Category: Christmas

Recycled Card Gift Tags

Here at Heathlands we are always looking for way to recycle, reuse and repurpose things instead of throwing them away.

Christmas can create quite a lot of waste and we decided to look for ways to reduce the load of rubbish and recycling we were putting to the curb.

One of our activities has been made possible by finding some fantastic die cutters / punches for repurposing our Christmas cards!

This craft also works with any old greeting cards just as well.

What you need:

  • Old greetings cards
  • Tag punch / cutter
  • Corner punch / cutter
  • Circular cutter
  • Scissors
  • Ruler
  • Pencil
  • Hope punch
  • Narrow ribbons or twine

How to make your gift tags:

  1. For using the tag punch: using a ruler and your pencil, measure out strips of card at your desired size. Our gift tag punch cuts at 1.5, 2 and 2.5 inches. Slide the card into the punch face down and press hard.
  2. For making rectangular tags: cut your card to the desired size and select which corner size you are punching. Punch all four corners.
  3. For circular tag: using a circular cutter, place over desired section, hold firmly and while pressing down rotate the cutter.
  4. For ALL tags: not use your hole punch and punch each tag for string / ribbons.
  5. Cut a piece of ribbon or twine around 4 inches long. Double it over. Pass it through the punched whole and put the loose ends through the loop.
  6. Your gift tags are complete!

You can also see our video here:

https://www.facebook.com/Heathlands.Cumbria/videos/531733505691518

Christmas Gnome Decorations

These adorable Christmas tree decorations are not only cute, they’re really easy to make!

You will need:

  • Colourful felt
  • Wool / yarn
  • Wooden beads, red, pink and natural work well
  • Tiny buttons
  • Paper raffia
  • Glue gun
  • Scissors
  • Chalk
  • Plastic bodkin

How to make your gnome:

  1. Make a tassel by wrapping the wool around your hand until you are happy with how big it is. Thin yarn may take up to 40 wraps, think around 20.
  2. Cut a semi circle of felt out and use the glue gun to make it into a cone for his hat. Make sure you leave a little hole at the tip.
  3. Tie a loop of paper raffia around the middle of your tassel and pull through the hat, glueing with the glue gun in place.
  4. Glue a bead into the front inner edge of the hat for his nose.
  5. Glue on buttons to his hat to decorate.
  6. And you’re done! Hang him on your tree.

Crackerless Christmas Crackers

Its beginning to look a Christmas here at Heathlands!

We adore this time of year, and we are always trying to think of ways to make Christmas traditions more inclusive for the individuals we work with.

Loud noises are often not appreciated by people with autism and learning disabilities, so we came up with this idea for a crackerless Christmas cracker.

You will need:

  • Wrapping paper
  • Toilet roll cardboard inners
  • Ribbon or paper raffia
  • A4 white paper
  • A4 colourful paper of your choice
  • A4 white card
  • Scissors
  • Sellotape
  • A ruler
  • A pencil
  • A black felt tip pen
  • A writing pen

How to make your crackerless cracker:

  1. Cut a piece of wrapping paper off the roll enough to wrap around your toilet roll tubes.
  2. This piece should be enough to make 2 crackers if you half it from top to bottom. Our piece was 35 x 19cm.
  3. Cut a 3cm strip off the long side of your colourful paper.
  4. Write BANG!!! at one end on both sides.
  5. Concertina the strip, leaving an inch at the blank end for sticking down.
  6. Stick the strip inside of the tube using the end you didn’t concertina.
  7. Place your tube on one long edge of your wrapping paper, in the middle and sellotape.
  8. The end of the tube that has the BANG!!! concertina to it is your “winning end”.
  9. Tape the winning end of your tube to the wrapping paper.
  10. Tape the concertina end of your BANG!!! to the wrapping paper close to the other end of the tube.
  11. Roll the wrapping paper around the tube and tape shut. Tape the soft end of your paper closed as well.
  12. Cut two 4-5cm strips of card from the short end of your A4 white card.
  13. Curl a piece of card and insert it into the loosing end of your cracker and tape secure.
  14. Pinch the wrapping paper space between your tube and the piece of card and tie shut with a ribbon / raffia bow.
  15. Add a gift / sweets / a hand written joke into your winners end of the cracker.
  16. Close like in steps 13 and 14.
  17. Your crackerless Christmas cracker is done!

Christmas Sausage Rolls!

Now it’s well known that we love a sausage roll at Heathlands. So we thought we’d put a festive spin on them and make Christmas sausage rolls! How you might ask? Well with stuffing of course and chestnuts. Yum.

Ingredients:

1 pack of premade puff pastry

500g pack of sausage meat

1 pack of your favourite stuffing

½ a pack of precooked chestnuts – these are optional

1 egg

Flour for dusting

Method:

  1. Preheat your oven to 190°C.
  2. Remember; you should ALWAYS wash your hands before and after cooking. This is very important as you are handling raw meat.
  3. Make your stuffing to the packets instructions, remembering to half the water as we are only making half the packet. Allow this to cool.
  4. Roughly chop your chestnuts if you are using them.
  5. Combine your sausage meat, stuffing and chestnuts.
  6. Roll out your pastry sheet onto a dusted surface to stop it sticking. Add your sausage meat in a line, leaving enough space to fold over the pastry and egg wash next to it.
  7. “Crimp” the edges of the pastry with a fork and cut to desired length. Slit the tops, egg wash and decorate with seeds if you want to.
  8. Place on a non-stick baking sheet or line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper. Bake at 190°C for 20 minutes, allow to cool a little and enjoy! 

Spiced Winter Biscuits

These lovely warming biscuits are perfect for after a lovely winter walk with a cup of tea.

You will need a mixer or electric whisk for this recipe.

Ingredients:

200g unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

1 medium egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

400g plain flour

Method:

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
  2. Add your egg & vanilla and mix well.
  3. Sieve your flour & spices into the mixture and mix well. If your dough is a little crumbly add a few drops of water at a time until it holds together.
  4. Wrap in clingfilm of baking parchment and rest for 30 minutes in the fridge.
  5. Roll out to desired thickness and cut out.
  6. Chill again for 30 minutes.
  7. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees and bake for 8-10 minutes. They should only be a very light golden colour.
  8. Cool on a rack and enjoy!
  9. To store, place in an airtight container.
  • Ingredients in bold are allergens

Origami Christmas Tree

We love Christmas at Heathlands. It the time of year where we relax our timetable to play games, make delicious food and even sing karaoke!

This year will be a little different but everyone has still been working really hard to make Heathlands as festive as possible.

As part of our festivities we are making our own Christmas decorations. We have already shared some with you and this week we thought we’d show you how to make an origami Christmas tree that you can decorate just like a real one.

We will also add an instructional video when it is loaded on YouTube.

Easy Christmas Cake!

This easy recipe is for a delicious Christmas cake and is based on a Borrowdale tea bread! Make it a couple of weeks in advance and it will mature beautifully. If you would like your cake to be gluten free, simply swap the flour for plain gluten free flour!

Ingredients:

450g mixed fruit – we used raisins, sultanas, currents, glace cherries and mixed peel

100ml strong tea

100ml rum – you can leave this out and double your tea

250g plain flour

175g dark brown sugar

25g melted butter

1 egg whisked

Zest of a large orange

1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp mixed spice

1tsp cinnamon

Pinch of salt

*** Optional – nuts and glace cherries to decorate

Method:

  1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C.
  2. Weigh out all the ingredients.
  3. Put fruit and tea mixture into a bowl and allow to soak for at least 3 hours, overnight is better.
  4. Quickly melt your butter in the microwave. 30-40 seconds should be enough.
  5. Stir sugar into the fruit mixture.
  6. Sift flour, bicarbonate of soda, spices and salt into the mixture and combine.
  7. Stir in beaten egg and melted butter.
  8. Put into an 8inch round cake tin, decorate if wanted and bake for between 1hour & 15minutes and 1 hour & 30minutes. Check the cake with a temperature probe or a skewer. Skewer should come out clean, temp should be 92 degrees C. 
  9. Enjoy!