Candy rope friendship knots.

Happy new year! Am I the last blogger out there to wish you that? At least it's still January eh! Only just though! Anyhoo, I have a printable and craft for the kiddos to make this valentine's day. I know we're in the UK now and over here we don't give valentines in class, but I figured we'd do it for our first year here just as a little novelty (the kids are still very much the yanks in class, and the accents have only faded very slightly after six months).

These friendship knots are really easy to make from any sort of rope candy, and I've made a print out that you can download to make cute little bag toppers with instructions for tying the knots, so that they look like more of a little gift.

The full instructions and printable download are here on Alpha Mom, so pop on over to have a look and see if these will work for your children. Ideal for both lads and lasses, as I'm pretty sure all children like candy and tying things in knots. I know boy scouts sometimes use this knot if they haven't got a woggle handy, but it makes me think of holding hands like this...

I've got another craft here ready to post too. It's something that my mum used to do with me, using left over Christmas cards after we'd taken them all down. Do any of you actually have left over holiday cards lying around anymore or have they all been recycled by now? I guess it's handy to have the idea for next year though right? I'll get to posting that tomorrow!

In the mean time, here are a few links to older Valentine's day projects that we've done here in the past...

Giant lollypop valentines

Toilet roll tube valentine's necklaces

Plastic bag iron on felt valentine's patches

Mini crepe paper roses instruction video

Kanzashi from baby wipes and paper towels.

Paper plate heart hats (and other designs)

Awww, I can't believe that photo above is almost a year old. Del looks so teeny! She's nineteen months old now and is all over the place running and climbing and jumping! Her hair is as wild as she is too :)

I hope you all had a lovely winter break. My epic mission to cater Christmas dinner for both sides of the family worked out in the end. Space was tight, so I did two sittings. Yes, that's right, I cooked Christmas dinner on Christmas day for one side of the family and then did it all over again on boxing day for the other side of the family! Our tiny little oven didn't know what had hit it! Then we started off 2013 with some wild and wooly Welsh walking over by Llyn Idwal. We've had a photograph of Llyn Idwal on our wall in America for years, and this was the first time we had taken the kids there. They have seen that photo pretty much every day of their lives, so it was fun for them to figure out where it was taken from.

Here's hoping that the rest of 2013 is just as lovely!