birthday bunting

This is one of my favourite things - a birthday bunting that my man puts up the night before each birthday, so that the kids get to see it when they wake up the next morning. The older kids know that we only put it up to celebrate a birthday, so there really is an air of festivity in the house when they see it!

It was really easy to put together since it only involved sewing straight lines - the hard part was having to cut all the alphabets out of felt and hand sew them individually. It was worth the work though - with four kids, we get to use them four times a year!

Christmas table

I have decided that even though we are already in 2011, and have been for a month, we can still admire the sight of a Christmas feast laid out. This is our Christmas table from 2010. Every year, we have a big dinner together with all the grandparents, and we pull out all the stops. Nice ham, roast sausages, and a hunk of roast beef. Along with whatever sides I can think up to make. The meats are the stars clearly.

I got it into my head to sew up some simple table toppers to add to the festive atmosphere. This was the first time I did this - usually we just plonk the food down on the table. But I managed to find some lovely Christmas fabric from Spotlight so I went with it. I was very happy with how everything looked - but I also confess that those pretty table toppers added some stress for me. How to get the stains out if someone dropped food/gravy/wine on the table??? (I did think of putting a clear vinyl sheet over the cloths but decided that it would be too tacky!)