Not one to deviate from the bandwagon I found the best Christmas handbook ever published. Bought for a meagre £1 from a charity shop last week, the book has given me a lot of lightbulb moments and a few chuckles.
It covers everything you need to have a very merry Christmas for all the family with recipes, decorating ideas, craft ideas and even instructs you on how to take down and store your decorations for next year.
By far my favourite section in the book is the "Choosing of Presents". With a handy illustrated guide on which presents to give and not give each member of your family. For example, who knew giving Gran a corset for Christmas would elicit this response from her?
The kids would take exception to receiving a school uniform or writing paper. And poor baby should definitely not be reminded of his incontinence.
There's also a chapter on how to decorate your tree to a theme with great crafting ideas for ornaments. There's the Children's tree.
With wool and stick stars. I remember making these at school.
Sweetie garlands which will no doubt rapidly become an empty sweetie wrapper garland.
And fluffy woolen pom poms. Did these at school too and hated it. They are so monotonous to do.
There's also the Victorian tree with gravity defying doves at the top of the tree.
A Soft and Safe Tree for baby with cotton wool garlands and paper chains.
And my favourite tree is the Wildlife tree for your garden.
Who needs gawdy Blackpool lights in your garden when you could have this lovely creation? It's so simple to make and the little birdies will be kept happy through the Christmas season.
The book also gives some handy tips on how to build with snow. Who'd have thunk you could use a cardboard box to make snow squares or a wasing up liquid bottle to make towers? Genius!
All I need now are four trees, two feet of snow and definitely not toilet paper or scrubbing brushes.
That book looks great, I just made popcorn garlands and thought about putting one out for the birds. We made snow castles last year using the sand bucket, don't know why I hadn't thought of it before!
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