This year has flown by, it only feels a few weeks ago I was putting up the decorations last year, yet here we are again! A lot has changed this year, D started a new job, we finally got married, and we made the decision to put our house on the market and start the process of moving somewhere with a bit more space so we can hopefully start expanding our family beyond the cat and the bird!
I've been busy sewing, but unfortunately have made less presents than I had planned what with all the house viewings and mortgage appointments! I've found a little time though, and have finished the crackers I started a few days ago. They're not very exciting, but I was going for a very simple homemade feel (honest!)
I had fun tracking down a little gifts for each person, some are very silly, but a couple (for my Mum and Sister) are actually fairly sensible. I've left the end of mine open so D can drop a little surprise in for me too!
Despite my attempt to keep things simple and flap-free this year, I did have a brief moment of madness in hobby craft and put some 'cracker tubes' in my basket. Then reason caught up and I realised they were just toilet roll tubes and I was about to pay £2 for something I have million of in the recycling bin! As it happens, I needed bigger tubes to fit some of the gifts in anyway so I ended up making them out of some kraft card we had left over from the wedding invitations!
Crepé paper is really forgiving, so I just cut some rectangles to roughly the right size, and folded over one edge to neaten them up!
The cracker snaps I bought on eBay are a bit short really, but I sellotape them down to the paper after threading them through the tubes so they should stay in place.
Then just rolled them up and used tape to hold in the paper in place.
Then (After some careful examination apparently!) I scrunched up one end of each cracker, tied them with some red raffia, and added everyones little present along with some chocolate balls and a silly joke (which D is responsible for!) Also, I know it doesn't look it, but I really can see out from under my new fringe! I'm channelling Claudia Winkleman I think!
The ends got scrunched up quite easily, so I made some smaller card tubes to slide in the ends to keep them in shape, and I wrote each persons name on these too so they don't get muddled up.
I'm quite pleased with how they came out actually! The gold crepe paper is rather kitsch and I quite like how homemade and maybe even a little bit 'vintage' (ugh) they look! I was going to decorate the outsides further, but I'm sticking with simple this year I think!
I wonder what D will put inside mine!
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