Tetchy Tuesday Snowmen

Z1's blueprint for today's efforts

One of these was made by me,
one by Z1

Today I was winging it  - no plan, no preparation. I had a vague idea about cutting out Christmas tree shapes to use for printing but decided to consult with Z1. She came up with snowmen out of circles.

My fatal mistake was being weak in the face of requests for YouTube. This distracted Z1 completely. Z2, once more, showed no interest in the craft to begin with. Z1, however, started off with great enthusiasm and drew a blueprint to remind me of the plan while she waited for me to begin with her. She got very annoyed at some interference from Z2 when he grabbed her snowman's pipe cleaner arm and "ruined it" (dropped it on the ground). It was downhill from there even when I brought out jewels to transform the former Weetabix box cutouts into a particularly glamorous snowman. Repeated and increasingly tetchy encouragement and queries from me as to whether she was going to give him more buttons did nothing to reignite her enthusiasm.

I grumpily banned YouTube and the computer from future pre-dinner craft endeavours. We shall see if my resolve holds.

Snowflakes, starfish and bolognese

Before

I thought this one would be a good one. One that Z2 could join in too. One they could both work away at while I got dinner ready in a scene of domestic creativity. Beads and pipe-cleaners, easy peasy.

Z1 has been learning about patterns at school so I hoped for a beautifully colour-coordinated snowflake just like her excellent job on the Advent calendar chocolates. I had even dared to hope she'd use the blue and clear beads for an icy effect. My hopes were dashed when she embraced her love of rainbows and pink and purple* while flicking between various Christmas tunes on YouTube.

Z2 kept telling me he needed his hand. I eventually figured out that he meant that he needed "a hand" but, as I had to cook the bolognese, he ended up sitting this craft out.

I sat down with the Zeds to join in once the bolognese was simmering. Z2 had totally lost interest, Z1 was busily working away so I decided to make one myself. Z1 had started hers off nicely with a pattern but, as she was distracted by the Christmas tunes playing on my laptop,  it had become rather haphazard. When I sat down, she ordered that I do a rainbow one. I argued a little that I wanted to do my own pattern but to no avail. Then, when she saw my stunningly excellent rainbow one, she decided that she wanted to do one like that and pulled all the beads off hers. Just in time for dinner. My arguments that no two snowflakes are exactly alike fell on deaf ears. Sigh.

After an interlude for dinner and bath, we moved our work into the sitting room and continued. I got to do one of my own while Z1 concentrated on her rainbow one.

We produced these beauties and we plan to hang them outside with the wreath and jingle bell wind chime. Although I can't help thinking they look more like starfish than snowflakes, I still really like them and I may even make a few more now that the Zeds are in bed.

Starfish snowflakes

*an initial dashing of hope also occurred when I looked at the packet of beads and realised there were no clear beads

You may also be interested to know:

1.  These beads are called "pony beads" according to the packet - is that common knowledge?
2. The age recommendation on the packet of beads was 8+. Clearly Z1 is very advanced
3. The bolognese was delicious
4. This post-a-day pace may not continue alongside the craft-a-day. 

The joy of jingly bells

The wreath did not start well.
The coat hanger I was planning to use had been commandeered as a poker for a hair-blocked drain.
My brave trip to Dollarama for some materials after a day full of ballet, Advent calendar creation, Spiderman birthday party and overtired bedtime for the Zeds ended in failure when I discovered our local Dollarama closes two hours earlier on Saturdays than it does during the week.
The pair of pliers I employed for shaping a fresh coat hanger into a wreath shape was an unfit tool for the job*
Z1 seemed a lot  more interested in Garfield on the telly and Z2 was very tired.

However, I bribed the Zeds to think persuaded the Zeds that making a wreath would be a lot of lovely fun. Well, actually, I got Z2 to nap to cure his terrible twos and only had to bribe Z1.

Complete wreath

Z1's decoration materials

Our wreath is made of a coat hanger, tinsel, jingly bells, pipe cleaners and pine cones. It is adorning our porch and I am delighted. It did not capture Z1's attention at all, though, despite the sparkly tinsel. She liked the jingle bells and, while I was out in the damp air hanging the wreath, she gathered the materials you see here to make her own decoration.

In progress              Complete      

It's a Christmassy wind chime and is now prominently displayed alongside the wreath. I declare Conquering Christmas, day 2 a success.

*or perhaps I am not very good at using pliers and/or shaping coat hangers

And we're off!

The day dawned, cold and overcast with an icing sugar sprinkling of snow on the ground. After a ballet class, a short restorative visit to the bee bakery, some eggy sandwiches and dispatching Z2 off with the husband to get a birthday present for the party we were due at later, Z1 and I were ready to start to conquer Christmas. Dun dun daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I'd woken up thinking about ways of perforating egg box craters so that they could be easily torn off as Advent calendar doors. I'd envisioned intact egg cartons* glued closed after placing the chocolates inside, with the egg craters projecting upwards from the lid as well as down. Dear readers, this is not how egg cartons are made (at least not the ones I have). With easy stacking in mind, rather than easy Advent calendar making, they have flat tops. To further annihilate the feasibility of my plan, the egg craters are not sealed off from each other fully, so just turning the box upside down was not an option.

Oh yes, the egg cartons
were not identical

I sat down at the kitchen table with the egg cartons in front of me to figure out what to do. I tore the lids off along the seam and put the egg crater parts upside down on the table. I decided they could be glued onto some cardboard from one of those cereal boxes I'd saved. Another obstacle became apparent - one of the egg cartons had raised bits so that it didn't sit flat. Pah! I attacked it with some venom using a scissors and cut the cereal box to size as a tray for both cartons. I drew around a coin for number labels for the craters. Preparation done.

Painting went smoothly. I had sponge tip brushes, we had red, green and sparkly pink paint and I cut out the number labels while Z1 painted away. We discussed whether ninjas were real, where they learned to be ninjas, whether our neighbour is a ninja and if teenage mutant ninja turtles really exist as we worked.

Once the paint was dry we stuck the number labels on. The relief I felt when I realised that we didn't need to fish any particular number out at any given time as they didn't need to be in order was disproportionate to how difficult that task would have been.

Colour-coordinated

Z1 expertly filled each egg crater with two Hershey's Kisses, colour-coordinating them carefully. The three silver-coloured sweets mentioned in the previous post? Well, two went into the day one egg crater and one went into Z1's mouth. She was remarkably restrained in her   begging requests for sweeties.

As I squeezed the glue around the edges of the cartons ready for the base to be attached, Z1 said it was very like We're Going on Bear Hunt. I am sure she is right but I have absolutely no idea what she meant by that, even after her explanations.

With that, it was done. My morning musings on perforations were ready to be put into action. I got a pin and began to carefully pierce evenly spaced holes in the first crater. I quickly realised that I most definitely did not have the patience to do this for 24 craters and that I was not even sure it would be an effective method of making the craters openable. The pointy scissors was nearby so I decided to make larger holes with that, through which Zed-sized thumbs could be inserted to rip off the top (formerly the bottom) of the egg craters in order to access the chocolate in a slightly more violent manner than I had pictured. Some craters were a bit too squishy from wet paint to do this. This will be dealt with when we get to those craters. Z1 was eager to open crater number one. The thumb insertion method worked with a bit of help from me. Once I decided that the opened crater looked like a volcano (rather than a torn egg carton), I felt a lot better about this method and, as I type, am pleased I used the phrase "egg crater" rather than "egg hole" throughout this as it ties in nicely with the volcano idea.

So, with a heart bursting with pride, I present to you the first craft in the Conquering Christmas series, our delightful, beautiful, volcano-reminiscent Advent calendar made from egg cartons.

The finished product complete with torn
open hole where '1' used to be. Z1 didn't completely
cover the cartons with paint. So there.

*I've settled on cartons rather than boxes

It's the final countdown

Thinking outside the box
(har de har har)

December starts on Saturday and we still haven't finished all the eggs in the second egg box to facilitate the Advent calendar. However, I have dug into the depths of my creativity and adaptability and decided the eggs can go in a bowl in order to liberate the box (or carton).

Ready to be gobbled 1 a day
by the Zeds

I have bought Hershey's kisses to put in as the daily treat. In my years of Advent calendars, we didn't get ones with chocolates in them...well, maybe we did one year...but times have changed. Two chocolates will be placed in each egg space (was going to write "egg hole" but it sounded wrong and possibly rude) so each Zed gets a treat on opening. Although it seems rather decadent and not very sensible to have chocolate at breakfast-time, I think we will be doing the opening in the morning. Perhaps I should replace the Hershey's kisses with chocolate chee-ay-os* as more breakfast-suitable. I won't, though.

Z1 and I ventured into Walmart and loaded up on paint and glue and pipe cleaners and the like last Saturday. Disaster was averted when I checked Pinterest before choosing the coffee filters for the coffee filter snowflakes.

Yep, it's the Final Countdown and I'm raring to go.

*Z2's terminology (for Cheerios)

You may also be interested to know:
 1.   There were only 3 silver-wrapped  Hershey's Kisses in the packet that I opened for the photo.
 2.   I only ate 3 of the sweets when I opened a packet to take the photo. I am not sure if this shows my   
        willpower the inferior quality of Hershey's Kisses. The 3 I ate were not the silver ones.

Buying gingerbread real estate

Last year's house
in case you missed it
in the previous post

In my first post here, I proudly showcased the decorated gingerbread house from last year. With Z1 a whole year older, wiser and more dextrous, this year's is bound to be even better...but first I had to find it.

Last year I picked it up with glee and anticipation on a bit of a whim from the Shoppers Drug Mart (rather like Boots, UK readers) that is mere yards from my office. This year, I watched the Christmas stock arrive with dismay as no gingerbread houses appeared on the shelves. I began to hunt elsewhere (and by "elsewhere", I mean the internet, of course).

I found some on Amazon but encountered the bothersome bother that one can often encounter with Amazon.com when you are not in the US (or, with Amazon.co.uk, if you are not in the UK): these items could not be shipped to me here in Canada.

I found others which looked perfect until I saw that, for the prices they were asking, I would want something rather more substantial than a whimsical bit of edible nonsense. I did think I was prepared to spend a bit more than last year to have one that was truly tasty (Last year's one, if the truth be told, was one of those things that I would take a chunk of in the evening if I had exhausted all other sweet options in the house) but I thought wrong. While the $73.64 price tag I saw on one kit is clearly ludicrous (even if it is pre-assembled), when push came to shove, even the $30 for one from here, which would be guaranteed to be delicious and comes in a lovely tin, proved too much for me and I was left wondering if, this year, I'd be gingerbreadhouseless. As you can imagine, particularly in light of my paper house metropolis that never was,  this was sorely disappointing to me (It would appear that I love me some miniature house action - this blogging lark is teaching me a lot about myself).



The kit - boxed up and ready to go

However, my dear readers, my spirits were lifted, my urge to acquire miniature properties appeased, when, on the same day I shook my head sadly at the lack of gingerbread house availability, I found myself in Shoppers Drug Mart stocking up on body lotion and sundries and saw that the gingerbread house kits had arrived. Hurrah!



Credit where credit is due: the kit is made by Create a Treat and cost me $9.99 (CA). I saw the same one on Amazon.com for $25.94. So there.

Also possibly of interest:

•  Gingerbread house construction and decoration is currently planned for the 9th of December, blogging will occur soon after. (The numbers in the list there in the right hand sidebar correspond to dates in December, clever, eh?)
• You can buy a pre-assembled, pre-decorated gingerbread mansion for $368.50
• Though tempted, I avoided saying in this post that I'd want a real house for some of the prices they were charging for the gingerbread ones 'cause, while nearly $75 does seem expensive for a house of confectionery, it would be extremely cheap for a real dwelling place. Clearly. Even the massively extravagant $368.50 would be a pathetic sum with which to attempt to buy a real house.
• If you're in Toronto, Sweet Flour Bake Shop (of the $30 kits) is well worth going to - you can pick your cookie dough and what you want in it (chocolate chips, obviously, but they have other options) and they bake it there for you on the spot. Really delicious. I came across it by chance while at the Ukrainian festival along that part of Bloor in September.

I know why they sell eggs by the dozen

It's not something I had really pondered before - why eggs come in dozens and half-dozens rather than any other number.


Thinking about it now, I suppose it could be that boxes of five would be awkward which is why ten wasn't chosen as the base number. However, I like to think the true reason was that somewhere, many years ago when such things were being decided, someone realised that one day I would want to make an Advent calendar with my Zeds and that two empty egg cartons that formerly housed a dozen eggs each would be perfect for this purpose.


I am still mentally refining the precise way in which our egg box Advent calendar will work but I am fairly confident it will be a thing of beauty. (I keep vacillating between "egg carton" and "egg box", sometimes feeling that "carton" is more North American and sometimes feeling that it's just the right name - thoughts?)

(Here's the real answer according to the internet. If I'd googled before writing, this post might never have existed.)