Changes Afoot

For me every year, the minute Chistmas Day is over, I want to clean and tidy and sort. My house, my life, my desk, my work; I want everything to be tidy and organised by New Year. I also get a sudden craving for all things fresh and clean: celery, carrots, raspberries, clementines. My Christmas decorations rarely see New Year.

Every year I get to this point and decide that the New Year will see a new me. I feel a very strong desire to make massive, life-altering changes.

Added to this, I am at the moment in the middle of learning primordial sound meditation. Although when you meditate the whole point is not to think any thoughts, I'm finding that I'm thinking a lot during meditation and afterwards. I feel like I'm spring cleaning 32 years of cobwebs out of my mind. At the same time, I've been reading a few books that I'd been meaning to get around to for a while. All seem to be saying the same thing to me as the information I've been given on meditation; or perhaps it's just that I'm noticing it all at the same time. Either way, I feel like this is an opportunity for me to change and grow. Eventually I will do a proper post about the meditation, explaining why I'm doing it, what the studies say, what you actually do and so on.

A while back, a friend asked me, "what actually caused your breakdown?" I started my answer several times, each time getting half way through my first sentence before realising I needed to start on an earlier event than the one I'd picked. I think eventually I started the story when I was 9 and my parents divorced. Not because the divorce was particularly traumatic; my parents never screamed or shouted, and as far as I knew it was more or less amicable (if definitively passive aggressive) throughout. But I think that was the point where things started to go a bit wrong for me, and unfortunately my family has a very rich and strong tradition of sweeping everything (especially feelings) under the carpet whilst humming with fingers in ears. Nothing is ever discussed, and so I suppose from that point things just started building up. 

I'm probably still recovering from my breakdown if I'm honest. It's a long slow process with lots of backward steps along the way. But I'm learning a lot, and I think the meditation etc are helping with that.

"It's like a mother, when the baby is crying, she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms. Your pain, your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get a relief." - Thich Nhat Hanh

A couple of weeks ago, many of you may have noticed that I had a bit of a meltdown regarding my confidence.  Or lack thereof. I've realised that now is really the time that I need to either shit or get off the pot, as it were. I cannot possibly continue with these thought patterns and expect to be at all successful in any area of my life. Weirdly, just the act of writing it all down has helped me to sort myself out a little; and I've been reading some books. Always with the books!

The end of this year sees me deciding to make big changes in my life, not necessarily with the day to day running, but with the basics of how I think, how I react, how I behave. I intend to be a lot happier, and a lot more comfortable in my own skin for 2014.

Review: Christmas Decorations from Grace's Favours

I am a big fan of having something a little different. I don't like to be the same as everyone else, to have the same things as everyone else.

When I discovered Grace's Favours, I basically emailed her and asked for something to review on my blog!

This is what she sent me:

How cute are these! They're all hand made, and the stitching is just perfect. Have you ever tried to get your stitching uniformly even? I didn't think it could be done; turns out it can, just not by me. 

I love these decorations so much; they look gorgeous on my tree next to all the other home made decorations.

Disclaimer: I was provided with these decorations free of charge in exchange for a review, but that was not dependent on my writing a favourable review. All words and opinions are my own.

The Great Elfathon!

Elf has become something of a Christmas tradition since its release ten years ago. Every Christmas it's on TV, and we all sit down with our families to watch, knowing that families all over the country are doing the exact same thing. It's a sort of shared Christmas spirit.

This year though, Elf won't be shown on TV. Or rather it will, but on Sky Movies - a channel a lot of people don't have. I was really sad when I saw the link to this story on my Facebook timeline this morning. For a lot of people, Elf being shown on TV is the start of Christmas. 

Yes, I know we all have it on dvd these days, and you can get it through rentals or Netflix or wherever else... but there's still something special about it being on TV, isn't there.

I thought it might be nice then, to have an online "event" on the Sunday before Christmas, where we all agree to dust off our dvds, and watch Elf at more or less the same time. Then we can share in the Christmas spirit together, and stick our collective fingers up at Murdoch and his growing empire of exclusivity.

I've created a Facebook event here and I would absolutely love it if you'd join in - and invite all your friends to join in too. Let's have our Christmas spirit, and start our festivities with a collective smile.

Is Father Christmas Real?

I've watched with interest lately, a debate on Facebook surrounding Father Christmas/Santa Claus, and whether he is indeed real.

When I was little, Father Christmas came in the middle of the night and left presents in a stocking at the foot of my bed. He ate the mince pie we left out for him, and left a little letter saying thank you.

Then one year, my older sister told me she'd seen my dad putting presents in her room.

The year after that, my parents divorced and when Father Christmas left his note, it was in different writing.

The debate on Facebook has been between "traditional" parents who tell their child Father Christmas/Santa is a real person who brings them gifts... and parents who don't. Instead they tell their children that Father Christmas is a made up character who is part of Christmas, or something else. 

These parents don't encourage their children to sit on Father Christmas's lap at parties, or have them leave out mince pies and carrots, or ring bells outside their bedroom door in the night. Father Christmas is just a storybook character.

At first I read the argument and couldn't decide whether this approach was a clever way to avoid that crushing disappointment of realising it was all a lie... or just really mean in that it stopped the children ever believing in that magic in the first place.

I've a friend who has two children. The ten year old recently discovered that Father Christmas wasn't real, and now Dad feels like a big fraud, "keeping the magic alive" for his seven year old son, when he's always taught both children to always be honest. Whenever his son mentions Father Christmas, my friend's daughter catches her father lying - something he's always tried to drum into her that you don't do.

I spoke to a lovely German lady who grew up in Hamburg. She told me that in Germany, children don't start school until they are 6 or 7, and by that point parents tend to have told their child the truth about Father Christmas - so as to avoid them hearing something on the school playground. In Germany, children are encouraged to be more inquisitive generally, and their questions - about Father Christmas or otherwise - are generally met with truthful discussion, rather than the usual "stop asking questions" or similar that I grew up with!

I also then read this piece about a child finding out her mother is Father Christmas. I loved the letter the mother wrote to her daughter: Santa is bigger than any person, and his work has gone on longer than any of us have lived. What he does is simple, but it is powerful. He teaches children how to have belief in something they can’t see or touch...Santa is a teacher, and I have been his student, and now you know the secret of how he gets down all those chimneys on Christmas Eve: he has help from all the people whose hearts he’s filled with joy. I think that's nice... but something you'd have to trot out a little later than the age of 5 or 6 really.

I hadn't really given the whole debate much thought until recently, when I realised I need to make a decision about what to tell S. 

Part of me thinks, with so many different depictions of Father Christmas and Santa in books, movies, cartoons, shops etc, one can't really expect a child to believe it's one real person who flies around the world in one night and so on. In one film he's old and doddery; in another he has children; in another he's a grumpy old man. I tend to think that by never telling the lie to begin with, you're not at risk of your child having all their beliefs dashed by that bratty kid in the playground who insists on breaking their friends' hearts by shouting about it all being a made-up lie.

But on the other hand... it just seems a bit cynical to never have your child enjoy that particular magic of waking up on Christmas morning and exclaiming, "he's been!" Of finding snow in the hall way and crumbs from a mince pie... I have good memories from my childhood, despite feeling a bit cheated when I found out the truth.

I probably have another year before I need to make up my mind on this; S isn't really bothered one way or the other right now, and I sincerely doubt she would ever volunteer herself to sit on the lap of a stranger in a red suit and fake beard. 

I'm wondering though, what do you tell your children? Have you ever been caught out with this one?

Recipe: Simple Gingerbread

Last year I commented on Facebook that I wanted to make some gingerbread men, and my friend Caroline very kindly sent me her apparently foolproof recipe.

I made them, and I loved them. So this year I made them again, and thought I'd share the recipe. It really is very easy!



Ingredients:
350g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
2tsp ground ginger
1tsp cinnamon
125g butter
175g light soft brown sugar
1 egg
4tbsp golden syrup
When I made them, I put some mixed spice in too.





All you do is, chuck everything into a bowl and mix it up. See how it's the best recipe in the world?

The dough eventually comes together and looks like this:

Tip it out of the bowl and roll out onto a floured surface. I find that this dough soaks up tons more flour once you start to work it, so keep a big pot next to you!

Cut the gingerbread into shapes and put on a baking sheet. I'm lazy about washing up (and everything else!) so I line the tray with greaseproof paper.

A word of caution here: spread your gingerbread men out on the sheet, because they expand a lot while cooking - and if you don't spread them, they'll come out of the oven holding hands!

Bake at 190 degrees C for 10-15 minutes. Be aware that the gingerbread is still a bit gooey when it comes out of the oven. Don't leave it in there until it hardens, or nobody will want to eat them!

See how they've grown slightly obese during cooking?

Leave them to cool, then decorate as you see fit! I decorated mine using tubes of writing icing and melted chocolate. Yummy!

If you try this recipe, please do post a picture here or on my Facebook so I can see how yours turned out!

Saturday is Christmassy Caption Day!

We got the Christmas decorations out the other day, to check we had everything we needed.

Then we went to Poundland and bought some more shiny goodies.

The verdict was: not enough. Must buy more. We had fun investigating what we had though!

Can you caption my photo?

Ranty Friday: Christmas Carrots/Sticks

I took S into town the other day to have a look at all the Christmas lights and trees. She loved it. We went into every shop I could think of that might sell Christmas decorations, and she wandered around, wide eyed and grinning from ear to ear. We spent twenty minutes looking at some tacky "tree" made from baubles in BHS. She was completely spellbound by it. In fact, we ended up buying a lot of Christmas tat and bringing it home to play with. 

One thing I was struck by this year is the number of "Christmas behaviour charts" or "Christmas reward charts" or other ways of turning Christmas into a carrot with which to beat your child. That bloody elf on a shelf can do one as far as I'm concerned. In my house, behaviour/reward charts stink regardless of what time of year it is, but at Christmas they just seem particularly distasteful.

When I was growing up, we all got the whole "Father Christmas won't come!" or "You'll be on the naughty list and only get a lump of coal in your stocking!" Although it did scare us, and (usually) made us stop pulling our brothers' hair, Father Christmas seemed to have been very ill informed, come Christmas morning. I remember one year seeing that my naughty little brother seemed to have exactly the same number of presents as me - but I was absolutely sure he had been much more naughty than me over the course of the year (I'm fairly sure my brother had undiagnosed ADHD, and were he growing up in the current climate, he'd be off his tits on Ritalin by now. I'm also fairly sure the word "naughty" was used more often than his name. It's a reasonable assumption for an 8 year old book worm to think he'd been more naughty than her).

Growing up in the '80s, "stop doing that or I'll tell Father Christmas" was probably the most-heard sentence by children across the UK by mid-November. It was used when we didn't eat our tea, when we sneaked food between meals, when we didn't get ready for school on time or dragged our heels walking home, when we didn't get on with our siblings, when we refused to give that uncle with the scratchy beard a kiss goodbye. 

I'm wondering what parents are hoping to achieve with behaviour charts. What if your child doesn't get all the stickers or whatever it is they're supposed to "earn" by Christmas Eve? Will you really withhold some of his/her presents? Will you really go shopping and think "ahh, but little Johnny didn't eat his sprouts last night, so I won't buy that present..." Really? REALLY?

A while back, I was listening to a podcast where the lady interviewed some parenting "expert" from the US. He had a book out, so of course he knew what he was on about. He said that his daughter kept leaving her bike outside in the garden at night, where it might be stolen. He said he'd kept telling her that if she didn't put it away it would be stolen. Then he told her, if you leave it out again, I'm going to take it and sell it to teach you a lesson. The woman asked him what he would do if his daughter left her bike out again and he said he would have no problem with selling it. "You have to be prepared to follow through," he said. And I switched the podcast off.

I know everyone will get up and vehemently disagree with me on this, and say that behaviour/reward charts are a great way of getting children to behave or whatever. Well balls, it's my blog and my opinion. And I think they suck. I'm not going to buy some creepy looking elf to sit on a shelf and spy on my daughter; I'd like to think I can not only teach her right from wrong, but also be understanding enough to realise that kids get a bit excited and do crazy shit at Christmas time. I don't think it's nice to punish them - or threaten to punish them - for being excited. All too quickly, my darling wide-eyed toddler will be a moody teenager who doesn't give a shit about Christmas and sullenly hands me a list of expensive electronic devices for Father Christmas to bring. I want to enjoy her excitement while I can.

this post was added to Mummy Barrow's Ranty Friday.

Recipe - Mincemeat

I made mincemeat for the first time last year, and was shocked at how easy it is. This is a Nigella recipe, but I don't tend to stick to it terribly well - which is really the beauty of it.

This is not like some cake or biscuit recipe where if you don't put in the right ingredients in the right quantities it won't come out right... Mincemeat is pretty much impossible to get wrong.

Ingredients:
8oz Bramley apples, cored & chopped up small (no need to peel them). This is usually around about one good-sized apple, or two smaller ones. The weight doesn't have to be exact.
4oz shredded suet
6oz raisins
4oz sultanas
4oz currants
4oz mixed peel
6oz soft dark brown sugar
grated zest & juice of one orange
grated zest & juice of one lemon
1oz almonds, cut into slivers (or you can just buy them already sliver-ed!)
2tsp mixed ground spice
quarter tsp ground cinnamon
good pinch freshly grated nutmeg
3 tbsp brandy

Here's what you do. Pay attention, because it's really difficult.

Ok, I was lying. It's as easy as easy can be. Just chuck everything except the brandy into a big, oven-proof bowl. You don't need to measure everything exactly; just whatever looks nice. When I made the mincemeat for this post, I used dried cranberries instead of some of the other dried fruit - to make it feel that little bit more Christmassy (and not at all because I had some in the cupboard that needed to be used up).

Once everything is in the bowl, you mix it up a little, and then you put a clean cloth over it, and leave it for 12 hours.

After 12 hours, you take the cloth off, stir it, and put it in the oven on 120 degrees for 3 hours. The recipe says "stir often" but I'm a bit rubbish and always forget so I tend to average about once an hour - and nothing bad has happened with it yet. So I would say "stir when you think about it."

After 3 hours in the oven, this is what my mincemeat looked like:

Once out of the oven, you leave it on the side to cool right down.

Then you pour the brandy over it, stir it in, and put it into jars.

A word to the wise: wash and dry your jars ready to be filled, then put them on a baking tray. When you take your mincemeat out of the oven, turn it up to 180 and put the jars in for 5 minutes to sterilise them - before you put the mincemeat in!

Opinions are divided on whether you should make your mincemeat hella early, and then spend the months before Christmas "feeding" it with more brandy. I suppose it depends on how much of a Christmas booze hound you or your family/festive guests are. I'm probably giving most of mine away as gifts, so I'm making it as boozy as possible. I'm nice like that. Plus, getting unsuspecting relatives drunk on Christmas "food" is something of a family tradition.

So there you are: minimum effort, maximum mum/housewife/goddess points.
If you decide to give this one a go, do let me know how you get on!

Wordless Wednesday: Festive Shenanigans

Our Week 24-29 December

Monday 24 December
Up horrendously early and into town for some last minute shopping before the marauding hoards came out to play. Home for lunch, and then back out to the pub to meet with some lovely friends. Briefly joined by HYM, then home for another couple of visitors. Evening spent preparing Christmas dinner.

Tuesday 25 December
Up horrendously early again, this time trying to persuade S to open presents. She was more interested in the paper though. Morning spent with HYM and my sister A. Hilarious moments trying to figure out what the hell to do with the turkey. HYM left, mother arrived, S opened a couple of presents. I produced an outstanding Christmas dinner that relied heavily on bacon. Nobody died. S opened a couple more presents. In the evening my sister Z and her boyfriend L joined us, and HYM came back. Then everyone but HYM left, and we had a nice evening snuggling on the sofa.

Wednesday 26 December
Up a little later but not so's you'd notice. Morning spent cleaning up the house while S played with more presents she hadn't yet unwrapped. In the afternoon we went to meet HYM's family at their house. Daunting, but they are lovely. Evening spent watching bad TV with my sister A, who stayed over on the sofa.

Thursday 27 December
Having spent most of the last few days cooped up in the house, we had to get out. And I needed to get my watch fixed, since it stopped working on Christmas eve. Spent the morning in town with A, then came home and had lunch. Spent the afternoon with my sister Z and her boyfriend L, visiting my brother L and his family. S was poorly though, so we didn't stay as long as we would have liked.

Friday 28 December
Morning spent wandering around town as I tried desperately to figure out what I'd come out of the house for. Visit from the older sister S and her husband and step-daughter in the afternoon, as well as A. Evening spent with HYM, curled up on the sofa watching a movie. Heaven.

Saturday 29 December
Horrible weather meant a distinct lack of motivation to leave the house. Most of the day spent cleaning and tidying; I find that recently my tolerance for mess and clutter has lowered considerably. Tree and decorations put away, everywhere vacuumed, big sigh. HYM came round for a couple of hours, then buggered off again.

Wordless Wednesday - Our First Christmas Dinner

Cranberry Sauce

Stuffing

Mmmmmmm

Leftovers!

Our Week 17-22 Dec

Monday 17 Dec
Up and ready relatively early for our toddler group Christmas party; put S in the sling as there are usually so many pushchairs there it's a nightmare to get in and out... plan backfired when she was monumentally sick all over both of us on the way there. Skipped the party, did a quick dash to a couple of shops and took my poorly baby home. Poorly baby then proceeded to spend the afternoon shouting at her toys and watching Tweenies without a care in the world. Visit from sister (A) in the afternoon who entertained S while I made S a Christmas stocking, which I shall be proud of for the rest of my life!

Tuesday 18 Dec
Up early due to a distinct inability to sleep; get it every Christmas. Baked 2 trays of brownies before 10am, then a visit from the health visitor, lunch, brief shopping trip with A, half an hour at toddler group and an ill-timed blood donation appointment. Impressed with myself I didn't pass out this time. Score. Got a sticker too, which is a bonus.

Wednesday 19 Dec
Horribly unsettled night and non-existent morning nap made for a stressed mummy today! Visit from D in the morning, followed by visit from Z and A, copious amounts of vomit on a library book, and an evening spent doing anything but settling. Meanwhile I struggled to finish an OU assignment, and wondered how the hell I'm going to get through the rest of the course if my child never sleeps again.

Thursday 20 Dec
Woke up feeling a lot like death but had lots to do. Braved near-torrential rain to go shopping for last minute Christmas presents and party food; S loved being in the pushchair under the rain cover. Afternoon spent wrapping presents and making vague attempts at tidying the house. A came round to help and even went back to town to pick up the things I'd forgotten.

Friday 21 Dec
Seeing that I would be waiting in all day for a delivery, I decided to invite people round for Christmas shenanigans. It was a last minute affair, and I didn't really prepare at all, but a few people came round and we had a good giggle. Two friends brought little girls a couple of months older than S, and she learned a few new tricks from them which was fun. She is now happily walking across the room with hands held... we appear to have skipped crawling altogether.

Saturday 22 Dec
Mad dash around town in the morning before it got busy, followed by an afternoon cleaning, tidying and wrapping presents. Evening with the HYM, who gets better every time I see him. Happy days.

What a Difference a Year Makes.

Today is one year since I had my 20 week scan. I remember the date, because it's also the ex's eldest son's birthday, and that's still written in my diary.

S&I at 23 weeks

It's strange to think about how much has changed since then. The day itself was not pleasant for me. I'd not been getting on with S's father at all, but agreed he could come to the scan. He arrived late, tried to figure out the sex of the baby on the monitor even though we'd agreed we wouldn't find out, and talked over the lady when she tried to explain things. We'd been arguing in the weeks leading up to it, and I think he'd only started being pleasant so that I'd allow him to come. We'd not seen each other for a while, and I found that I couldn't bring myself to even look at him. I felt incredibly sad that for most women the 20 week scan is an immensely happy thing, holding hands with their partner and looking forward to meeting their baby. I had none of that. While I was glad the scan showed a healthy, normal baby (and so relieved, after all the stress and worry I'd been going through), the day was mainly filled with sadness for me. I had hoped that when I had a baby it would be born into a happy, loving relationship; that we would be a family. Now it was becoming clear to me that there were problems with my relationship that could not be fixed, and I was bringing a child into a very difficult situation. I felt powerless to do anything about it, though. I was sad and tired and beaten down by it all. After the scan he handed me a wad of cash before getting a lift back to town from his ex, who had waited for him in the car park. Thankfully, I had brought my sister with me, so I wasn't alone for the experience. I was dismayed that he had chosen his ex, of all people, to give him a lift; especially when my sister had offered him a lift with us, and the buses run every ten minutes. Looking back, it was clearly a decision taken purposefully to put me in my place - something that became a theme of our "relationship" after that point. It is very telling of my mental state that, although I was cross about him bringing his ex to the scan, I only managed to be angry for about 2 days before just giving in and playing nice. Things were easier if I didn't rock the boat.

Not long after the scan, I went and stayed in Oxfordshire with friends for Christmas. It was an almost stress-free, peaceful Christmas, like being on holiday from my life. I felt like I'd run away to hide from it all, and was petrified of returning to my life and the myriad problems I felt ill-equipped to deal with. While I was away, the ex was texting me and being perfectly nice and reasonable, kept telling me he wished I was there, that Christmas wasn't the same without me. I found out afterwards that their Christmas consisted of going to his mother-in-law's house, where the adults got very drunk very early, and didn't cook a Christmas dinner, while the children presumably did their best to stay out of the way. This was my fault, obviously. If I'd been there we would have had a perfect family Christmas. The fact I went away for Christmas, took his unborn baby away from him for Christmas, was something I was still being chastised for in April.

As it was, my Christmas last year was surreal. Whenever I visit my friends in Oxfordshire, I feel like I've been teleported to a different planet where the usual problems don't matter. One night there, and all of a sudden my shoulders go back down to shoulder level rather than being bunched up about my ears. To be there over Christmas was a dream. Everything was so laid back; we watched movies with our feet up on the reclining sofa whilst eating party food, visited family, went to the cinema on Boxing Day. Christmas dinner was something everyone played a part in preparing, in between watching the Grinch and listening to carols. I almost forgot what a mess my life was in, and what I would be returning to the day after Boxing Day.

Now, looking back at that time, it feels like I'm talking about someone else. It all seems so strange, to have been in such an awful position, to have been so scared and felt so alone and confused. I felt like that a lot during my pregnancy and the first few months of S's life; it was a very trying time for me.

This Christmas though, my life could not be more different. S and I were invited to Oxfordshire again for Christmas, and I was very tempted to accept the invitation; except I don't think my mother would ever have spoken to me again! Instead, S and I are entertaining my mother and sister A for Christmas dinner. I have all the things I didn't have this time last year. I have the world's most beautiful, amazing daughter (biased? Me?) who will have no understanding of what Christmas is, but will no doubt enjoy unwrapping presents and being spoilt rotten by friends and family alike. I have an awesome, supportive boyfriend who will happily allow S to spend an hour clawing at his face if it'll make her happy. I have a home that, thanks to my fantastic brother (whose praises I will never stop singing), is now the sort of place I want to invite people to visit. We're having people over to visit throughout the festive period, and although that means I'll need to actually tidy up at some point, I'm really looking forward to it. I have the most wonderful, supportive friends around me who have proved their worth time and time again.

S&I last week

If you'd told me last Christmas, "don't worry, next Christmas will be a lot better." I would not have believed you. Stuck in the middle of it all, I could see no way out and felt thoroughly miserable about it all. I had nowhere to live, a turbulent relationship with the father of my unborn child, little support, no money. I spent most of my time around the festive period alone in my room in a shared house, drinking soup and wondering what the hell I was going to do. Now there is rarely a day I don't see someone I love and am happy to have around. My evenings are spent with HYM or wondering how the hell I'm going to wrap all these presents before Christmas morning (or how the hell I'm going to get S to actually go to sleep). I still have no money, but who needs money when you have what I have. Money can't buy this.

And now I've made you all gag at the sick-inducing schmaltz of it all, I'm off to cuddle my little girl and my handsome young man. Merry Christmas!

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Wordless Wednesday: Christmas!

Home Made Christmas Tree Decorations

I resent paying over the odds for Christmas tree decorations that are crap any way and are likely to fall apart before it's time to take the tree down. Plus, I'm not exactly rolling in money these days. So I thought I'd have a go at making tree decorations this year.

Turns out, it's the easiest thing in the world to do - so I thought I'd share that with you!

The first batch I made were just normal salt dough, and I painted them once they had dried out - but then the lazy fairy inside of my head woke up and asked, why not just colour the dough as you're making it? And so I did...

The basic recipe for salt dough is one part salt to two parts flour, and roughly one part water (you just mix in enough for it to become dough). I substituted green poster paint for most of my water.

I used a spoon to mix it, until it was more dough-like, because I'm chicken and didn't want my hands to look like the Incredible Hulk.

Once the dough is formed, it looks like... dough. 

Don't be tempted to eat it though; even if you've used water instead of paint, it's made with so much salt it will make you vomit.

You need to knead the dough (see what I did there?) for a good five minutes. The more you knead it, the smoother the dough will be, and therefore easier to work with - and the nicer your decorations will be!

See the little cracks in the dough there? If they're still there when you roll it out, the dough is too dry and your decorations will not be suitably fabulous. 

To resolve this, roll the dough back into a ball, sprinkle a little warm water on it, and knead some more. Think about someone who has really annoyed you. And your bingo wings. This is good for bingo wings.

Even with being chicken about getting green hands, my hands are still green. Who knew that kneading green dough would make my hands green. The salt from the dough also makes your hands very dry and rough, which is just lovely. The good news is that because it's poster paint, the colour usually just washes off first go. But just in case, don't do this the day before a job interview or anything like that. Allow for the fact I may be wrong, or your poster paint may be different to mine. It happens.

Once you've kneaded the heck out of your dough, you can roll it out and cut out your decorations. 

This time I did Christmas trees - hence the green - but you can use whatever shapes you have to hand.

NB. the blue thing in the picture is a pen lid, which I have cleverly adapted to be used as a hole-cutter-outer. It is better to cut out a hole for ribbon to go through afterwards, than to try and poke it with a knife or similar. Also I have found that it's better to do this while the original shape cutter is still around your dough - this stops the pen lid from pushing the dough out and ruining the shape of your tree.

Incidentally, you don't have to use a pen lid. When I made star shapes, I used a smaller star cutter for the hole. The world is your oyster; choose whatever you want to make a hole in your decorations.

Once you've cut your decorations out, lay them on a baking tray.

 I line my tray with greaseproof paper, because I am lazy and don't like having to wash baking trays - but it's probably a good idea to do that any way.

Make sure you marvel at how awesome your little assembly line of identical trees looks. Don't these look lovely?

That's basically it. 

You will need to dry the salt dough out; there are a few options for doing this.

The easiest option is to stick them in the oven on a low heat, around 100 degrees C, for a few hours. The thinner they are, the less time they will need (but beware - the thinner they are, the more likely they are to snap before Boxing Day)

You can bake them for less time on a higher heat, but this may cause the dough to brown. And since we've gone to the effort of colouring the dough before baking, we really don't want to have to go back and paint over brown bits afterwards.

The third option is to just leave them out in the open air for a couple of days to dry out. This is better for the environment (and your electricity bill) but can backfire if you have nowhere sensible and flat to put them, and end up dropping a can of soup on them half-way through the second afternoon; once they have started to dry out you can't really smoosh them up and re-make them.

What I tend to do is put them in the oven on a low heat for an hour or so, and then take them out and put them on top of the fridge for the rest of the day. Sometimes I will take them off the baking sheet and line them up on a window ledge above a radiator to make sure they're really properly dried out.

Once they are dried out, you can do fun things like painting them with glitter glue and sticking things on, if you like.

And then, all that remains is to attach a ribbon, and hang them from your tree.

So there we have it. I would estimate the grand total cost of these decorations to be... no more than about £3. And that's allowing for buying full bags of flour and salt, and a new tub of paint. The ribbon is probably the most expensive thing, and if you have some of that kicking about the place already (let's face it, who doesn't have ribbon kicking about the place) then you're laughing.

I have saved you a fortune in cheap tat foil Christmas decorations that look awful and are terrible for the environment. Feel free to thank me in the comments.