It's a paper maché polar bear standing on a pizza base ice berg, with its cub. I love the way G painted the 2D cub looking up at the 3D mum. I had gone out of the room to put something in the sink, I didn't even know we were painting stuff on the iceberg, I just put it there to give the wobbly bear a bit of stability. Mini jaffa cake packaging made the initial structure, actually we were trying to make a reindeer inspired by a muddy deer hunting trek in Margam Park, but it just began to look like a polar bear so we went with it...

Party time in our house, friends coming round, big tradition of homemade games going back certainly 3 generations that I know of. My Nanna being an expert at circle games, although the prizes were a bit different in those days, I remember handkerchiefs with nursery rhymes on or your initial embroidered in the corner, hey, sometimes it was someone else's initial, but somehow just as coveted, and brown plastic combs, or murray mints, and once I won a tiny bottle of bubble-bath, I was on cloud nine. Anyway, although G never had the joy to meet this pocket wonder of a Nanna, she has fully imbibed the ethos of cutting up that cereal box and making a party game. I was simply the provider of scissors, water, brushes and getting the paint down from the shelf, I was beginning to feel a bit left out when I got offered to do some of the background, and was asked a little bit of advice about the boots. I am proud to say I also cut the mouth bit out of the beard. The rest from sketching out to painting, cutting out and checking it worked was all down to G, another pocket wonder I should say. A pin the tail on the donkey style game, but it is pin the 6 different features on the Father Christmas. Blu tak on the back of each feature, a scarf to gently blindfold your competitors, and optional spinning of course...

This weekend we put up our Christmas tree and decorated it. Eilir wanted to decorate the room too (something I don't normally do much of because our living room is pretty colourful as it is), he also wanted to learn how to make chains of paper people - so I thought we could combine the two using newspaper (the black/white/grey would be a contrast to our shocking pink walls).

I first showed Eilir how a standard 'stick man' chain is made, folding the newspaper, drawing the design and then cutting out. Eilir then drew his own design with spiky hair that worked really well - on each he drew a different face, some with 'sticking out tongues'. Depending on how well we did the folding we'd get the occasional off one with bits missing, like one mysteriously was missing a head 'maybe he had a skiing accident...?' We then tried different Christmas themed shapes, like a snowman that Eilir drew - I did the cutting out while Eilir provided commentary 'Is it hard [cutting out the scarf], is it worth it...?' He then asked if he could do ‘corachod' (Welsh for elves), and proceeded to draw a practice elf. He commented 'Do you know what I think will be the hardest part? The curly shoes', and he was right - they were a devil to cut out (but definitely worth it)! We finished off with some weird and wonderful ones, including some fat birds (mine) and a man wearing a snowman suit (Eilir's).

Rohan is a king/wise man in his Cylch Meithrin Nativity play. Drawing, cutting, measuring, tracing, gluing, taping, neatening and more measuring. He started to cry when we started gluing gold paper to Logaan’s crown. He said: “don’t do Logaan’s Mummy, do mine.”

They were really good at cutting, taping and gluing and gave the tracing outline a good go! (Lots of practice with that using feet, hands and soft toys as templates). Rohan also said that it was a bit tight. It’s okay when his hair goes through the top.

Wanted to take a picture of him in his costume with the gold crown we made. Logaan is wearing his and completing a 100piece dinosaur jigsaw. Rohan refused, preferring instead to run around in a vest and nappies. His little hands and feet are freezing to the touch.

G flicking through recipe books again, got an idea for these filo pastry Santa sacks. The question was, what should the filling be? The book recommended feta cheese and rocket, but G was not happy with this. I suggested apple and raisins, a bit of a mince pie feel, but G said they had to be for dinner, and came up with chopped red onion, quorn, and chopped tomatoes, cooked in a pan for a while until she reckoned they were soft enough and then wrapped up in the pastry layers. G spent ages cutting each layer of pastry into six fairly equal squares, and really loved painting them with olive oil and a pastry brush. End result: G said she preferred the risotto I had done to fill us up and just toyed with one, big sister rejected the risotto and scoffed 5. Jack Spratt and all that, it was all vegie so they must have got some of their 5 a day somewhere along the line.....

`

If you haven't guessed already, we are big time greedies in our house.  This recipie was one that I fancied making back when we were doing the biscuits, so this Sunday we had a go.  The original instructions produced pink and white coconut ice squares, which I thought could be given a festive twist by using green instead of red food colouring, and if we stacked the squares in a particular formation we could make a Christmas tree shape.

Eilir again relished the task of mixing the ingredients - "The chocolate brownie milk [condensed milk] is winning" i.e. the other ingredients were getting covered in it.  Then, letting his imagination fly, - "It's wetting Camelot up, sucking it into the deep water".  He was particularly enthusiastic at the stage of adding the food colouring - "I want it to be super green".  

"It looks good, it smells good, will it taste good?"

This recipe involved waiting for it to set overnight.  I explained my idea to Eilir about making the Christmas tree shape from the cubes we would cut, but he had a much better idea.  He had seen something on a craft programme that showed you how to make a tree from star shapes, so he dug out his star shaped play dough cutter, and wanted to use this to shape the coconut ice instead.  The next day (after washing said cutter) I let Eilir show me what he meant and (hey presto!) it worked really well.   I gave him some edible silver balls (left over from making a birthday cake) to decorate it with - "This is really cool with the baubles", and he then demanded the orange slices (that he knew were in the cupboard) to represent presents under the tree.  I used the left over coconut ice to make my own tree shaped heap with some cherries.  I think we all know that Eilir's small but beautiful version wins hand's down!

Our third mission was to get the authentic finishing touch for Eilir's school concert costume.  Eilir has been a shepherd three year's running now (his choice), and has been wearing the outfit I originally sewed together from an old sheet 16 years ago for his older brother!  This year it required a little mending but was otherwise ready to go, all we needed was a shepherd's crook....

This was the weekend of Grandad Leigh's visit (who incidentally is a real life genuine shepherd being a sheep farmer in France), so we went out with the expert to learn some bushcraft (he's also Australian to boot) and to get ourselves an appropriate implement.  We went for a walk in Howardian Nature Reserve to look for a likely specimen.  Grandad advised us that hazel was the best for a sturdy crook and we soon found what we were looking for, he cut a large section which he then cut down to Eilir's size after much "a bit shorter, a bit shorter" from Eilir.  Myself and Eilir then sanded down the rough bits using sandpaper from the house to get a lovely smooth (and hopefully acceptable for school) shepherd's staff.

Grandad also advised us that hazel was the traditional wood brought in for Christmas decoration pre Prince Albert and his fir trees, so watch this space, we have kept the left over section for another Christmas making project.......