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Saturday, December 15, 2012

Reindeer Food with Reindeer Topper Printable.

 
Aside from the usual making of the Christmas cards, we kicked off our Christmas creativity this year by making some Reindeer Food.  I first stumbled across the idea of Reindeer food about 3 years ago when a friend of mine made some for the kids to sprinkle on the lawn.. Last year I bought some from a shop, but this year I decided to give it a go and make some myself..

I still had the poem tucked away in the draw so I simply created my own bag topper to go with it. 
 
Download your copy of Reindeer Food Topper for free: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7pe3wq93TPRcHNfSzV1Q0NERnc

 
What you will need;
 
* Bag of rolled oats.
* 2 ramekins or small bowls 1/2 filled with raw sugar
* Food colouring of your choice (we used red and green)
* Glitter in assorted colours of choice
* Some festive sequins (optional)
 
How to make:
 
Start by placing your rolled oats into a mixing bowl.  You can add as many as you like, depending upon how many packets/jars you plan on making of the Reindeer food.
 
Next add a few drops of the food colouring to the ramekins of raw sugar, mix it in until the sugar turns the desired colour.  Set them aside to dry.  (Instead of this you could also use jelly crystals also)
 

Once the sugar is dried out, add the sugar, glitter and festive sequins to the mixing bowl and give them a good mix through.
 
Once all mixed and your happy with the amount of goodies you have through your rolled oats, you can start placing it into your ziplock bags...
 
Once you have closed them all, print out the provided topper and staple it over the top :)
On Christmas Eve, take the kids outside and sprinkle it all over the lawn, leaving a beautiful sparkly trail for the reindeers to find your home :)  We even recite the poem while we are doing so..
 
Because it makes quite a lot of mixture, why not give some to friends, family or neighbours to spread the magic around.
 
Enjoy & Merry Christmas.
xoxox
 

Friday, December 14, 2012

Christmas Comes but Once a Year..


December 13th! Already?! Where does the time go?  We are well & truly into the swing of Christmas around here (I think I have been since late October..lol) but now with the tree/s up, lights on & house decorated there is something magical about this time of the year that I just adore!

I am a bit of a stickler to traditions and it's our family tradition that we put up the Christmas tree on December 1st, unfortunately this year I had to bend my tradition ever so slightly and put the tree up on the 2nd as we were at the in-laws celebrating a rather early Christmas on the 1st.  It was still our intention to put up the tree that night but after a big lunch & rather exhausting day we ended up heading out to look at Christmas lights instead. Although all of the kids were asleep in the car very very quickly! 
 
So our tree went up December 2nd and we had a big roast dinner to mark the occasion like we do every year, roast pork with all the trimmings.. The kids got a kick out of the Christmas dinner set this year and loved getting out their Christmas cups/mugs and placemats.. After dinner we popped on a Christmas movie 'Beethoven's Christmas' and started to decorate the tree...
 
I love our tree, I bought it at a Target Christmas sale on Nov 30, 2010 ~ just in time to put it up the next day.. The only down side of my beautiful tree, it is impossible to decorate! I really think they should have put a disclaimer on the box saying so, its branches are so thick it makes hanging ornaments impossible unless you have metal hooks and even then you have to bend them out of shape and clamp them back down over the branch to secure them!
 
Nevertheless I love my tree and it really is a representation of our family.. we each have personalised baubles and baubles that mean something to us on it and I love how it 'grows' each year and accumulates more and more character! 
 
So after about 4 hours the tree was up and decorated.. It is only decorated from part way up this year so little hands can't get to it and we also have a baby play pen surrounding it.
Despite all of this baby proofing im still really happy with the way it has turned out and could stare at it endlessly.
 
So aside from the house decorating we have been driving around looking at others Christmas lights, this has been quite a regular event as our youngest has taken to ONLY falling asleep in the car at nights.. which will be rather boring after everyones lights have come down.. at least we have something to look at, at the moment on our nightly trips.
 
With just a little under 2 weeks left til Christmas this next week is going to be jam packed with lots of Christmas activities to really make the most of this season.. after all Christmas comes but once a year!  Enjoy xx