Wrapped with love

The last gifts have been wrapped.
This year I have not handmade any gifts.
In fact, we have pulled right back with the gifting.

We are having a kris kringle with our extended family so I have bought 2 gifts instead of the usual 15. Our little ones will receive a gift as did all our nieces and nephews over the years. But now they are all adults and so we thought we'd give a kris kringle a go. It has taken A LOT of pressure off shopping wise.
 The Mister bought for our 18 year old nephew-a gift voucher...boring I reckon but he'll be happy.

And I bought a little something for the girlfriend of one of our other nephews. Beautiful Carlie...I had a lot of fun wrapping this one in a simple little kraft box, punched out some music paper and embellished with some feathers and a chipboard letter from my scrapbooking days.
 
 

I find the first part of December very busy with all the parties and end of year functions. While I love every minute of it, it can feel exhausting and my being sick a couple of weeks back didn't help.
This week has been so beautifully relaxing and fun! All the Christmas prep has been geared around the kids. So, I've had some happy time with the children and they've been busy and happy too.

We made wrapping paper using the much loved technique of potato printing-almost as good as foot printing.

Bella created some beautiful finger knitting, just the perfect trim on Grammys gift.

Lulu decorated Nanny's gift with glitter glue and I topped it with some paper flowers that I made from an old sewing pattern.

As well as our snowman cookies and peppermint bark, we also made some rocky road.

The kids and I worked together to make the Crackers for our Christmas lunch. I bought the supplies from Spotlight in the after Christmas sales last year. They wrote their own jokes and popped some Hersheys Kisses inside each cracker. We photocopied some vintage music paper for the wrapping and tied them off with some twine. It was a big team effort, Ollie thinking of most of the jokes (of course), Bella writing them as Ollie was tired after writing the first one, Lulu popping the treats inside and me doing the tying and wrapping with help of little fingers to hold the string tight while I tied the knot.

Just a lovely week together and I am so grateful for these moments.

I do hope your week has been festive and fun too and may your Christmas be filled with much LOVE and JOY, PEACE and HOPE!