Xmas craft is making it's way home from school and cheering our home.
The wrapping has begun, giant colouring in pages and crepe paper. We purchased a 20cent Xmas book from the school fete that was missing pages, so we are cutting it up for decorating presents.
We have been playing with a label decorating kit. All the kids joined in but the littlest loved it the most.
The elf on the shelf has been turning up in weird and wonderful places - trying to steal the lollies from the advent calendar. He was even found in the fridge, sidled up to the chocolate crackles we had prepared for the grade 3/4 nature treasure hunt and afternoon tea. Each child was given the list I wrote the night before below and we ventured into the forest, no koalas but most things were found on a beautiful morning adventure.
| Beetle Skink Bracken Fungi Moss Koala Gorse Chrysalis Purple Flax Lily Spider web Spider Wattle or Spiny Mat Rush Wallaby or Kangaroo Grass Cherry Ballart |
Kookaburra or Kingfisher
Possum or Kangaroo poo
Tree Hollow
Black Cockatoo
Leaf blister sawfly
Pine Nuts
Blackwood Wattle
Gum nuts Gall
Dragonfly Caterpillar
Common Brown Butterfly
It's been proper summer hot and we're pulling out the summer clothes.
There was a mega baking xmas day with my vegie group ladies, we hired out a community kitchen for the day and brought home an extraordinary amount of food. Everyone shared some of the days creation which resulted in a huge gift to take home, actually the idea was we could share them around as gifts but I'm not sure I can - who can give away delicious home made jam, nougat, truffles, biscotti, short bread, mini puddings..... I had great success with raspberry, rhubarb and apple jam using 2kg of raspberries from the garden - will post about this one later. I also baked up pfeffernusse for the first time (I used this recipe except used 3tbspns of star anise instead of anise), russian tea cakes (link) and gingerbread (recipe link) then packaged them up together with some sunflower seeds and beans. These have made great teacher's gifts.
There has been more raspberries, they're hard to keep on top of and it seems criminal to find them going to waste. We have been freezing the latest haul.
The Bowerbirds have been making these to hold table place cards for Xmas lunch at nannas. They have crepe paper baubles, silver wool tinsel and a little glitter. The names will be written on these -
find the link here, they sit snuggly on the tops of the pine cone trees.
I made this bell stick with the little Bowerbird today so she can reach up and jingle the bells.
Xmas time is hectic but mostly joyous, just wish we had a few more weeks to fit everything in and get my crazy messy house under control.