Hi guys!
How was your Christmas? I hope you all had a lovely one, and that Santa was kind to you.
I had a great, albeit quiet Christmas at home with my family and the dogs, exchanging presents, watching festive TV, and falling in to food comas from eating waaaay too much delicious food. I'm going to tell you all about my Christmas properly in a couple of days, once I finally have a chance to sit down and go through my photos, but in the meantime, I wanted to quickly show you the Christmas crackers and table favours I made this year while I have five minutes to myself. I had hoped to blog about them before Christmas, but life was so hectic I ran out of time.
Every year, I like to make my own Christmas crackers instead of buying a box of over-priced, ready-made crackers full of cheap tat. There's nothing wrong with ready made crackers, of course, but I personally really enjoy making my own, and have fun personalising them each year. I always buy a Christmas cracker kit from Hobbycraft to construct myself, and then fill them with whatever gifts I fancy- which usually ends up being chocolates, scratch cards, or mini beauty products. They always go down really well with my family.
I wasn't impressed with the designs on offer at Hobbycraft this Christmas, and settled for the Santa and Reindeer cracker kit, which was a lot more cutesy and childish than I'd usually go for. I wasn't sure I even liked them until I took them out of the packaging, and started making them the night before Christmas Eve, and realised they actually looked pretty damn cute.
To make them, all I had to do was to place a paper hat and a joke in to the centre of the back of the card, roll each cracker in to a cylinder-shape, slide the three tabs in to the pre-cut slots, tie a piece of curling ribbon in to the middle of the diamond cut-outs to cinch in one end, drop in the surprises, and cinch in the other end to seal them. It was super easy to do, and I had all six made in under fifteen minutes.
This year, I filled our crackers with an assortment of festive Lindt chocolates, which included mini chocolate Santas, reindeer, teddy bears, and truffles. We had quite a few chocolates left over as each cracker only held four, so I popped the rest in to the little festive fabric pouches my Mum made from some Christmas fabric, and added them to the Christmas dinner table as table favours. Both the crackers and the favours were a winner with my family on Christmas Day; everybody loved them! They were the perfect finishing touch to Christmas dinner, and the chocolate was a real treat at the end of the meal. I particularly enjoyed the milk and white chocolate truffles- they were so good!
The crackers went down so well this year that I'll definitely be making my own Christmas crackers again next Christmas. Who knows, I might even try to make them from scratch next year, although the kits from Hobbycraft make cracker making so quick and easy, I don't know I'll bother. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Have you ever made your own Christmas crackers or do you prefer to buy yours pre-made?
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My stepmum and sister used to make them which I liked a lot. They put L'Occitaine soaps in them one year which was cool and mini Yankee candles another time!
ReplyDeleteThese look really nice!