being a square print I could not located a suitable frame in any of our local stores so I designed by own online at Frameshop and am was suprised at their quick delivery - I ordered frame on the Wednesday and it was delivered on Friday morning! You customise all the specifications of your frame, size and shape, frame colour, mat size and colour.

Here are the wall stickers I purchased from another Etsy store Lola Decor (I changed the colours):

I am so happy with the all the different features of the room coming together and think it looks great.

More Christmas

I had grand plans for lots of blog posts this past week but was sidetracked by a bad flu and still feeling under the weather today so trying to take things easy.

Time for some more Christmas details. First up is a (bad) picture of our tree:

The Little Guy has been gently re-arranging the tree. He loves it and says 'wow' and 'pretty'. And he has only opened one present so I think he is doing really well.

One day I would love to have a proper mantel to hang our stockings but for now this is what we do. The bits and pieces have been purchased over the last 3 Christmases since we bought our house. I love our stockings (from Myer) and our stocking holders are from David Jones (I've also seen similar ones at Myer):

Bottom shelf: The little red boxes are actually candle holders and are also from David Jones. The red bauble is from Bed, Bath and Table and lights up inside. The silver wire Christmas tree I can't remember where that one is from (perhaps a discount store?). The white candle holders on the left were a wedding present from my parents and the champagne flutes on the right are from our wedding.

Top shelf has this gorgeous decoration from a trip to World Disney World we took a couple of years ago:

It is quite heavy and I have been searching for the past two Christmases to find an ornament stand to hang it on. Just this week at our local shopping centre a little stall selling personalised Christmas baubles were selling them for a bargain price of just $5! I was so happy!

And speaking of beautiful Christmas things Sharnell Dollar is giving away some gorgeous Christmas goodies including these:

Check out her blog for details of the goodies and how to enter.

Christmas

Christmas decorating is in full swing in our house with the tree going up this past Monday -which is very late for me! I usually have the tree up by mid November but with all the re-arranging of the house the Chritmas decorating has been taking a backseat. I am a little fussy and particular when it comes to Christmas but each year I find a few more bits and pieces to add to our collection including this cute take on an Advent calendar:

This version is actually a placemat with 2 layers. The bottom layers display the numbers and you rotate the top layer accordingly. I have just blu-tacked it to the wall and each day take it down to change the number and re-tack to the wall. The Little Guy loves it and calls it 'pretty'!

This shelf is in our new dining area

displays a gorgeous Villeroy & Boch tealight candle holder (a gift from my boss many years ago), a cute wind-up wooden Santa sleigh and reindeer from My Wooden Toys (I can't see this particular toy on their site at the moment but they do have some adorable wooden nativity sets), a photo of the Little Guy and a lovely wooden Advent calendar purchased from Bed, Bath & Table last Christmas. The Little Guy is a bit young at the moment to use this but I look forward to future Christmases where I will be able to put some little notes about a Christmas related activity or event as well as chocolate inside each of the little boxes.

The Little Guy also has a Fisher Price Little People Nativity Set he loves to play with. I believe it is important for there to be some Christmas (or any other celebration) decorations he is allowed to play with rather then everything being out of bounds to him.

I also saw this cute version of a Advent calender at Infarrantly Creative blog:

How cute is it? What other great Christmas ideas have you seen?

Changes

The epic re-arrange of our house is now complete besides a couple of little touches for the playroom that I recently purchased which have yet to arrive. Our spare bedroom/study is now the playroom, our dining room is now the study/craft area and the toy storage area of the family room is now our dining area. It is so nice not to have a zillion toys strewn across the living room every day. It was a massive job with new furntiure purchases, lots of decluttering and rearranging but I am so pleased with the result.

For the first time ever I have my very own desk and much needed creative space. I purchased some galvinised metal pails from Ikea to store some of my frequently used tools such as scissors, pens, adhesives etc. They were looking rather plainish though so I tied some gorgeous American Crafts ribbon around each of them:

Amazing what a little piece of ribbon can do - I think they look great. (And did you notice the text printed on the ribbon on the right?)

Lots to share at the moment - more storage for my crafting bits and pieces, Christmas decorating including Advent calendars and other little Christmas gifts I have been preparing.

Making a big effort to get blog posts up over the next couple of days so stay tuned!