Christmas Table Decorations

I love hanging out with crafty ladies!

Every couple of weeks I get to spend a morning with the crafty ladies of my church. Most of the women that go to the craft group are older than me. While I marvel at their skills, they are quick to downplay their abilities with comments like “In our day, every young woman could crochet or stitch or quilt like this”. I’m not sure that is really true – not every woman had skills like these lovely ladies!

What I love most however is not their amazing skills, but their willingness to share what they know and the way they care for each other. I look at the long-term friendships of these women and hope that when I am their age I will still sit and talk and craft with my friends the way that they do.

Our most recent meeting was the last of the year so we did a special Christmas craft. We used styrofoam balls, wide wired ribbon and lots of pins. Short strips of ribbon are folded into triangles then pinned around the ball to create an effect like a pine cone. Some of us added a ribbon to hang our creations, while others added pretty curls for a table decoration. Some used a couple of different ribbons while others used only one ribbon. It was really interesting to see how different they looked with different colour combinations.

I considered writing up a tutorial for you, but after a little searching I found a pine cone tutorial on Whipup that is very similar and ready to go.

We also shared morning tea that morning and I had to snap a couple of shots of clever party food.

These ladybirds are made from baby tomatoes and olives and sit on a baby spinach leaf and some green relish or sweet chilli sauce spread on bread stick.

These looked like teddy bears. They were caramel tarts decorated with pretzels, marshmallows and mini M&Ms. Very cute!