Christmas Contacts

I love Christmas. Friends and family joke about my enthusiasm over the festive season and I have been referred to more than once as “The Christmas Fairy”. For me Christmas is about the food, the traditions, the getting together with family, the lights, the music (I do a mean “Rocking Around The Christmas Tree) and the fun activities.

We all remember the big things that we need to do at Christmas, for example, buy presents, replenish the decorations and get the turkey out in good time however how many of us remember to take the time to do one of the most important tasks of all? Sit down get in touch with people that you perhaps don’t get to see much during the year.

Letter writing for many is a thing of the past, as sending a text or an email is quicker and cheaper. Nothing is nicer though than receiving a card or letter that someone has taking the time to write and post, through your letter box. Hallmark greetings cards have cards that are suitable all year round and their Christmas collections are just gorgeous. Beautiful verses, traditional snow scenes, cute characters or even more modern designs that are well made and just look great when displayed, despite not actually costing as much as you would think.  Whenever we send a card we make sure we add a paragraph or two, just to ask after the reader and to wish them a sincere and very much meant Merry Christmas.

Christmas is all about family and friends, not about gifts really, and my 6yr old loves helping us to write the family Christmas cards. When he was younger he would add his name, kisses or a little picture and now that he is a “grown up six year old” he likes to write his own messages. Personally I think little things like this are what make Christmas special and I hope my boys carry on the tradition when they are older.

If you get a chance, do sit down and write a note to those who you don’t often see this year, they are sure to appreciate it.

3D Fabric Paints from Dylon

When Claire from Bottle PR asked for people to do some arty Xmas stuff on fabric I thought “why not?”. I like messy arty stuff, Kieran adores it. A few days later these 3D fabric paints arrived in the post:

HUGE panic, I don’t have an iron, I’ll mess it up, I can’t cope well with anything that contains glitter! After Claire talked me down and reassured me that they didn’t need ironing and would just set in about 4hrs, we got to work.

[slideshow id=11] When I say “we”, I mean Kieran, aka Mr Independent. At 5yrs he was more than capable of designing his own Xmas tshirt and had a fantastic time doing it.

The end result….

Click to enlarge

It has indeed set overnight and has been great fun. I would say though that avoiding huge blobs is the better idea as otherwise it takes much longer to “set”.

There is plenty left over and we are going to hunt out some more from this range, which is available at John Lewis and Hobbycraft, because there is no end to the projects we can do, festive and otherwise. Kieran wants to get some plain fabric bags to decorate and put some home-made biscuits in for his Aunt’s, another lovely Christmas idea.

Great fun and a new way for Kieran to create, I can see us doing many more projects involving Dylon in the future and look forward to playing with the other items in their art & craft range.