This weekend we have been making christmas decorations. We had fun at B's Woodcraft Folk group making a christmas tree from recycled materials so we decided to give a conifer tree a miss and make our own at home too.

We used four bits of cut card for the leaves. Each of those was painted green on one side. We made a collage of different bits of silver and gold paper for two of the remaining sides.

We then rummaged through our recycled paper box and fished out various glossy mags. Taking a very general interpretation of Christmas, we then cut out various pictures and stuck them into a random collage on the two remaining sides. There is a juxtaposition of pictures of pies, puddings, presents, crackers and cakes next pictures of people in squatter camps from charity begging letters and old people from the NHS advertising. As B says, we need to remember these people at christmas too.

We also made a little angel/fairy which sits quite nicely on the top. We all had quite a lot of fun doing that.

Otherwise, we're obviously into the run-up to the Winter Festival of Light, with every other house competing for large electricity bills. Does anyone think that a large 10 ft illuminated Santa is attractive, or is it just me who cannot bare the sight of them?