Here's wishing a Merry Christmas to you
Not too many  sweets - but not too few
With nice full tummies and Christmas sacks too
With friends and games and plenty to do
With hopes of a great big bone to chew
Good  it's a nice wide chimney flue
Then as the night turns sparkly blue
Cuddle up tight my dears, one, two
So Santa can come and sneak silently through... :o)

Merry Christmas and seasons greetings to everyone all over the world
from me, Jake and Watson (whose eyes are positively shining with doggy excitement)

Jakob catches two huge fish with his bare hands!!!!!!!

No waders. No bait. With nothing but his bare hands, my husband the master fisherman caught two huge fish! WOW!! Not surprising though really considering they were already dead. Yes, here in little old Denmark we've had another gale. They even gave it a name, Bodil, after our sweet, gentle Danish grandma on the boys' dad's side. This time nothing landed in our garden but on his way to checking our holiday cottage, Jakob crossed two recently flooded bridges across the fjord and literally picked up two smashing fish like the one in the photo!

Carp. Guess they misread the 'Carpark' signs!

Sparkle in the dark - make an advent wreath

Careful with candles. Never leave them unattended:

Bedtime story: One Saturday night some years ago, when we had a spot of trouble with a candle. More than a spot, actually. A nasty big burn which shrivelled up half our tablecloth and ate right down into the table. It left a thick trail of soot that licked up the wall, snaked around the ceiling and silently settled on everything… while we were asleep upstairs. Luckily, as our terraced house is pretty solid concrete, the flame finally fizzled out without the Fire Brigade, but we learned a few things, I can tell you. 

1. Check your smoke detector works. 

2. Whoever lights the candles, now puts them out – so none get missed. 

3. Never buy dark candles where the flame snuggles sneakily down inside and escapes unnoticed out of the bottom. 

4. Always stand tea lights and candles in proper candle holders away from other objects

5. Call your insurance company before you spend a whole Sunday sloshing down the ceiling, walls, floor etc. in your swimwear. Twice. Ours would have sent out a team of professionals to do it all for us. Cheers.

That said, here's how we made our Christmas wreath this year!

You'll need candles and some clay (called 'ler' and available in most Danish supermarkets up to Christmas)

Make a circle. Jake came up with the idea of using a
saucepan to make it nice and round. Pumpkin
soup and spoon are optional.

Make the holes for the candles.

Cut a rectangle and then make the pointy bits like a crown.

Mould it round and slide it up the candle a little.

Then push it firmly onto the clay hole you made before.

Bend the points out a little like a flower.

Jake used a kebab stick ...

...to hold his Father Christmas in place.

Then he added the other leg.

It was too dark to go looking for real moss so we found a funny thing to do with the garlic presser.

We squeezed some clay through it and used that as moss instead.
And Father Christmas's beard and hair and Watson's tail

I pressed bits of clay moss into place so it stuck on the tight.

Here Jake is putting Father Christmas's head back on.
You have to use watery clay to stick bits on. Or use glue if bits fall off. 

Good as new with Watson too!

Adding more beard.

And a house I got for my birthday fitted perfectly in the middle. Thank you Dorthe!

Now for some colour...but before we start...
DONT PUT ANY DECORATIONS, GLUE OR GLITTER PAINT ON OR NEAR THE CANDLES
THAT MIGHT CATCH LIGHT AS THEY BURN DOWN.

Spray snow, glitter paint etc. from TIGER. Newspaper to protect the plate.

Glitter for some more sparkle in the dark. 

Sploosh. Jake added some spray snow.

Mushrooms (from TIGER) and hearts painted with
red nail polish for the final touch.

And on Sunday you can light the first candle!

NOTE: Clay shrinks 10% when it dries. We were a bit ambitious with our little bits and pieces and have since had to use quite a lot of glue. Make sure your circle of clay isn't stuck to the plate too, or it may crack. Spray snow covers a multitude of sins though and our wreath still looks good :o).
We're not sure how long our wreath will last but we had a lot of fun making it anyway.
Maybe a chunk of clay with a bunch of fir twigs stuck in the middle will last longer.

Sweet creepy crawlies...and much more besides at the National History Museum of Denmark

 Natural History Museum of Denmark, Universitetsparken 15, Cph Ø; open Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00; tickets: over-16s: 75kr, under-16s: 40kr, under-3s free adm; 3532 1001, snm@snm.ku.dk;www.zoologi.snm.ku.dk/english

These terrific photos and more were taken by Thomass Hahan. Smile please!

Incredibly scary or just cute and hairy?

Bra-vo? Is that a bikini she's wearing there? 

And these sculptures were amazing too.

Can't be easy having such long legs. But she seems happy enough.  

Not all spiders are black.

This one looked a little like a Scorpion.

And this leather sculpture was bigger than Jake and Louis.
Not sure they were meant to be sitting on it.

A web site with a difference?

Plenty to learn - even for Jake, who has more than 100 tarantulas - at his dad's :o).

Then when you've seen the spider
exhibition, you can explore the
rest of the museum.

More than enough skeletons to last past halloween.

If you've got the backbone for it.

Cases of skulls...

...that you are welcome to pick up. If you can carry them.

Some are too heavy.

Like this whale.

Or this giant sloth. I like sloths :o). See he's only got three toes.

You can sit for ages enjoying the view.

And marvelling at the smily beasties.

And when you've seen enough, it's bye bye Lucy and off you trot.
Lucy  is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago and her skeleton was discovered in 1974.

Making a pumpkin lantern...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! 

To make your pumpkin lantern...

You will need: 

• an adult
• somewhere that doesn't matter if it gets sticky (an old table outside?)/a newspaper
• a sharp knife
• a pumpkin
• a spoon 
• a tea light

Get your friendly adult to slice the lid off the pumpkin and then
you can use the spoon to scrape away the seeds.
If you dry the seeds you can use them for a necklace.

Scrape the seeds out of the pumpkin too.

Draw a picture of the face you want on the front.

Draw the face on the pumpkin and get your pet adult to cut it out -
unless you're old enough to do it yourself with an adult beside you.

It can be fiddly.

Make sure you slice the pumpkin flesh away right through
or the candle light won't show up. 

Finally, Jake cut little triangles out around the lid on the little pumpkin.
We've heard that if you rub salt on the  inside they last longer.
But not if they're left out in the rain.

Ooohhhhhhhh! Happy Halloween!!!!

We've heard Americans are much better at this than we are and have lots of special tools and templates they can buy in stores. Well done you guys! But we had fun anyway.