mamas creative: All Wrapped Up

Yes it’s well and truly over! {Christmas that is, not my long suffering blog} and it’s on to summer holidays for us Aussies. Since the last post I have moved house and am awaiting the build of our next home (which just started yesterday!) I will one day get around to putting up some photos of my last home as a tribute to it’s awesomeness!

Now at the risk of sounding old, how fast was the lead up to Christmas? And because the men in my family are now all in WA at the mines we had an early {fake} Christmas this year at the start of December so it came even quicker and I was totally unprepared.

At the very beginning of December I was asked to do some decorations for our church Christmas party. It was one big BBQ with jumping castles, face painting and a giant slip and slide - basically a huge shindig for the kiddies. So I did something cheap and cheerful. Luckily it wasn’t too fancy because it was outside and just happened to be the windiest day of the year! Fyn and I collected pinecones {if your on the Gold Coast Bond Uni is always the place for Christmas pinecones} and sprayed them silver, so that was a grand cost of $3 for the spray paint. Then I added some cheap baubles and curling ribbon to make these thingies.

We had about 12 umbrellas around the car park and a few tables for the food which were decorated with more pinecones and baubles in vases and bowls. Lets just say as most cheapo things do, they looked good en mass.

Shortly after this party {fake} Christmas day arrived and even though I wanted it to be special I was totally unprepared so guess what the table looked like? Yep. Leftover party decorations.

Colin Cowie close your eyes those are paper napkins! Also those mini pinecones on the plate were meant to have name tags wedged into them … oops no time. And as I’m not even unpacking most of my things while waiting for the next house, I had to rummage around in my boxes to even find this stuff.

The kids were outside this year. I hung up all those thingies I made and I even put one over the table like a {cheapo} chandelier, the kids really appreciated that. The cups had stickers and pencils inside and I bought a large pad of colouring in from the two dollar store. But just in case you were thinking that colouring in pages as placemats are a genius idea which will keep the kids occupied while you have five minutes to yourself to eat a Christmas meal … think again.

While I love the blue and pink for a change in all honesty it’s just not me, especially for Christmas. So for real Christmas day I was actually prepared and I did the table much more to my liking. Although I didn’t get around to buying some lilies on Christmas eve so a branch from the front hedge had to do, thankfully no one posh came for lunch. {Sorry family, you know it's true!}

The bags have chocolates and treats inside and we had a little drinks buffet set up just to the side of the table. We had such a small group that I wrote a few pre-prepared names on our Christmas hats and had a game of celebrity heads while eating. Hilarious!

Fyn made these chocolate trifles all by himself for the kids to eat. They are chocolate wobbles jelly, a ripple biscuit then Pauls chocolate custard topped with cream. Great kids recipe tastes really special and very easy to make. Meanwhile I made the most awesome from scratch triffle and all the adults choose these chocolate cups instead! The girls helped with these mini chocolate puddings which are just those marshmallow biscuits topped with white chocolate and mini m&ms. Although we realised after that it should have been two leaves and one berry.