This Sunday, I decided to teach myself to use a sewing machine.

Recently Dad gave us a couple of boxes of craft supplies. A few days ago these supplies gave me a brilliant idea,.

"Gemma-Rose, would you like to be in my video?" I asked.

"OK, what's it about?" my younger sister said.

"We could make a DIY video," I suggested. "We could use some of those craft supplies in Dad’s boxes and show everyone how to make a decorated notebook."

Gemma-Rose agreed this was a great idea.

Very soon we were sitting in front of my camera. Paper, glue and ribbons were spread around us. We were folding, cutting, sprinkling sequins and having a great time.

Gemma-Rose is a lot of fun to film with. I'm going to ask her to be in another video. She's a natural on film (I'm really awkward).

Would you like to watch our video?

A few weeks ago Mum and I were Christmas shopping.

We own a book called Make a Monster. It has a lot of really cute patterns for toys to sew out of fleece.

The cold weather is back, and winter will soon be here.

We are all cold and in jumpers and jackets. I see Gemma-Rose rush out of the room.

"Where are you going, Gemma-Rose?" I call after her.

"To get my fingerless gloves," she answers. As I think about it I decide she is right. It is time to bring out the fingerless gloves and warm my poor hands up.

Last year I made myself and Gemma-Rose fingerless gloves when I was tired of having cold fingers, especially when playing the piano.

This Easter I made another pair of fingerless gloves, this time for Imogen. I gave them to her on Easter Sunday as a gift. She was very surprised.

I was also surprised, but for different reasons. The main reason was that I had made three pairs of fingerless gloves out of the same three balls of wool. It was hard to believe that the balls of wool stretched so far. Another reason was that I had made Imogen's glove pattern up when I lost the piece of paper with the instructions for the gloves I made myself, not that I would have been able to make her another pair like mine. Mine took a lot of wool as they were very long!

Charlotte also has fingerless gloves, but she made hers herself out of other balls of wool. She did not knit hers, but took the quicker option of crocheting them. If I could crochet I would have done that rather than spent hours knitting!

I love fingerless gloves and they are very useful! I am going to have to put my gloves on.

There are so many things to do and so little time before Christmas. Don't you think the same?
We are making our own cards for Christmas this year. I think that home made cards are so much prettier than shop bought ones.

First we got out lots of pens, pencils and paper. We drew some pictures and wrote Merry Christmas on some of them. Then we coloured them and inked them. The cards were beautiful but Mum had another brilliant idea. Her idea was that we should make little tags to go on the Christmas tree to go with them.
Mum found some nice holy pictures in a book and scanned them. Imogen was in charge of our job. Our job was to cut out pieces of card and stick them to the pictures.

Charlotte went on the computer and printed off some little pieces of paper saying 'Merry Christmas from Sue, Andy, Duncan, Callum, Imogen, Charlotte, Sophie, Gemma-Rose'. It was all in different fonts.
We are almost finished with the cards and tags.

Making things for Christmas is a lot of fun.

I was trying to think of some craft to do. Then I came up with the idea of making little notebooks.