Christmas cookies

Well, it seems that this Christmas vacations have been quite productive in terms of arts and crafts!

Another receipt for making cookies; these ones you can hang as well in your Christmas tree.

What do you need:

• 200 gr flour
• 100 gr butter
• 80 gr sugar
• 1 egg
• some vanilla sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon gist
• 1/4 tablespoon salt
• Coloured sugar (the one it is sold to make cupcakes)

And now?

• Mix all the ingredients together and make a dough.
• Wait for half an hour.
• Make the shapes by rolling a bit of the dough and then bending the end.
• Draw the red lines with the coloured sugar.
• Bake in a pre-heated oven; this really depends on your oven for temperature and time, I needed 200ºC and 15 minutes.

And there you have them! Cute cookies ready for your tree!

Do-it-yourself body scrub

I came across the blog Hey Gorgeous via Pinterest, and I found a great idea for gifts: a body scrub. The most charming thing is the simplicity of it, and actually, the good results.

In the original receipt, they suggest two kinds of sugar, which I substituted by coloured sugar meant to bake cakes. I could not find almond oil here in Kigali, so I used olive oil. And since I could not find any vanilla extract either, I rasped some lemon. You can see the result below!

I downloaded the labels "Scrub Sweet Scrub" from Wedding Chicks, here is the link. The result is quite professional and super-cute!

How to make a Santa Claus with a toilet paper roll

Well, I am bit on the late side to write this post, but hey, you can apply the same technique for almost any figure you want to make.

This is an example on how to make a Santa Claus with a toilet paper roll.

• You have to make two cons with red paper: a big one for the body and a small one for the hat.
• Cut white paper to make the face.
• Glue the cotton as a beard and at the tip of the hat.
• Glue the eyes, or just draw them.

See the result below!

You may find these posts also interesting:

• Christmas decoration: Stars and straws
• Christmas tree decoration
• Rudolf: the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Merry Christmas!

How to make a Christmas manger

In Spain, I have always prepared a Christmas manger at home. I always liked to unpackage the figures, make a river out of aluminium paper, put together the mountains and buildings.

Here is Rwanda, we only have a small set of figures with Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus and three shepherds. Very cute, all coming from Argentina. So this year, we have added some scenery to it! We made a small "building" by cutting a paper bag and placing it upside down. And we added as well some trees and animals from the toy farm. To finish it, Paul and Anna drew an angel each, and also a star. We glued all of it on top. You can see the result below!

You may find these posts also interesting:

• Christmas decoration: Stars and straws
• Christmas tree decoration
• Rudolf: the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Merry Christmas!

The Little Fir Tree

This year the children had a very nice little play at school. It went over a little fir tree that was left alone in the forest, and that wanted to grow and become a Christmas tree. It was really cute!

I would recommend this play to other schools, or to play it with your family (given that you have more than one child and maybe some nieces and neighbours). Well, you can find the complete play here.

You may find these posts also interesting:

• Christmas decoration: Stars and straws
• Christmas tree decoration
• Rudolf: the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Merry Christmas!

Christmas decoration: Stars and straws

Here comes another super-easy way to make easy Christmas decoration stuff.

Draw some starts that your children can cut, or let them draw the starts themselves. I used the brown paper from the supermarket paper bags (about the only crafting material available in overflow in Rwanda).

Ask the children to colour the starts and then to glue them around a straw. Then get any pot you may have around the house and place the straws inside; or put them in plant plots. Voila!

Christmas tree decoration

Last week I went to buy a Christmas tree; and since we are in Rwanda, I was already that I could find a pretty decent plastic one. After unfolding it, and getting it ready, we went for the second step: Christmas tree decoration!

Not many fancy things are for sale here, but that only helps to improve our creativity. We baked our usual cookies, but this time we made a hole with a stick before baking them. You can see the result above. And then, we hanged them on the tree.

Well, they did not last long. Honestly, there is not a single cookie hanging on the tree at the moment. But, hey, that is part of the fun; isn't it?