Christmas crafting

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a good one. I did - it was lovely but far far too short. I only had the two days off work and went to see my parents Christmas eve for a couple of nights so it was over far too quickly.

Here is a quick update of what I got up to just before the day and also afterwards as well.

I made quite a few more Christmas cards for people - quite a lot of little quick ones for people that I work with:

Sorry this isn't the best of pictures - I don't think it came out too well. I also finished making some cards with images that I had already coloured last year. I had to improvise with some of the colours and make things fit around what I had already done as they had been coloured with no theme or backing paper in mind - here's how they came out:

Again apologies for the awful photography - especially of the last one. I do love the way that the others came out though. So simple and yet I think they are really effective.

I also made a banner for some of our friends instead of a card this year. I like that this is also a decoration that could be used in future years as well as a card.

I may have also had to make myself one of these...it's now up in my living room - I wanted to keep it here where I have taken the photo of it in my little crafty den but I think it should be shared with other people.

Finally on the theme of Christmas - we didn't think we were going to get all of my niece's presents to her in time to be opened on Christmas day so we packaged them up in this box.

Added tissue paper

 And sealed the whole thing up.

It then got wrapped in brown paper and string and a letter from Santa attached to explain that he forgot to deliver it to her house on Christmas day so it was sent for safekeeping with her grandma instead. I forgot to take a photo of it when it was done and I think it looked really good - really annoyed with myself! I think she really liked opening the big box up to find that she still had loads of other little presents to unwrap. I know I would have anyway - the most fun of Christmas is the unwrapping!

Henlow did a little destructive disappearing act just before Christmas - here's him trying to lift his ramp and just poking his head out from under it:

He did afterwards manage to end up removing the ramp completely from the hut at the top of his house and just about ending up with the whole thing on top of him. We took the ramp out over Christmas to try to stop him from being quite so destructive but will have to re-attach it shortly.

Finally I have also been doing some work on my sweater -I still don't think I will get it all done in time for the next class but I have been doing my best to keep a growing a little each day. Here's it's progress since my last post.

 I had to try to work out the shaping of the armpits yesterday and get all of the sizes right as well as the actual stitches looking good - hence the scribbling all over my pattern! I think I am getting there though with a lot of help from Eleanor.