Advent Sticks

It's that time of year again…the year we meet as friends to assemble our Advent Sticks, 

(baskets…hangers).  

This year our good friend at the Knitty Gritty Homestead instigated the creative madness…

we had taken a year or two off, but after last night…never again!!!

There were 5 of us, so we each took on the task of creating by hand 3 items each 

(times 5…one for each person).  

The extra gaps we fill in with stickers…candy…coupons for "things to do"

As the handcrafted items were revealed there were squeals of JOY from the mums…

"ooooh"ing and "ahh"ing at each handmade goodie!

These are some of the goodies in our Advent Sticks this year!!! (other friends to participate were creative co horts Wabi-Sabi Wanderings &  Embracing the Now  & of course my co blogger Shanti!!)

Each goodie is lovingly wrapped in tissue paper…of all colours…

then if using a stick it gets tied on parcel by parcel..

This year some of the mums just put their parcels in a basket…each day the children get to pick one parcel to unwrap…oh goodness…our nature tables will be GORGEOUS!!!!

(We joke that we do this as much for us, as for the kids)

And here is a sample of the finished product…

I did mine on a coat hanger this year…I stretched it out and kept the hook on top…

makes it easy to hang somewhere in the house!  

After losing my mother earlier this year, I have to admit that I so look forward to creating new traditions with my family of friends…and keeping beautiful old traditions like this!

Wishing you all a beautiful weekend FULL of creativity and JOY!

A Winter Peg Family

We just got a HUGE load of snow the other day...it inspired us to hunker down and start creating!!

Let the winter crafting begin...

I know it's not "officially" winter yet, but the hats and scarves are all out, and there's snow on the ground...aside from that we're just waiting on the calendar to make it official!!

In the meantime here's a sweet little winter peg family craft...

To make your own you will need:

Peg people in various sizes

Acrylic paint in whatever colours you wish

Wool felt

*you can use regular felt, but I just LOVE wool felt

A super duper small paint brush

Glue gun and glue

So here it is step by step...

To begin paint on sweet little faces and a circle on top of the head, (the hat).

If you are intimidated by this my biggest word of advice is use a small small brush...like with 5 bristles on it...practice making your dots on paper, then move to your doll...practice really makes perfect!

Then to make it look like a hat I did a white rim with little ridge lines...

Next step is to paint their bodies...I diluted my acrylic craft paint in some water...makes it go on like a water colour.

Then cut some small rectangles for scarves...fringe the edges with your scissors, and I also cut very small circles out of felt for the tops of their hats.

One trick I started doing is to take a red beeswax crayon, or a pencil crayon and paint a small circle of "pink" on their cheeks.  I find this just makes the little peg people come to life!!

And that's it!  Put them around a pine cone "tree" and the kids are ready to play!

(or if you want to be totally crazy, you could put a little eye hook in the top of their little peg people heads and voila...winter tree ornament!!)

With love,