Advent Calendar and Knitted Socks

After a lot of badgering by my little sister – and a few others, I have managed to find time to put together a second post.

Although we had a busy weekend with family visiting Emma and I still found time to make our annual advent calendar, with a twist this year. We have been looking at all the fantastic Christmas trees in blogland made out of old magazines and catalogues and thought we would adapt this idea to make an advent calendar.

Normally (since the children were at playschool!) we would make a cone shape and hide the sweets inside the cone and then attach the strings holding the sweets to stars with the days of advent printed on them. As the children are much older now – 13 and 15 we have been adapting this idea to suit. I like making this type of advent calendar as you can choose the types of sweets without having to buy the mass produced chocolate advent calendars. This year we have some very fancy seahorse shaped chocolates, if you know the ones I mean.

I also thought I would show you my knitting effort in this post:

This is courtesy of little sis again who gave me the wool, needles and pattern for Christmas last year. As you can see I have only just got started with the first sock but if ever I finish them they will be a very funky pair of knitted socks to keep my tootsies warm in this cold weather. Any bets on when I will finish them?

Well, here goes, my first post!

Thank you for all my lovely comments and albeit it rather late thank you so much for all the lovely crafty presents I received from the bloggy meet in London. It was very kind of you all to include me as well.

You will be pleased to hear that I have been crafty this weekend while looking after my friends children while parents went Christmas shopping. The girls (aged 13 & 12) made these, courtesy of "fan my flame".

I think it was quite an achievement as they made them all on their own as I was busy making blueberry muffins.

I say I was busy making these but in fact it was made by my friends nearly 10 year old son. They looked absolutely fab and tasted delicious.

Well, I say I have been crafty but as you can see the children have - does that count?

Well, she needed a helping hand

Seeing as my BIG sister Ally is"far too busy" to create a blog but is definitely an honorary blogger and has taken part in 3 bloggy meet-ups, I thought I'd do it for her - and I'm sure I have chosen the right title for it!

And she is a closet crafter too...............................

here are some of the decorations she made yesterday following Domesticali's tutorial

this one is from wrapping paper


and this is her clever variation made using the fabric wrapping from Michaela's fabulous fudge

she soaked it in a PVA solution first to stiffen it and it worked really well.

I'm sure she will have a lot more to say so please leave my BIG sister a comment to welcome her to blogland!!!