Christmas Countdown: Handprint Cards

Christmas Countdown

The snow has arrived (at last) in the suburbs of South East London* which can only mean that, as usual, it has peaked too soon and the much-fabled White Christmas is another 388 days or so away. In the meantime, now that I have dispensed with yet another birthday, I can get on with the task of being fully prepared for Christmas. Last year, I was heavily pregnant and struggling with SPD that, combined with snowfall, rendered me housebound, since crutches and snow and people who cannot put on their own shoes are not a very good mix. I could only sit and watch whilst the Pocket Dictator did lots of fun things with The Girl, The Houseguest, the DH and whomever else offered to do fun things with her whilst I sat immobile and frustrated. I am making up for lost time though: since the snow has arrived I have driven, yes driven my girls to nursery, digging the car out of the snow for nearly an hour this morning. I have walked, yes, that’s right, walked into Bromley to get provisions, just in case the next round of snow renders us all housebound. I have been in the snow with the dog, kicked up the powder with my daughter and generally worked very hard to eradicate the memories of last year which are still surprisingly fresh. All of which made me realise that I need to focus on ghostbusting the spectre of ‘last year’ that keeps popping into my head, and December provides an ideal, even romantic, opportunity to do it.

Every year since I can remember I have had an Advent calendar. Not one of the edible ones, nice though they are, but an old-fashioned picture-based calendar. I can’t remember whatever logic I had for eschewing the chocolate ones, since I am a keen consumer of chocolate, but the tradition is writ large in my brain and it wouldn’t be right to mess with my own tradition now, would it? This year, despite having bought almost all of my Christmas presents before November 30th (admittedly some were purchased online late last night but I still did it), which was last month’s self-imposed challenge, I seem to have overlooked the purchase of one. This could, in part, be to do with the increasing difficulty in sourcing such a thing, or it could be that I just wasn’t looking hard enough. Either way, I shall have to make do with the one that came on the front cover of Country Life. It was whilst musing on this, and trying to figure out how to use twitter for the umpteenth time, that I saw almost simultaneously a post by Him Up North and a comment made by Cafebebe making reference to Advent and doing a post a day until Christmas. Thus my Bloggy Christmas Countdown Advent-ure (see what I did there) was born. I am attempting planning hoping to write a post per day from now until December 25th, all of which are Christmas related, acting as a countdown until I arrive at The Day itself, fully prepared and filled with Christmas Spirit. And maybe a bit of Christmas spirits too. To which end, I give you:


Day 1: Handprint Christmas cards

You will need:
card, folded in half. I used black because it’s what I had.
paint (I used glitter paint, but you could use poster paint, finger paint) on a dish, plate, tray
a hand
markers, for embellishment

Get your fully protected offspring to did one hand in the paint the press it onto the paper. Depending on their ages, you may need to assist with some or all of this, since it can be surprisingly tricky to get the paint on the card and not on the chair, table, dog, sister etc. Placement is also crucial to the final design so it might help if you know in advance the sort of picture you want to make.

I got the idea from this Reindeer calendar that PD brought home last year

Holly: handprints in green, then use your finger to dot on red paint.

Angel: handprints in gold glitter paint. Fingers used to paint a rough body with thumb-print head. I later added eyes and a mouth.

That’s it. Leave to dry, embellish as necessary and put the children in front of CBeebies whilst you clean up the mess.

*other, more exclusive suburbs are available.