Advent Calendar

This weekend Brian and I made an Advent calendar for the boys.

 

Here is is hanging in front of the patio doors. It's 24 envelopes, each with a number on the front, and inside there's a card with instructions (like 'clean your room for santa') and in some cases a treat.

 

Some have treasure maps, and reminders of fun events.

 

We had a lot of fun decorating them.

 

The boys are longing for December first, so they can start opening them. I'm excited too....

Granola - finally

 

 

 

Some nicely decorated jars of granola - don't you wish you knew the student at this course? Made using this recipe, from Nigella's book Feast. It's wheat free, and you can made a sugar free version if you like!

Macaroons and origami boxes

 

 

 

We made macaroons using this recipe. Adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris (Broadway) by David Lebovitz. The prune and chocolate filling won everyone over.

The boxes we made also - they are a simple origami box - great for packaging all kinds of goodies. We made black and white ones for the truffles, I'm gutted that I forgot to take a photo - they looked wonderful!

Bath Bombs

 

 

 

A selection of bath bombs - in production, and the final packaging,

Wire and Bead decorations

 

 

 

 

Simple to make, and good for your Christmas tree, and to catch the light in a window, year round.

Christmas decorations

 

 

 

 

Here's a sample of our christmas decorations - made from recycled CDs, and clothes pegs. Ingenious, eh?

Make 'n' Bake 2009

 

A lovely day spent crafting, baking and mixing at Educate together on Saturday. We started with truffle making, moved on to christmas decorations, made chocolate macaroons and granola - all before lunch!

After lunch, we made bath bombs, and got back on the crafty vibe with packaging, gift tags and cards for the goods made earlier. Sadly no photos of the truffles, and not because they ended up in our tummies! The class were amazingly restrained, though the same can't be said in relation to the macaroons. :-)

More photos to follow...