Christmas crackers!

I love Christmas. I love giving and receiving gifts.

This year I took part in two Secret Santas and two gift exchanges. One Secret Santa was with some students and teachers. The three students work together, I teach Barbara and Thierry, and Clare and Helen share P-J’s lessons betweenthem. We decided to go to a local restaurant together, and introduced the idea of Secret Santa. I received this lovely notebook and bookmark:

Here are P-J and Barbara feeling self concious in paper hats – I provided home made crackers, that included a paper hat, a gift and a typical cracker joke (though Claire had great difficulty translating such classics as “Where do frogs kiss each other at Christmas?” “Under the mistle-toad”)(Groan) I didn’t have any bangers though, so we insisted that we shouted “BANG!” when we pulled them – which resulted in some funny looks from the other clientele. The set meal was choucroute (not my favourite meal of all time) but washed down with a couple of bottles of wine, it was bearable. Our afternoon lesson was less decorous than our morning one, however!!

I took part in a Christmas Cracker swop too, organised by Mad About Bags.

I was paired with Ellie from Feltabulous and she provided me with some wonderful gifts. The idea was that you put everything in a kitchen roll tube and wrapped it in festive fabric…but I’m no sewer, and fabric would be wasted, so I requested paper instead. Here are the lovely things Ellie sent me:

Here’s the cracker, waiting to be unwrapped – and what lovely things within.

Vintage papers, and a packet of seeds

some lovely ribbons and lace trim

hot chocolate sachets and Lindt bears

a beautiful felt heart (on the Christmas twigs!), a gorgeous charm and some quartz crystal ear-rings.

Aren’t I lucky?! Thank you so much, Ellie for my lovely cracker. And thank you to Amanda who alerted me to the swap.

I forgot to take photos of what I sent to Ellie, but here is a photo from her site (I hope she doesn’t mind!)

Some lollies, some chocolate coins, some wooden buttons, a little Parisian keyring, some Vichy mints (locally made), a little bottle of honey shower gel, some felting wool (thank you Noz!) a bookmark/necklace (comme tu veux..!), a couple of straw Christmas decorations and a Zentangle with a cat on it. It’s amazing what you can squeeze into a tube – though actually I cheated and made my own!

I will tell you about my other swaps another time. But what fun!

I think I did better than poor John over at Going Gently. For his Secret Santa he received the awe-inspiring gift of a pair of plastic antlers mounted as a hunting trophy. Here is a link to the post – but don’t click on it if bad language offends you. He was certainly disappointed in his gift!I felt so sorry for him that I have arranged for a secret santa gift that he will enjoy to arrive next week (the earliest that they could deliver) I don’t think he reads this blog, but I won’t tell you what it is, until it has arrived.