MAKE A CHRISTMAS SNOW GLOBE

The Christmas decorations are out in force now. If you have a few hours to spare over the next few days you could get the family together and make some interesting decorations out of recycled bits and bobs that are floating around the house. Young children usually come away from school at this time of year with a little something to add to the tree, usually made from a dissected egg box or toilet roll tube and cotton wool, and very good they are too. I would like to suggest a couple of ideas that also rely on things that have been used.

CHRISTMAS SNOW GLOBE
You can get snow globes from the shops for next to nothing, but to make one yourself will be far more satisfying.

What you will need:
- Glass jar with tight fitting lid (Any type of jar will do)
- Distilled water, or boil some water and use it when it's cool (Adult supervision needed)
- Glycerine (this helps to slow down the snow fall and is available in most chemists)
- White or silver glitter (avoid the ultra-fine glitters, they tend to float rather than fall!)
- Clear silicone sealant (a tube of aquarium sealant or the stuff you get from the DIY shop)
- Small waterproof ornament or figures
- Plastic jar lid, to fit inside the jar as a base to elevate the ornament within the jar, if needed
- Another plastic jar lid, or wooden circle plaque, just a bit larger than the diameter of your jar, to use as a stand (optional)
- Acrylic paint for the base of the ornament in your choice of colour
- Coiled Christmas rope
- Craft glue to attach the decorative rope

How to Make Your Own Snow Globe:
Check to make sure that the ornament you have chosen will fit within the diameter of your jar.
Make a trial run. Invert your globe jar and remove the glass part, leaving only the lid. Place the plastic base in the centre of the lid, then position the ornament on top of this. Place the jar over the ornament and check the fit. If the ornament is high enough to view clearly, use silicone or aquarium sealant to glue the ornament firmly to the lid. If you need to raise it up a bit put it on the other upturned lid and then stick that to the original lid. Use another small jar to test the snowfall. Fill the test jar with distilled water, or boiled water that has cooled, then add a teaspoon of glitter. Put the lid on and shake it to see if you like the effect. If the snow is too sparse, add a little more glitter. Add a few drops of glycerine and test it again. The glycerine should slow the rate of the snowfall quite nicely.

Working over a sink, pour the water and glitter into the globe jar, filling it to the very top. Invert the ornament assembly into the water and screw the lid into place. Some water will be displaced and spill over the top of the jar. Wipe the jar dry and shake it up! You can use the sealant to glue the jar to a wooden base or another plastic lid, if you like, for extra stability.
Paint the base and the jar lid in your choice of colour. Once the paint is dry, use craft glue to add your choice of Christmas coiled rope, a circle of Christmas lace, or whatever you wish to add as embellishments.

Check out some Christmas No No's

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Check out the Wiki site too

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Fun Games for kids

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SANTA-THE FACTS!!

SANTA…. THE FACTS (ACCORDING TO MISGUIDED SCIENTISTS)

Most years I am asked by at least one child how Santa manages to get all of the presents delivered on time. Every year I come out with more and more fanciful ideas to the solution. Well this year I have done some research. If I’m asked, I can bombard any unsuspecting child with a few statistics that will get their brains ticking over.

Lets start by taking a look at Santa’s mode of transport, -his trusty reindeer. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are roughly 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects and germs, this does not rule out flying reindeer -although only Santa (and maybe a few people who have plenty of Christmas spirit have ever seen one)!

Lets get down to the facts… There are two billion children (small people under the age of 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle most non-Christian children, this reduces the workload to about 15 per cent of the total (roughly 378 million according to the Global Population Count). At a rate of say, 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. That's 822.6 visits per second. For each eligible household, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, put presents under the tree, eat any snacks, kiss mother when available, get back up the chimney, hop in the sleigh and move on. Assuming each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth, we're now talking about 0.78 miles per household - a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to let Santa and the reindeer do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours.

This means Santa's sleigh moves at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. The fastest person-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 miles a second (a conventional reindeer, by the way, can run 15 miles per hour at a strong gallop). Assuming each child gets nothing more that a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting overweight Santa. Conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting flying reindeer could pull 10 times the normal amount, Santa would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not counting the sleigh) to 353,430 tons, or four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth II. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles a second creates enormous air resistance, which would heat the reindeer to incandescence in the same fashion as spacecraft or meteors entering the earth's atmosphere.

The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms. The entire team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 gravities. A 250-pound Santa (a wee bit underestimated) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. An eminent scientist who collated some of the fascinating facts about Santa concluded "If Santa DID deliver presents on any Christmas Eve, he's dead now."


So what do scientists know –ask any child and they will tell you that Santa is magic!

Check out some Christmas No No's

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Have a look at the Wiki site too

.

Fun games for kids

A FEW CHRISTMAS STATISTICS

It is estimated that over Christmas as much as 100 square km of wrapping paper will end up in UK and Irish rubbish bins, enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey. Use string to tie up your parcels so that the paper can be reused.

Around 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging are thrown away over Christmas. When buying gifts, try to avoid items that are excessively packaged.

An extra 500 million aluminium and steel drink cans will also be used over the festive period - vent your festive frustration by crushing your tins before placing them in the recycling banks.

Around 5,000 tonnes of aluminium foil gets thrown away in the UK and Ireland each Christmas. Try reusing the foil or make some decorations to hang on the tree for next year!

Check out some Christmas No No's
.
Have a look at the Wiki site too
.
Fun games for kids

CHRISTMAS NO-NO'S

IDEAS FOR RECYCLING AND PINCHING THOSE PENNIIES
(That ended up in the bin!)

Save money on washing powder, go to the shops and buy new clothes every week.

An old pair of underpants can make a very attractive tea cosy. It would make a good conversation piece about recycling too.

Old jars can be used to fill empty shelves.

Replace bulbs in the house with broken ones, you will save loads of money.

Instead of buying expensive grease, use earwax to stop hinges squeaking. (My two lads thought that this idea was very amusing and insisted that I printed it!)

Save lots of money buying expensive oven cleaners, eat out in restaurants every night.

Save toast and turn it back to bread, simply scrape with a knife and wash under the tap.

Put up wallpaper with blu-tak, that way you can take it with you when you move house.

Sawdust from the wood yard makes ideal fake snow and is also an indispensable ingredient in the kitchen. Use it to thicken soup, add it to cereals, cakes and biscuits and it makes a great substitute for Parmesan cheese. It can bulk up a cheap cut of meat too. And it’s free!

If you have children, don’t let them bring any friends into the house. Walking in and out of rooms will wear out your carpets and lino a lot quicker. And replacing the floor covering will be expensive.

When you are buying vegetables make sure they are dry. If not then dry them with your sleeve. You don’t want to be paying for water.

(After reading this one again we quite like the idea and we have decided to take it out of the bin. We do know someone who goes into the grocery shops armed with a small knife. She uses this to cut off the big stalks from the broccoli and to trim leeks before they are weighed. She also has a cloth to brush off the peat that is put on carrots to make them look fresher. She hasn’t started peeling bananas before going to the checkout yet, but it’s only a matter of time!)

TOP TIP

Lets finish things off by making a homemade fly swatter. Simply use a coat hanger and a cereal box. Straighten the hanger and fasten it to the box together with a piece of sellotape and hey presto! Your very own, home made fly swatter, ideal for keeping the flies off what’s left the turkey when it’s still on the kitchen table in January!