Posts Tagged ‘elves’
Christmas Elves
I’ve just made a whole stack more Christmas Elves for my second cousins, Sianna and Kobi, and will be making a few more for Chrissie pressents this year. These are perfect little gifts for children, or even adults! (I have them spelling out love, joy, peace and Christmas in our house!). If you don’t want to follow the instructions here, you can always order then from my etsy shop! I’ll make any word/letter combo you want. 
You’ll need:
Red felt (1 sheet is enough for 10 elves, with some extra)
Mini pompoms (5 per elf)
Letter blocks. I bought mine here, but these are expensive compared to the $2 shops that stocked them last year.
Wooden balls for heads
Hot glue gun and lots of glue sticks for them!
Scissors
Template
Steps:
1. Download the template/pattern and cut out the shapes.
2. Collect the letters that you need. Make sure you have enough! These blocks annoying come in a pack of the alphabet, and you should get 2 of each letter in the box (be aware of what letter is on the back of the letter you want… A and N were on the back of each other, so for Sianna I actually needed 2 boxes, which normally I might have only needed 1…)
3. Cut out enough arms for each of your blocks.
4. Cut out enough legs for each of your blocks.
5. Cut out enough hats for each of your blocks.
6. Turn your glue gun on, and lay out all your legs. I personally like to do all of the one part (all legs, then all arms etc), rather then elf by elf. You can do it elf by elf if you want though!
7. Put the glue onto the BOTTOM of the BLOCK, not the felt! The glue is too hard to spread on the felt. It’s really important that you work quickly to get it on, but also, remember to work SMART, as in, make sure that everything faces the right way!
8. Once your legs are all on, fold one of your arms in half. Put a strip of glue across the top of the block, and line up the middle of your arms with the middle of the block. Press down both sides. The arms should hang over to about the bottom of the block, but hey, you can make them longer or shorter depending on how you want them!
9. Cut out a circle of white felt- this is the collar. Use pinking shears to pink the edges. Glue this onto the block. Use the hot glue gun to make a circle on the bottom of the wooden ball (the hole should be on the bottom), and stick it onto the collar. I find that it’s best to be a bit generous with the glue at this point, but making sure it’s not too wide- you don’t really want to see the glue.
10. HATS! It’s best to test this before you glue, or on a spare head- because different wooden balls might be different sizes. The hats need to fit neatly around the head (not too low, or too high), with enough room to join them together.
Run the glue down the side of the hat shape (straight side), and fold it over so that the other straight side meets it.
11. Run the glue gun around the top of the elf’s head, and put the hat on. You can pretty easily add more glue here if it’s not sticking properly.
12.You can fold the hats either way- I always try to do a bit of variety, but you might like one word to all face the same way… Anyway, just put a blob of glue where you want the hat to connect (just above the bottom of the hat), and fold it over.
13. Pom Poms… I like to choose two colours for my pom poms, and do the arms one colour, and the legs and hat the other colour. I have some that are multi-coloured though, and others that are all white, or old gold etc. It’s up to you! Pom Pom’s don’t require much glue, and they can always be replaced/glued back on if they get pulled/sucked off or lost!
14. They’re finished!
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Real Meaning Of Christmas
Blog This Challenge 24 is ‘The Real Meaning of Christmas”, what an interesting topic! So many answers to this… but I think I’ll take the time to explain to everyone how Luke and I are approaching Christmas and what we’re working out works for us, and our ‘family- Luke, Pepper and I.
What does Xmas mean to you and your family?
Christmas is really the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Luke and I, as Christians, are pretty big on this being the only thing we’re celebrating, so we’re removing the Santa/Reindeer part from our celebrations (and kinda unfortunately- our decorations too). We’re also trying to make everything more Australian…. I’m in the middle of making a Christmas Advent Calender, which I’m embroidering, and instead of snowmen etc. I’ve got watermellon and thongs and the beach… cause that’s what Christmas time is to us!
Have you got some traditions??
Our Christmas traditions are being pulled from each of our families, and then brought together to make our own. I imagine we’ll develop a few more when we have kids.
Some of our current ones are:
Having Christmas Eve dinner with my family
Having Christmas morning with Luke’s family
Going to church on Christmas morning- it’s a beautiful way to start the day- celebrating, singing Christmas Carols, and seeing friends.
There’s this book that my family always reads each Christmas, and we have done since we were all little. I’d love to get a book of the Christmas story for our kids as well.
Oh course, listening to my Peter Coombe Christmas Album, is always a must as well! And I don’t mind hitting a few keys on my parents piano and playing along to them!
What will you cook?!
One of my favourite parts of Christmas- cooking! Here are a few lovely things I’ll be cooking up (I’ll post the recipes in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!):
Almond Bread
Mini Christmas Puddings
Peach Blossoms (My great Aunty Letty would make these all the time for any celebration before you passed away the other year, so I love to remember her when I make them)
Panettone- Because Luke’s family is Italian we’re now eating this at Christmas time too! It’s a new thing for me, but very yummy!
Who will you spend it with?
Christmas means family time. So we’ll be spending time with each of our families, planning a bit of a Christmas party to spend with friends, and hopefully enjoying some quite time- just the three of us.
Got a favourite Christmas memory?
When we were younger we would always get water guns (the boys more so then me). So one of my favourite memories is going out onto the lawn and shooting each other with the guns. The best times were when mum or dad got water guns as well and played along!
Last Christmas we went and got some chickens and a duck! It was pretty awesome to have them running around the house, and Pepper was SO good with them! Even when Duck Norris tried to eat her!! They are gone now (dog attacked them the day we got back form Israel!), but it was such a fantastic time picking them out and taking them home!
How are you decorating??
Like I mentioned earlier, we’re going anti-Santa this year. We’re also looking into every regular ‘tradition’ and where it comes from etc. wreaths, christmas trees, etc. which is something we did when we got married- looking at why people do various things and looking at if we should do them or not.
So we’re not having a Christmas Tree, but we are having some other pretty things. We’re having a handmade christmas this year- so new decorations (apart from the few I bought last week) are handmade, as well as presents for people.
We have a massive bar in the middle of our house/shed so this year my mission is to make it pretty and Christmas-y, and use it as a bit of a center for the decorations…
Some of our decorations are:
Christmas Elves
Christmas Swag
And of course this, which I’ve been working on for EVER!
Oh, and all the other decorations I haven’t taken down from last year yet!!
Tags: blogthis, challenge, Christmas, deocrations, elves, food, stars
