Sleigh Bells, Rocking Reindeers and Mystery Toys...

Sleigh Bells

by L. Smith

RING out, ye merry jingling bells!
Clear and sweet your music swells
On the crisp and wintry air.
Sending echoes everywhere.

The moon, her shining face aglow,
Sends our shadows 'cross the snow;
And as we swiftly skim along,
I listen to the sleigh bells' song.

The bright stars watch us from the sky
As our sleigh goes gliding by,
Like an undulating wave
Wherein my happy soul doth lave.

Ring out, ye bells! Merrily ring!

Oh, what pleasure you can bring!

So Very joyous is your song:

Merrily, merrily glide along! 

 

 

       Below is Santa riding his reindeer rocking horse. A loves to test drive this toy best inside of his workshop at the North Pole! You can color this paper reindeer toy, cut it out, fold along the dotted lines and paste the the "A" tabs to the opposite panel to make the paper toy 3D and able to rock.

Santa's Rockin' Reindeer Toy.

 

 

       Harry has written Santa a letter requesting his dream toy. He hopes that Santa will have all the right tools in his workshop to make his wish come true on Christmas morning! Can you guess what that toy is? Well, just to make sure that you know, print, cut and reassemble the mystery puzzle below.

Find out what Toy Santa is building for Harry at the workshop.

DIY A Bauble Ornament Wreath

A Vintage inspired wreath is easy to assemble if you have plenty of baubles. It takes approximately 80 of these baubles
to complete a full looking 14 inch sized wreath and this is a 16 to 18 inch one. Hannah used newer baubles for her
creation. She is a collector and could not bring herself to deface antique baubles with hot glue.

        My younger daughter crafted this bauble wreath for our home last year and gave it to me for Christmas. So, this year it hung in our dining room! She used several very large packages of new baubles in the following colors: pink, blue, silver and gold. She also included a long garland of small silver beads, a silver reindeer and gold/silver sparkly leaves from a few pics. 

       She started the wreath by selecting a foam wreath form in a large size and wrapping it with a large silk ribbon in blue. Hannah also wrapped a substantial wire in the same ribbon for hanging the wreath and attached it firmly with hot glue to the back side of the form in her second step.

       Then it was a simple process of assembling the baubles with hot glue and around the wreath until she was satisfied with it's appearance. She then hot glued the finishing touches to the bauble wreath, tucking garland, gold leaves and a small reindeer between the baubles with strategic dabs of glue as she went. 

       The entire process took her approximately four hours and caused a few burns on her hands. I loved it and she rolled her eyes as I gushed over her masterpiece. She let me know that she would not be crafting another in the near future and that it would be the only craft she would make for me to post here for a very long time. Hannah is not "a crafty person" and she is always quick to remind me of that little known fact!

Close up photos of this Vintage inspired, bauble wreath.

Traditional Gilded Walnut Ornaments

Traditional painted walnuts photographed outside on my patio moss. Next year I will include them on my
German feather tree perhaps? More than likely, my young ones will make off with them before I ever
 get a chance to use them!

Above you can see the boxes I used to spray
paint my walnuts silver and gold in.

       Painted walnuts are very traditional to the Victorian Christmas tree. These ornaments can look so very different depending on how you paint them and what flowers you select for the trimming of the tops of each walnut. I chose traditional Christmas poinsettia in white and red, plus a few silk holly leaves to hot glue to the samples shown here. But these walnuts would be just as lovely painted in pinks and blues with matching trims. You could make walnuts to match your own tree colors exactly, of course.

Supply List:

• English walnuts
• metallic spray paints: gold and silver
• tiny Christmas pics
• wires for hanging
• hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
• cardboard boxes 

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1.  Make sure your walnuts are clean and free of dirt.
2. Purchase several pics to cut apart and reuse in the decorative applications on top of each walnut. I chose a traditional poinsettia and holly leaves. 
3. When you spray paint your walnuts, make sure to do so outside in a well ventilated area. I chose to do so inside of cardboard boxes because it makes it easier for me to clean up the mess. I just break down the boxes and toss them into the recycling bin when I've finished with the spray paint.
4. Insert the wire hangers and glue these into place.
5. Hot glue your silk flowers to the tops of each walnut to add a nice finished touch of decoration.

Left, you can see the silver painting on top of newsprint and Right a few close up shots of the old-fashioned ornaments.

More About Gilded Walnuts:

• Gilded Walnuts - How to Make Victorian Christmas Decorations 
• Homemade Christmas Tree Decorations: Easy To Make Christmas Ornaments
• Victorian Christmas: Gilded Walnut Ornaments

A Visit to Bethlehem In Spirit

A Visit to Bethlehem In Spirit

by James Montgommery

The scene around me disappears,

And, borne to ancient regions,

While time recalls the flight of years,

I see angelic legions

Descending in an orb of light:

Amidst the dark and silent night

I hear celestial voices.

"Tidings, glad tidings from above

To every age and nation!

Tidings, glad tidings! God is love,

To man he sends salvation!

His Son beloved, his only Son,

The work of mercy hath begun;

Give to his name the glory!" 

Through David's city I am led;

Here all around are sleeping;

A light directs to yon poor shed;

There lonely watch is keeping:

I enter; ah, what glories shine!

Is this Immanuel's earthly shrine,

Messiah's infant temple?

It is, it is; and I adore

This Stranger meek and lowly,

As saints and angels bow before

The throne of God thrice holy!

Faith through the veil of flesh can see

The face of thy divinity,

My Lord, my God, my Savior!

DIY odds and ends tree stocking

       Sometimes simple ideas are the most appealing. I made this homespun Christmas stocking from scraps of left over wool and stray beads/buttons from earlier crafts. It was very easy to whip together and I didn't need to visit a sewing shop to acquire any of my supplies.

Above, a grey wool stocking depicting a faux feather tree trimmed with odds and ends from
my button box.

Supply List:

• scrap wool felt (approx. 1/3 yard)
• faux tree branches, chenille stems 
• buttons and beads for tree ornaments
• scraps for tree stand
• embroidery needle and a variety of threads
• dental floss for the hanger
• red berries for the tips of the faux tree branches

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. With right sides facing together, pin a paper stocking pattern on top of your wool felt and cut out two sides of a Christmas stocking. (If you don't have a pattern there is one on this page.)
2. Determine the side that you will use as the front and using a tiny whip stitch, sew on the chenille stems to look like a feather tree. (see the photo above)
3. Applique a tree stand beneath it from felt scraps, I used a bit of green with gold floss. 
4. Sew on beads, Christmas berries and buttons to trim your faux feather tree. 
5. Sew together the two sides of your stocking with a blanket stitch using embroidery floss in any color that satisfies your taste. I used a ivory to gold variegated floss to stitch up the sides of my steel grey wool stocking.
6. Leave the opening at the top, but sew around it's edges with the same fancy stitching in order to prevent the wool from unraveling over time.
7. String together a handful of beads using your dental floss for strength. 
8. Attach this beaded hanger to your wool stocking and now you are ready to decorate a mantle or Christmas branches with the woolen creation. 

A Young Skeptic

I don't believe in Santa Claus!

I really don't, at all.

He can't come down our chimney,

For it is much too small.

I don't believe in reindeer

That scamper through the air

And patter over housetops.

It's foolish, I declare!

I've grown too big for fairy tales.

I don't believe it's so!

But I'm going to hang my stocking

For I'll get it full, I know.

My teacher in arithmetic

Says, "Prove your problem, boys."

And I'm going to prove just who it is

That brings my Christmas toys.

My camera's on the mantel

With a flashlight rigged up, too;

And whoever fills that stocking,

I'll get his picture, true.

I know just who I think it is,

And so I shan't feel bad

If that film, when it's developed,

Shows the face of my own dad!

Sew a traditional chimney stocking

Grandpa Santa Claus

Why does old Santa bring dollies and toys,

And candy and playthings to us girls and boys,

And fill all our stockings so full Christmas Eve?

He's everyone's Grandpa, I really believe!

Left, Note the holes at the bottom for attaching him to the stocking. Right, A Belznickle character
 for my chimney stocking.

       Here is one of several chimney stocking patterns I have created from earlier Victorian designs. It is my own interpretation; obviously, because of the Belznickle! Chimney stockings are not new to  American homes but, alas, as all decorative things in America, they have fallen out of fashion here.
        I, however, am not a slave to what is fashionable; I have more of a curious nature than that. Vintage designs and the history of objects have always been peculiar hobbies of mine. So, here is a pattern to make one, two, or three for your own mantle this Christmas.

Left, Stitching through the cardboard to attach the Belznickle. Right, The backside of my
chimney stocking.

       Chimney stockings are usually stuffed with candies, nuts and/or small toys. This is in part because they are a bit more narrow than other Christmas stocking designs. Chimney stockings also  have a Christmas character either poking out of the top of the chimney cap or through a fireplace depicted at the bottom of the stocking. My version here does not have a fireplace at the bottom, only a suggested foot. But I will include other versions of stocking patterns on this blog that will show you how to make a variety of interpretations in the future if you are interested in these.

       You will need to purchase "brick" novelty print online for this sewing craft, for the fabric stores in the U. S. do not carry it this season. Perhaps we may start a trend here and brick or stone novelty prints will make a come back? But for now, you will need to search fabric suppliers online.

See how long I've made the chimney stocking? Most of these designs are very long
 and narrow. It's up to you to decide just how long you wish the stocking to be. I include
 the lower boot half in the pattern and the snowy piece above, but you must extend the
length of the chimney part in accordance to your own tastes. The face mold that you
acquire to use on your Belsnickle or Santa figure will also effect your own
version of this stocking design.

• Brick prints from Field's Fabrics

Supply List:

• novelty cotton print of brick (1 yard)
• needle and matching threads
• cotton batting or white felt or faux white snowy fabric
• Sculpey clay
• press mold mask
• paper clay
• wood glue or hot gun glue 
• masking tape
• acrylic paints: flesh tones, red, brown, eye colors, white etc...
• acrylic sealer or Mod Podge
• stiff cardboard
• pattern (below)
• embroidery needle or nail
• dental floss

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. First you will need to cut out the "figure" of the Belznickle from a stiff piece of cardboard. The stiffer, the better. Some of you may even choose to use a thin piece of wood alternatively. 
2. If you use cardboard, cover it completely with masking tape.
3. Then you will need to acquire a press mold of St. Nick. These are very common in the United States in hobby shops. If you cannot find one of these you can make one of your own. Click here to see a video and get directions for press molds.
4. I use Sculpey for making my Santa face molds, in part because Sculpey is very durable and waterproof. You do not need much for this project; a very small block of it will suffice.
5. After baking the clay face in an ordinary oven, let is cool and then glue it to the cardboard cut-out figure. See pattern for positioning.
6. Now mix your paper clay according to the directions from the manufacture. Spread this out around the face mask and over the entire surface of the cardboard cut-out, excluding a narrow strip at the bottom of St. Nick's coat. (see pattern) 
7. After the front surface of your coat dries, turn it over and repeat the process on the backside of St. Nick's coat. Let it dry.
8. Take your sharp nail or large eyed embroidery needle and make a series of small wholes across the bottom of the exposed cardboard strip so that you will be able to sew the figure of St. Nick into the top of the finished chimney stocking.
9. Print, trace and cut the stocking pattern onto your brick, novelty cotton print, front sides facing together, because you will need two pieces exactly alike. Sticklers may wish to line up their bricks. Don't forget to add a half inch seam and to also position your pattern at the bottom of the folded fabric. This because you will need to determine how long your chimney stocking will be on your own. (see pattern)
10. With right sides together, allow for the seam and sew a straight stitch by hand or machine around the stock foot and up. Leave an opening where St. Nick will be sewn into the top, peeking out from the chimney as he slides down it. 
11. Sew a strong loop six or seven inches long and approximately 2 to 3 inches wide to attach to the backside of your stocking. This loop may be made from the brick fabric or the snowy white fabric. (whichever is stronger) Attach it the the backside of the finished stocking before sewing the Belznickle in place.
12. I've included the curvy piece of pattern for a snowy top to add to the top edge of your chimney stocking opening. Cut this from a white felt or some other fuzzy white fabric.
13. I used a blanket stitch to attach the snowy applique buy any stitching would be nice.
14. Now sew through the backside of the finished stocking through the cardboard holes to attach St. Nick, leaving the front half of the stocking open to insert candies or nuts. Use a heavy thread, embroidery floss or even dental floss to do this with. The heavier the thread the better the wear of the stocking over time.
15. You may also choose to reinforce St. Nick to the stocking with a bit of hot glue.

A Chimney Stocking pattern by kathy grimm. Free for personal craft use only.
 Property of https://belsnickle.blogspot.com/

The Befana Fair in Rome

       In Rome the season of making gifts corresponding to our Christmas comes twelve days later, and the gift-bringer would not be called Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas, but Befana, a gruff little old woman. Perhaps she is in some way connected with the old woman of whom the legend is told that she was sweeping out her house when the Three Kings rode by with gifts for the infant Christ. " Come," they said, " and see the Bambin Gesu." She said she would when she had finished her sweeping. But though she took her gifts and started, she was too late then, of course, so she gave the presents to good children and bits of charcoal to those who had been naughty. The name is really a short form of Epifania, the Feast of Epiphany, and it is given both to the gift-bringer and to one of the most extraordinary popular festivals ever invented to amuse children and to turn grown people into children. It is a night fair opened every Eve of Epiphany in the great square called Piazza Navona, where long, long ago one of the Roman emperors, Domitian, once had his race-course. In the days just after Christmas workmen begin to bring out from queer underground storerooms all the lumber and other material needed for setting up booths and decorating the square for the Befana. From year to year it lies somewhere, ready for use at a moment's notice, and when needed it is suddenly produced without confusion, marked and numbered, all ready to be put together and regilded, or repainted, or hung with acres of bright-colored draperies. The Romans are masters of the art of managing public displays and change the empty, windy square as if by magic suddenly into a great oval street of booths enclosing the whole circus-shaped space. At dark on the Eve of the Epiphany the Befana begins. The hundreds of booths are choked with toys, and gleam with thousands of little lights. In the open spaces the moving crowd of children, parents, and grandparents grows closer and closer between sunset and midnight, and every one is splitting the air with some sort of whistle, horn, or trumpet. Noise is the chief need of a successful Befana, and the first thing every one buys who comes must be a tin horn or one of the grotesque little figures made of painted clay, always with a whistle in some part of it. Their very ugliness is attractive, and they are daubed with a kind of bright and harmless paint of which every Roman child remembers the taste so long as he lives. Round and round the crowd moves in a stream of young, old, and middle-aged, all blowing horns and whistles with a ridiculously solemn persistency, bent on making all the noise it is possible to get out of one small toy. Now and then they stop to buy at some booth, or to greet a friend; one group attacks another with a specially strong burst of noise almost too much to stand when shrill whistles are brought close to ears, and there are shouts of laughter when the party which can make the most hideous noise drives off the other half deaf from the din.

       In one long-remembered year, in the old English Protestant church about a mile away, the organ was rebuilt and the organist, a practical Anglo-Saxon, had the useless old pipes sold at the night fair for the benefit of the church. The braying of the high cracked reeds was frightful and never to be forgotten.

       Thousands upon thousands of people throng the square; even under the clear winter sky it is not cold; the flaring, smoking, wind-blown torches throw strange shadows down upon the old women who behind the booths sit warming their skinny hands over earthen pots of glowing coals. They look on without a smile on their wrinkled faces while their sons and daughters sell little old women of clay, the very images of their mothers, to passing customers. And there is no confusion, no accident, no trouble, there are no drunken men and no pickpockets. But Romans are not like other people. J. C. Dier, 1911.

A little Italian girl talks about La Befana and visits 

her fair in Italy.

• Befana, her history and meaning
• The story of the Befana and letters and pictures by children