Getting in the Christmas mood

I see the light at the end of the tunnel with regard to Christmas presents - thanks to the internet it's been quite a pleasant experience this year. Have ventured into town a couple of times, but nothing compared to previous years. It's great waiting for all the parcels (just hope they all make it in time) and the postie seems to enjoy delivering them all to me too - although he seems to want to know what's inside most of them!!

Village people seem to love decorating the outsides of their homes with fairy lights. Our village has quite a few but the village before ours has an amazing aray of flashing lights and gardens festooned with Christmassy light decorations. We're going to have a evening walk, perhaps Christmas Eve, to see them all properly rather than from a car window. Getting into the spirit of things we headed off to our friendly local hardware store (there's quite a few around here, love them, love browsing round them) and bought some of the striking blue outdoor lights which we've strung around our front garden trees and bushes - looks brilliant.


On the work front we've been reading about traditions and the history of Christmas using the Almanac I mentioned before and Woodlands website. Bits of interesting information have been written up and posted on our large Santa on the wall which Ben helped me to make last week. We've also be reading the traditional Christmas Story (I'm amazed how Ben forgets it every year) as well as a more detailed and grown up version to get a better understanding.


As P is Dutch we decided to understand the history of Sinterklaas. Although our Almanac said the children had to do a treasure hunt around their homes to find mini presents from Sinterklaas, Katie and Ben decided to follow the other European tradition of leaving their shoes out (or on the windowsill) on the eve of the 5th. They enjoyed mini chocolates and these hanging hearts with lucky stones that I embroidered with their names.



On Friday, we had a willow weaving session where the children made willow stars - going to display them in our two front windows.


I'm continuing to be busy sewing and crafting ready for next Saturday's fayre. Ben's idea of making dolly peg pixies has paid off, they look so cute I've decided to make a whole load of them.