A festive packed lunch

It's my children's school Christmas Dinner today, and while my son has been looking forward to it for weeks, my daughter is what you might call roast dinner averse; try as we might, we can never persuade her to sign up for it. As well as the traditional turkey and roast potatoes and so on, the children also get a Christmas cracker to accompany the meal. My challenge was to give my daughter her usual packed lunch with a festive feel, so she wouldn't feel too left out. 

Here's what I assembled:

• favourite-filling sandwiches - cut into Christmas tree shapes with a cookie cutter
• bundles of carrot and bread-sticks - tied with golden ribbon
• a home-made mince pie - with a sprinkling of snowy icing sugar on top
• a chocolate coin
• a mixture of white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries
• a satsuma

I hope she enjoys her alternative festive fare.

Advent adventures: day 23

Today we opened the twenty-third drawer of our tabletop advent tree. Inside, my children found a tiny trinket to hang on one of its branches and a strip of paper upon which was written a fun and festive activity. There's one of these for every day of Advent - I know that for sure because I came up with the twenty-four ideas, lovingly wrote them out and carefully placed one in each of the tree's diminutive drawers. I'm going to attempt to take a photograph to represent each day's little Advent adventure and post them all here.

Day 23: What shall we have for Christmas dinner?

[Daisy drew all our suggestions. I love the idea of 'choco loot moos']