Some Christmas odds and ends

This little bell has been in my family for as long as I can remember. When I say 'in my family', I mean it was my grandmother's and used to hang on her tree along with lots other other shiny, pretty bells. My cousins and I would sneakily appropriate them on Sundays when we would visit her and reassign them to our trees at home. You know, steal them. Charming children we must have been. I'm not sure why, but the allure of these bells was too much to resist. I distinctly remember the great lengths we went to to sneak into the lounge and nab them. 

So for many years it would hang on our tree at home (I'm sure my parents were delighted with a yearly reminder of my childhood thieving) and when I moved Mum handed it on to me (read: I took it with me along with quite a few other decorations).

I hope it lasts long until Puddleduck is ready to move out and take it with her.

I mentioned in my pendant light post I was making paper chandeliers for Christmas decorations - this is one of them hanging in the front window.

Puddleduck, Mum and I also got a little bit crafty and made some decorations out of borax crystals and pipe cleaners. As it turns out, when you mix hot water and borax and suspend pipe cleaners in the solution overnight, it will crystalise around the pipe cleaners and create 'crystal' decorations. Very cool.

They don't withstand a lot of touching and the ones we used food dye with tend to 'bleed' a little, but all in all a very fun activity and something I think we will do again next year.

Experimenting ...

My apologies for another post with no real purpose. I'm experimenting with the Blogger app ...

So, here's a photo of my recently pimped fridge. I'm actually on the hunt for removable wallpaper in just the right pattern to cover it with, but in the mean time these postcards will do!

Project - pendant light

I should know better, but I was randomly googling recently in the hope of finding some hints on how to make a paper lantern chandelier to hang as a Christmas decoration and I came across coffee filter pendants. Instead of sensibly 'pinning' the images and going back to the task at hand, I thought "Oohh, what a great idea. I should try that. Now."

I became a teensy bit possessed with the idea so I set off looking for coffee filters. Not as simple as it sounds in this brave new world where coffee machines use pods instead of filters. I did track some down online though (thank you Officeworks) and ordered two thousand. Yes, two thousand. At the time I thought I was over-ordering.

Full of crafty enthusiasm and armed with my trusty glue gun (actually, the glue gun was a new purchase but it sounds more poetic to call it my trusty glue gun - and by the end of the project it had certainly earned the moniker) I started. 

At this point I was still enthusiastic - as opposed to the dogged determination that took over about a thousand filters later. It's that middle bit of the lantern that breaks you. You can glue and glue and glue and you'd swear you hadn't covered any more of the lantern than you already had.

 

Anyway. 

I got there in the end.

And I'm pretty happy with the result. Of course, having done one, I had to do the other one too. Sigh.