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.