some Christmas decorations…
a series of mittens and gloves, of a single width of felt and decorated in various ways.  These made nice and simple little gifts for friends.  The little glittery gold bell was made by a 4 yr old Sam, and he made 4 of these in different colours and shapes.  Cassie made the stuffed stocking

a fairy… a lot of girls of my age would have come across this project, made out of safety pins and beads.  I think it was out of a magazine, or on Better Homes and Gardens, or something like that.  A group of my friends and I all made one together.  Her place is on the top of the Christmas tree, when she has a fairy light stuck up under her skirt (keep it clean now) she actually looks pretty speccy*!                   (* Aussie slang for spectacular)

… beaded snowman and white beaded and embroidered pillow both from kits (by me); the blue sequinned and embroidered stocking by a pre-school Cassie

Using up some leftover wool, one year I made a series of knitted envelopes filled with pot pourri, to give to friends.  The star buttons are made from Fimo clay, painted with acrylic paint and with glitter sprinkled onto the wet paint.  (the gold and green ball was a kindy project by Sam too)

A few years ago I got really enthusiastic and made everyone in our family a glitzy Christmas stocking; big enough to be worn on a real adult foot, believe it or not…  These are all of satin, each front and back double-layered and padded with old ironing board padding (yup, I keep stuff like that, just in case; sad, huh?), and with velvet cuffs, all decorated in an individual way.  They each have a cotton loop to hang them up, even though they never ever actually get hung up since I baulk at having nails hammered into our beautiful jarrah mantlepiece… (that’s an over-my-dead-body sort of a thing)  They usually lie flat around the bottom of the Christmas tree.

I do admire other people’s Christmas trees, the ones which are all glitzy and sparkly and beautifully colour co-ordinated, sometimes even with a new colour scheme each year, but it is just not for us.  We have a small artificial tree that we use each and every year.  It was bought when we were first married 23 years ago and our collection of decorations has grown and been added to over the years and each one tells a story.  Hardly any of our decorations have been bought cold, as a finished object.  
Some of them are souvenirs that we have bought on overseas holidays, or are gifts from dear friends.  Our most precious decorations are the ones that our children made with their own chubby little fingers, and proudly brought home from kindy, daycare and preschool, and even sometimes as they got older too!  I used to be into beading and embroidery, and so made some decorations too… and some of our decorations are little things I did with the kids as fun little activities, to fill in those long weeks when Craig was working and we were home alone.

According to Aussie tradition, these gumnut babies have to be hung somewhere so they can “see” a gum tree. (embroidered and beaded on cardboard by me)