The best holiday in the world: Sinterklaas!

[beelikej]

This morning I posted some nsfw paperart: a D/s J2 scene for those of you who missed it.

Now it's time for some good, clean family fun. Because besides fan-arting, I've been busy crafting surprise wrappings for Sinterklaas this week. Here are some photos of this year's creation, as well as some candy I redesigned. If anyone is interested in the poems I wrote to accompany presents, let me know. (They are in Dutch;)

Before I get creative, a little background information. Like with Secret Santa, we pull the name from the person you have to buy a present for. Our family's rule is to at least write a poem to accompany that gift and it's optional to make a surprise package, but usually everyone gets crafty with that as well. (Most of us also give small presents with poems to everyone else, depending on time, budget and cooperating muses;). The poem reflects either something that happened to that person in the past year or makes fun of their habits or wishlists.

I was my mom's secret santa. Recently she had the veins in her legs stripped; this was done while she was conscious, so she could watch the procedure, which she was very excited about. On her wishlist she asked for a set of cuttingboards and these things combined inspired me to make a set of legs on an operatingtable, demanding in the poem that she would show her skills before receiving her present....
So, let's make this thing....

I used a ton of bubblewrap (taken out of the plastic recycle trash at work) for the filling.


I rolled this up and shaped it with some cellotape to resemble legs. I had bought the cheapest pair of tights for covering up this construction.


Not as easy to put on, maybe also because I have no experience with tights; my goodness, I hope they are not such a hassle on real legs.


Tadaay, mission somewhat accomplished.


It took a bit of kneeding and bending to make the legs look like legs again. Too bad the toes I cut are not visible at all.


But the pair of socks I found in the back of my closet (too small) make it look a lot cuter. The big gift is hidden in the "cuttingboard" underneath; a panorama calender from Oxfam. I also had another gift, because I always buy my mom something extra (seeing as she does the same for everyone else, I'd like to even out the amount of presents a bit). To shorten unwrapping time this year, we had agreed to limit ourselves to one package per person, so I added the other gifts in this surprise too... (my mom bought three presents for everyone, I rest my case)


This is a giftcard from a shop my mom loves; I'm hiding this in one of the legs.


The envelope was connected to one of the strings (varicose veins;) that I added underneath the tights, can you spot it? I added some surgical instruments and blue covercloth to finish the surprise construction. Done!


My guestroom is turned into Sinterklaas' workshop, to hide the work in progress while I was not at home, just in case my mom decided to drop by with groceries or to do some vacuuming. (Did I mention how awesome my mom is?)

In addition to secret santa and optional presents, I'm also in charge of the candy. Every year everyone gets a big chocolate letter from Sinterklaas. In our family that's the first gift everyone simultaneously unwraps. This year brother J. didn't want one because he's watching his weight and darling nephew Ruben is not allowed that much chocolate yet. I wanted to create some alternative food things that would fit in the same boxes as the letters, so we would all have a similar looking present to start with.


Here's what I made for my brother. This "music book" plays a traditional Sinterklaas song and contains two chocolate figures (I took care of those;). I bought big carrots with roughly the same size.


I only had to cut a bit of the top and then wrapped the foiled figures around them: first Sinterklaas....


.... and of course also his assistent Piet. Then I put them back in the box, wrapped it and added a poem to tell J. that if he had changed his mind about the chocolate, all he had to do was sing the song along with the book. If he did that, Piet would make sure there would be a letter for him amongst the other presents after all. (He didn't sing, but the carrots were a big hit:)


This is a collection of marsipan goodies. Instead of putting names on them, I wrapped them all up anonymously and put them in a big pizzabox. Everyone could then pick a size they wanted (mom and brotherdearest H. love the stuff, others don't care so much). For Ruben I added the Sint and Piet candy bags with marshmellows and pepernoten (small cookies). Sintermom managed to hid something in there for me:)


Instead of the chocolate letter I made Ruben one from marshmellow, I was fortunate enough to find some with Sint and Piet faces on them, that I could cut up. In the end the letter R didn't quite survive the journey, but it tasted good anyway:)


An overview of the chocolate letters (black boxes with feathers from Piet's hat), the presents with poems, the surprise (folded in my backpack) and candy (in my fluffy green backpack.


Ha! I bet you thought that wouldn't all fit, but I RULE at packing bags. Off I go by bus (15 minutes), train (1 hour, 45 minutes) and tram (30 minutes) to the family in The Hague...

Want to join the unwrapping of the presents? Go to the photopost in my blog:)

Also: check the tag if you want to know more about the previous editions of this Dutch holiday!

J.

Comments

[cassiopeia7.livejournal.com]

You are AMAZING. So much work, for gifts people are going to rip open in no time at all! ♥ (And your Mom is badass indeed. I would NOT want to watch veins stripped out of MY legs. Yikes.

. . . but the tights, bb. Put 'em on one leg at a time, until you get to the knees, THEN pull the whole thing up. No wonder you had issues. :D

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

:-) Ahw, thank you. The bit right before ripping the presents is what makes the arts & crafts worth it;)
Well, my mom trained to be nurse and still works in care; with my brother and sister in law both working in a hospital (in radiation and cardiology respectively) plus my meager experience during medschool, my family loves talking surgery and such *grins*

Thanks for the how-to-dress lesson, that makes a lot more sense than my method, heehee.

[sillie]

You've been so creative! And those legs are awesome. XD

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I had a blast, even though technically I only made one surprise:)

[tmn1966.livejournal.com]

I love these annual posts. Your ingenuity never ceases to amaze me and you and family always look like you're having such a good time. It reminds me of when I was younger and we had a huge family Christmas dinner with my mom's family. Such fond memories. Now most of the extended family is so spread out, living in Florida, Texas, California and Tennessee, we only get the chance to have a big family get together every few years.

Anyway, seeing your post made it seem even more Christmas-like to me. ♥

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the advantage of living in a tiny country! Although relatively speaking we consider traveling to the West quite an undertaking;)

We don't get together for Christmas, but everyone who's in the country* will come over for my birthday the day after (which we call the Second Day of Christmas:)
*My other brother and his family are currently in Bali (Indonesia) on vacation. My sister in law and darling nephew will celebrate their birthdays with her parents who come over from Australia to meet them there - heh, that makes my complaint about traveling to The Hague a bit silly, doesn't it?

Most people in the Netherlands will celebrate Christmas with a family dinner, the second day of Christmas is traditionally for the inlaws;)