I am a huge fan of Christmas. As we don’t celebrate Halloween, I have been known to start with the Christmas movies and music as early as October! I think this is to do with being a musician and Christmas concert/production rehearsals starting as early as October Half Term. As I write this, II haven’t got my tree up but by the time this goes live my tree will be up hopefully (after all it’s less than a week to Advent!). There a friend of mine at church who starts counting down from September (Actually I think she starts earlier than that but doesn’t tell anyone she’s already counting down!)
Back in the Summer, as crazy as the idea was, I started planning Christmas. I got out my Christmas Planner (Those Mrs Brimbles inserts are coming in handy again!) and started on all the things that would need to be organised. I also got thinking about what could be crossed off before Rex arrived. It even crossed my mind to write my Christmas Cards back in the Summer so they were done. Then I realised that we didn’t know what Rex’s name would be officially (and although we were told he would be a boy, did I want to risk putting “The Boys” if it turned out he was actually a girl?) so those went back on the shelf until I knew for sure what names I would be writing on the cards.
I’d been for a wander around Hobbycraft a few weeks back before Lockdown 2.0 to take a look at Christmas bits. I found a Cross Stitch Christmas Card set so decided that I’d try and make some for some of my relatives.
There’s definitely something about all the home/handmade touches around Christmas. Whether it’s decorations the kids have made in Children’s Work at Church or at school, or the handmade presents that I’ve spent time on.
Christmas Cards
Homemade Christmas cards are perfect for sharing the love with family and friends. In previous years, I’ve often been too busy with other things to make any Christmas Cards but this year I’ve been working on some, while Rex has been napping. I love using embellishments that I have in my craft kit as well as handwriting font from Design Bundles to add extra features to the cards. The gingerbread men came in a Christmas package from a friend (Although Hobbycraft does a similar version) and the Christmas Jumpers were from Hobbycraft (they come with little sticky pads on them which makes them easy to stick down.
Once I downloaded a few of the fonts from Design Bundles I was able to create these labels to be printed off and stuck into my homemade Christmas Cards. The font is called Mama Papa.
Gift Tags
Every gift needs a name tag, these can be homemade too. In previous years I’ve printed ones that I’ve found on Pinterest. But I’ve also found over the years that just printing a template is a great start to then use with wrapping paper that matches or compliments the present that you are wrapping or maybe is special to the person receiving the gift. So far I’ve made these ones with wrapping paper and some scrapbooking paper. This scrapbooking paper is from the Kraft Xmas set from Hobbycraft – it goes well with the brown paper wrapping paper I have this year. Another idea is to use this year’s Christmas cards to make into gift tags for next year – therefore recycling your Christmas Cards into something new.
You can download the template I used here.
Another option are these stickers from Design Bundles – I quite like the. “Do not open until 25th Dec” ones. I think I’ll be printing some of them off to add them to the wrapping.
Printing Wrapping Paper
When Jaxon was little, for one Christmas we painted wrapping paper to wrap our gifts in. The intension was it would be potato printing or hand prints but I think it descended into chaos and just turned into whichever sponge shape he would cooperate with.
Homemade Crackers
Another craft is homemade crackers. You can get kits to make them which include the “bangers” but you can make them at home without if you prefer. I’m sure at some point over the years I have made them but I haven’t recently. They are really easy but so effective to do as something for your Christmas table – it also means you can tailor them to your guests. Here’s a tutorial I found on Pinterest.
Paper Chains
Paper chains are so very easy to make but also cheap to make too. In the past we’ve bought kits but in the summer for Jaxon’s birthday, I found a printable that was actually July 4th themed but I just omitted certains designs on the printables so that it was just blue and white stars for his birthday which he absolutely loved! Making red and green ones work great for decorating a tree or they can be strung across a room to add some more decoration. There’s a lovely easy walkthrough here to follow and make your own.
