The Christmas bug

I wanted to share some of the creative things my daughter and I have been getting up to this Christmas. There seems to be no end to my creative flow, and I am finding myself getting up really early with a great idea, and burning desire to get on with it. No wonder people say they need an actual holiday after Christmas.
I think my creativity is being fuelled by the amazing blogs I am reading, and the more I read the more inspired I get. Sometimes I like to create my own things, other times I like to just do something that is like another persons idea. It's nice to know what the outcome will be.

Olivia and I made stamped salt dough gift tags which were inspired by the amazing Artful Parent blog (makes me want to have a go at parenting all over again), and Kirsty Allsop on Channel 4 'Kirsty's Homemade Christmas', who I simply love. I read about Amy's love of Kirsty last week - glad its not just me! By the way, Amy is going full pedal to the metal for crimbo and over at her blog she is running a '25 Days of Christmas' feature. You should defo check it out, so many great ideas (I have jam tarts on my list now).

The following are some pictures of the saltdough making, these photos are quite 'rough' so please excuse...haven't the time to process and fiddle around:

Olivia stamping away..

You can see how small our kitchen is, and how BIG Olivia's hair is

Normal ink stamps work well - I picked up a set in the 'pound shop', for...a pound.

Out of the 3 hour oven baking

An example of how they will look, you can write on the back with markers.

Salt Dough Recipe - makes about 30 stamped shapes

2 cups flour

1/2 cup salt

2/3 cup water

1. Mix and kneed to a soft dough
2. Roll out
3. use cutters to cut out
4. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet
5. Stamp with ink stamps
6. Make holes with a straw
7. Bake in a low oven for about 3 hours (good if you can turn the oven off at the end of this time and leave them in overnight)
8. Write messages on the back and attach to pressies!

A very fun and occupying activity for kids - Olivia was absorbed for hours!

I haven't shown it on this present but I have also been stamping ribbon and webbing to wrap around gifts:

A very dear friend gave me these wooden stamps from her travels to India. I have so many, these are just a few of the small ones.
I find stamping on something soft like this packaging foam sheet, makes a good quality stamp.
I got this idea when browsing around one day and can't credit the exact source, but this blog comes up trumps for a reference.

Today we are doing some more stamped salt dough with my new letter stamps - they will be even more like Kirsty's then. And we are making cinnamon cookies for Olivia's trampoline group.
Better get on...

What are you making this Christmas? Do you get the bug?
Love, me x