Christmas Crafts

Tilly had a Christingle service at school today, for which they had to make Christingle candles.

I had never heard of Christingle until I was in my twenties.  I am sure it is a recent invention, much like Pop Tarts, whatever the Swedes say.

Anyhoo.  It is a rather nice service, and a Christingle Candle is usually rather pretty.  You get an orange, stick cocktail sticks into it, onto which you spear sweeties, and then decorate it with ribbon.  You stick an candle in the top and it all looks lovely.  It should look like this:

Or even prettier.

Tilly came home with hers this afternoon after the service.  It looked like this:

I am very much afraid that when she pulled it out of the bag to show it to me, I laughed.

I am usually really very good when it comes to the children’s artistic efforts, knowing full well that they need encouragement from those they love most, and even more full well that their efforts are usually ten times better than mine would be under the same circumstances.

Unfortunately, this time, I blew it.

It is the world’s worst Christingle candle.  If there were a website called Christingle Wrecks, I would enter this for a prize on it.  As it is, it looks like it has been savaged by wolverines.

I had steeled my nerve earlier in the week when Tallulah came home from Brownies with a similar bag claiming to have made a Christmas wreath out of pasta.  I could not imagine how it was going to look that good, yet she produced this:

which is actually a thousand times better than I could have hoped for, and which I have grown very fond of in the last few days.  I cannot say that I feel the same about the candle of menace.

Sharon has sent us some wonderful craft kits to keep us occupied and in our spare time we are steadily working our way through them.  Behold the fruits of our labours:

Jason helped the kids make this at the weekend while I was cooking.  Pretty good eh? 

This afternoon, Tallulah made this:

and has managed to make him look extremely alarmed, which I like.

I helped Oscar make this:

and apart from the fact that I sewed his trousers on back to front, I am reasonably happy. 

There are more, but you cannot see them yet.  They are what we like to think of as works in progress.

You may wonder why Tilly’s projects are noticeable by their absence.  Rest assured that she was not harmed during the making of her Christingle Candle, but she had had enough of crafts when she got home and did her maths homework instead.

Poor child.

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