Christmas Reindeer Chaos

As December dawned upon Glenmore the word ‘Christmas Fun’ began to be whispered amongst the herders, tinsel appeared and Christmas sneezed upon the Reindeer Centre once more.

The Christmas period is one of our busiest times of year and we feel we should do something a wee bit extra special this is where Christmas Fun begins. Over December we arm ourselves with Christmas cheer and crafting supplies and head to the paddocks. An army of extra herders appear and we make decorations, Christmas hands and even help Santa himself – he valiantly mans the paddocks and gets all the last minute Christmas requests!

Santa's weird reindeer
Santa (and Moose) even had time to meet two very unusual little reindeer!

We even had a major reindeer herding success when one afternoon before Christmas when myself and Imogen went for a shwizzle around the mountain roads to check for any rogue reindeer. We do this daily as the girls have a great habit of creating some rather impressive traffic jams and if so we swoop in like a reindeer removal squad and deposit them atop a ridge with some yummy food. It’s also a great wee break from Christmas madness down at Reindeer Hoose!

This time we had a very specific mission to seek out Lulu and her lovely calf Bhuachaille who had not been seen properly since September! October is usually our month for training our wee calfies to wear a head collar but wee Bhuachaille managed to miss out on all of this! The mission was bring him in and halter train him so he could participate in our Christmas day parades.

We drove up the road and saw nothing, went to the ski-ing carpark and again saw nothing promising until we spotted a loitering car then one reindeer… then 24 reindeer including Lulu! I ran down the carpark and caught Lulu so fast I forgot about getting a head collar (thank god for Imogen!) and then forgot to take off my mittens so once again required assistance. In a space of one minute we had Lulu haltered and were heading with the herd to the hill enclosure with Bhuachaille in tow. Not bad for just a wee afternoon drive!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=babqms7-bVs&w=420&h=315]

wish
Creative Christmas wishes, beautifully made in our paddocks!

The ultimate day is Christmas Eve, definitely one of the busiest days of the year and the team that day was Andi, Hen, Sheena, Imogen, Abby, Anne and a very festive Shona! We took the busiest visit of the year, and to our knowledge of all time, with a whopping 51 cars on the visit! Have a look at all the people!

xmasevevisit
Just one or two visitors on Christmas Eve!

We all survived Christmas fun and even wore some very stylish jumpers!

Group
A triumphant Christmas eve team!

Hope you all have had a wonderful Hogmanay!

Abby

Very Merry Christmas Reindeer Crafty Fun

photo 5Today’s the day – Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you’re all having a lovely day and have eaten your weight in chocolate and cheese and are having a good rest. If your wee ones (or your big ones!) have already tired of some of their presents, then I have a very quick little Christmas decoration tutorial for you all.

Everyone meet Gerald, the pom pom Christmas reindeer! This is a quick wee make that hopefully the kids will manage, with some adult supervision, of course.

Materials

  • Yarn or wool. It doesn’t really matter what kind, or what colour, but I used brown for realism. Please feel free to make rainbow reindeer!
  • Red felt. I buy whole sheets from local crafty places for about 50p, but you only need a little to make a nose.
  • Googly eyes. I use ones that you peel that backing off and it sticks to anything.
  • Sticky tape.
  • A pair of scissors
  • Cardboard or a pom pom maker. I used a pom pom maker because I am super into crafts and like to buy useless stuff.
  • Pipe cleaners

photo 1.0Instructions

Firstly, make a pom pom. I presume everyone knows how to make a pom pom with cardboard, but if not there are lots of tutorials on Youtube. I will put links in to tutorials at the end of the blog.

If you don’t know how to make one, you basically get two pieces of cardboard, cut them into circles of equal size, and make a fairly large hole in the middle. Put the pieces of card together and then wrap the yarn/wool around the circles, going through the hole in the middle and round the outside. Once the circles are completely covered in a fairly thick layer of yarn, you then have to cut the yarn. To do this, I get a pair of scissors and hold the cardboard circles so that I’m looking down on top, i.e. like a bird’s eye view of a tyre on a car, as opposed to looking at a tyre lying flat on the ground. I then put the scissors roughly in the middle and cut down, trying to find the split where the two sides of cardboard meet. Then cut along this split all the way round. You’ll be left with lots of little bits of yarn all poking out. Keep a good hold of that cardboard! You need to wrap a length of yarn around all those little bits, so put the length in between the cardboard bits and then basically tie it as tight as you can. This is where the pom pom can go wrong – if that piece of yarn isn’t tied tight enough, your little yarn bits will all fall out and you won’t have a pom pom!

photo 2.0photo 3.0Tie it really tight a few times and then you want to make a loop with the end, to be able to hang Gerald on your tree. I just tie a knot in the yarn quite low down and it gets hidden in amongst the pom pom.

photo 5.0The next step to a pom pom is to remove the cardboard, but HOLD ON! We’ll do that in a minute, but first we want to make a start on those reindeer antlers! I put a pipe cleaner in the middle of the pom pom, basically through the hole in the middle and then you can remove the cardboard. You should be left with a pom pom with two ends of pipe cleaner coming out of the middle. I then bend the pipe cleaners so they stick up, like antennae.

photo 1.2You can leave the antlers like this if you like, to make something similar to calf antlers, of you can add more pipe cleaners and make cow or bull antlers. I just twist the pipe cleaners round the sticking up pipe cleaners and bend them into shape and I ended up with this.

photo 3.3Starting to look a little like a reindeer now! Next, we need to cut out a nose for our reindeer. I went for red, but you can do whatever colour you like. Just cut a wee circle out of your felt.

photo 5.3I then get my sticky tape and cut a little bit off. I bend it on itself to make it double-sided and stick it on the back of my nose. I then place my nose on my pom pom.

photo 1The next step is to put your googly eyes on Gerald. I just chose a nice big pair and stuck them on!

photo 2And finally, hang him on your tree!

photo 3Admire your handiwork and enjoy the rest of the festive period!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us at the Reindeer Centre.

Imogen

 

YouTube links for more help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M9Dw4leyjw&feature=iv&src_vid=C9dbhu9YhtU&annotation_id=annotation_615976

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EULHNtikVxg

 

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