Scented Gift Lavender lady

This little ‘granny’ doll is bound to be a great favourite with small girls. She is easily made out of scraps of fabric and is filled with lavender. Read the rest of this entry »

Paper-mache DIY: Making Tenpins

These little, lightweight tenpins are simple to make, and the whole family can enjoy the game. The bodies and heads are fun to decorate, and you can paint them in the brightest colors you can find. You can make small pins using toilet paper tubes, or if you want them a little taller, paper towel tubes are ideal. Read the rest of this entry »

Weekend Kids Games Craft: Pick a Fish

With this magnet game, you can go fishing no matter what the weather. Once you have cut out the basic body shape, you can paint each fish a different color. If you don’t have any paperclips at home, anything metal will do, such as a small safety pin. Play Matching Pairs or High Scores with the fish. You may even be able to think up some games of your own. Read the rest of this entry »

Decorated Gingham Bed Liner

Using a simple sponge and some paint, it is easy to liven up a child’s bed linen. As an alternative, translate a child’s own drawings into sponge prints and let them have a go themselves.

This project is for one single-size flat bed sheet and one plain pillowcase. Read the rest of this entry »

Where are you going to spend Christmas this year? continued

Even if you do take your own booze, you don’t want to appear a soak in front of your in-laws. ‘One year,’ said a friend, ‘we took up a crate of claret to my in-laws in Lancashire and, having polished it off, were asked to bury all the bottles in the garden, as my mother-in-law was so embarrassed by what the dustmen might think.’

On this subject I have never forgotten a hideously shameful occasion when my children were very young and my in-laws were staying. Having announced, sanctimoniously, and untruthfully, that I never drink at home at lunchtime, I then laced my orange juice with going to get me through the ordeal of grandparents’ and children’s lunch. My daughter, then aged two and a half, seized my glass, and, ‘thinking it was straight orange juice, took a great swig. She swiftly spat it out all over her grandmother and declared that she’d been poisoned, whereupon Granny took a tiny sip, and recognised gin. Read the rest of this entry »

Nativity Plays

When Mary heard she was to be the mother of Jesus she went and sang the Magna Carta.

Schoolboy Common Entrance essay Christmas approaches. Realising that the children will soon be breaking up, Scarlett O’Aga steps up her panicking. Buckling under Christmas shopping, she staggers past boutiques pounding out sexy pop music, and wishes that she had a salary to blue on party glitter and was at an office party being propositioned. Read the rest of this entry »

Christmas School Holidays

How exciting! the children are breaking-up from school today. Scarlett has already collected little Nicholas and Carol from their primary schools, and is driving down to Berkshire to collect Holly from boarding school. Noël has taken the afternoon off to collect Robin from his boarding school. As usual, the end-of-term carol service takes twice as long as scheduled, and even the sight of pretty mothers in fur coats coming out of chapel doesn’t cheer up Noël, who’s been champing outside in the Volvo for forty minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Stockings and Christmas Gifts, Kids’ Trip to Santa’s Grotto

My heart leaps up when I behold a reindeer in the sky.

Now the children have broken up, it’s time for a trip to Santa’s Grotto. In Stroud this year, it only cost Sop for a visit and a present, and you could have your photo taken with Santa as well.

Playing Father Christmas these days is a pretty taxing job. In department stores, Santas must never ask a child how Mummy and Daddy are, because so many parents are divorced, and long explanations hold up the queue. Instead he must ask, ‘How are the folks?’ Nor must he say ‘Yo Ho Ho’ Read the rest of this entry »

Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, Celebration Holiday part 2

Hours later at tea-time they reach Granny.

`Here you are at last,’ she cries in fluting reproach, rushing out in her medium-heeled court shoes and wool dress, embracing gingerly as she inhales a waft of dried sick, trying not to wince, as older children tread mud all over the carpet. Read the rest of this entry »

Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, Celebration Holiday part 1

Christmas Eve — and the excitement starts to bite. Little Nicholas and Carol, already in a frenzy of excitement, are opening the penultimate door of their Advent calendars. The wireless is playing a jazzed-up version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’. For Scarlett, there’s not much rest ahead, but she hopes everyone will be merry.

Granny and Grandpapa arrived yesterday. Having been woken twice in the night, firstly by the departed neighbours’ burglar alarm, and secondly by the lodger coming in tight at three o’clock in the morning, they are downstairs by 8.30 a.m., shivering, their breath rising like incense. Scarlett can’t light a fire because the log man still hasn’t arrived. Read the rest of this entry »