I don’t mean to alarm anybody but…
CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!!
What’s your Christmas Preparation Style?
Are you one of those ridiculously organised people who has purchased all their presents in the half-yearly sales?
Or is that you maniacally grabbing gifts off shelves on Christmas Eve?
Do you get exasperated at the sight of Christmas paraphernalia in stores in October? (If this is you, you’ve probably stopped reading this post already.)
Do you delight in doing ALL OF THE CHRISTMAS THINGS?!

Christmas is definitely my favourite celebration. This is the first time I’ve actually started preparing for it this early in the year.
I was lucky enough to recently be invited to the Spotlight Make It Merry Event and I walked away brimming with ideas for Christmas craftiness.
Here are some easy crafty ideas to ease you into the festive season.
(It’s a marathon not a sprint, people.)

What’s the Christmas Card Tradition at your place?
At ours, we wrangle all the babies, adults and fur babies to take a nice family picture.
We then work some magic on it and turn it into a Christmas card.
Because we’re fairly certain that all our family and friends want our noggins on their fridges.
We’re kind like that.

However at the Make It Merry Event, I was reminded of how fun it is to make your own cards.
I’m definitely going to be doing some card-making with The Little Ladybird this festive season.
Those little foam gingerbread people and felt Santa parts are stickers.
Which is AWESOME given The Little Ladybird’s track record with glue. (Glue is not a food group, right?)
The teacher in me also loves using stickers as a fine-motor activity.
Peeling the backing off is a great strengthening activity for little fingers.

Term 4 usually involves some Christmas Craft in the classroom.
The Kindy Teacher in me loved those pearls and rhinestones above because they peel off in one strip.
(Nothing more annoying than having 70 billion bits of sticker backing strewn all over the place.)
You just measure out your strip and snip it off where you need to.
So simple for such a striking result.
That’s just a papier-mache star painted red.

That is part of a stocking panel that kids can colour in with fabric markers.
I think this would be a fun activity for Christmas events.
You could use it to keep the kids entertained and away from the sweets table, thus reducing the chances of a sugar-comedown-tantrum come 4pm. (Or does that just happen at our place?!)

The fruit is already soaking for our Christmas Cakes.
What Christmas baking happens at yours?
We got to play with Wilton Icing Pouches that have a variety of tips to give you cool icing effects.
For the record, those cupcakes were created by one of the very skilled presenters.
My icing abilities require further work.

Have you heard of the Minc Foil Transfer Machine?
It pretty much blew my mind. It’s this magical machine that… I would try to explain exactly what it does but maybe you should just watch this video for a better, technical explanation.
Imagine all the foil effects you could create!
I’m envisioning lots of wall art that you could frame.
(Santa, I’ve been a good girl this year, so feel free to pop one of these bad boys into my stocking. Pleaseandthankyou.)

Each week in November up until the Big Day itself, I’m going to share some Christmas craft ideas.
Stay tuned!
Thank you to the Spotlight team for having me. Funnily enough, I professed my love for Spotlight in one of my very first blog posts. How’s that for full circle?

What Christmas craftiness happens at your place?