Teaching I love

I so much enjoy teaching in my new school.My children seem to appreciate my teaching and enjoy it. We recently did a small dramatization of the Princess and the pea.
I could not possibly put photos of the students during the play but I would like to show you the lovely crowns one of my students made for it.
The king

 The Queen

 The prince

 The princess

I also downloaded and presented flashcards about Christmas to my first and second graders.

And here are some pieces of their art.

Walnut candles and a secret eagle.

I went to my framer's a couple of days ago to frame some of the lovely things I have purchased or received recently. Imagine my surprise when I found on the back of Geninne's Umbrellas this eagle. Now I am trying to find a way to frame it so that both sides can be see. Any ideas?

A couple of days ago I made my own walnut candle decorations which I saw on Margie's blog. They took a very short time and I used up leftover candles I had kept for ages.

My Christmas Tree this year.

I used to have a very big Christmas tree.
Some years ago my dear and I decided that it was too heavy to put it down  from the " attic " so we donated it to my old school and bought a new, a bit smaller, one which hubby insists that it is still huge!!!!!
As my dear is suffering from his back lately my dear brother helped out to bring the tree down and I put some Christmas music on the computer and started decorating it on the 5th of December.
In my dream world the Christmas tree is something the whole family does together!
Well in my real world my teenage son and my hubby prefer their computer so I decorate myself.
This year I decided to put the tree in another corner of the house next to the sofa and the Billy (Ikea's wall to wall bookcase).

Then I added some lights, not too many but I decided I won't buy anything for the tree this year.

Then it was time to put the ornaments on. I have lots of ornaments, vintage ones from my grandfather and from my father, store bought ones I accumulated for years, handmade ones made by friends, and finally handmade ones I made myself.

When in 2006 we visited Finland for Christmas I bought some ornaments there and ever since then I have been decorating the Finn way...that is wooden ornaments, felt ones and straw ones.

This year I decided I wanted a combination of Finn, wooden, handmade and vintage so here is what I put.

 The big red heart is from Lapland and there is reindeer fur on it. The wooden and straw ones are from Finland, the cross stitched pouch was made by Cathy, my friend in England, years ago and the pearl angel was made by my niece Vicky who loves beading and handicratfs in general.

 This is a box of wooden toys I bought from Lidl years ago and decided to put them on this year. I was planning to add them as tags on gifts and maybe I will in future.

This is not a very good picture but maybe you can spot my friend Marabeth's photo ornaments, sea glass friend's Gara's crocheted snowflakes, my dad's vintage baubles,a dove heart by Maria Jose, my Portuguese pen friend and Cathy's felted hearts.
 Then I stopped decorating the tree for a while and hang some glass ornaments on my light fixtures. The fused glass hearts were made by Deed, another sea glass friend.

 The angel is a gift from Marabeth!

And after stretching on the lights I added some decorations on my big table.

My various material collection of Christmas trees and some glitter stars and fern leaves.
After all that I was too tired to continue.
You will see more of my tree in future as I continued decorating it.

Bazaar (2) and a walk.

On December 4th I went to the French Institute bazaar. I bought some handmade and some second-hand things all very reasonably priced. Like in the previous bazaar post these cost me about 10 euros all together.

 The majority of these are for school use and for gifts.
I loved this Little Red Riding Hood coming along with grandma for story telling at school.

 And this little teddy bear from England can be my assistant at the young ones. The elephant is fantastic, in very good condition and I loved the colour!

 This was handmade by the students of the school and I bought it to copy at my school at some point.

 After the bazaar we went for coffee with my brother and my sister-in-law in Kalamaria, a city suburb.
I loved the colourful balloons and the carouzel.

 Someone was selling a blowing bubbles tool. Aren't they gorgeous and so difficult to take a picture of!

 There was an ice skating ring.

 The sky was blue and planes passed over our heads.

 We did some window shopping. Lovely windows filled with Christmas ornaments.

 And another curb find. Don't you love that frame with all the little flowers on it?

When December came...

...my first concern was the Major Teachers' Training Programme. It was the last part where for three days we would focus on microteaching. The seminar took place on two days after all and I presented my microteaching "The Owl and the Pussy cat"  which went very well. I also enjoyed attending the rest of the participants.
And tried to take some pics as usual.

 I used Marabeth's gift to carry my things and it attracted lots of attention from the English teachers who loved to have one  too!!!!!

Then I started decorating for Christmas....
added some fairy lights on my sea glass...

 ...and on my big table...I laid the woven fabric I saved from the school crearance, I put the Italian candy cane vase horizontally because the cloth I covered the table with is not even and I was afraid it might fall...

 ...I put the IKEA  red lantern with more fairy lights, the blue pomegranate that cut my finger, some painted pine cones and Margie's crocheted stones in a plate that was a gift of students years ago...

 ...I added lights to the fantastic driftwood boat that my friend's boyfriend made for me...

 ...and of course the red typewriter and the pots of plants are there too...