12 December 2015

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

12 December 2015

Last week I showed you how to make some Danish Christmas hearts and today we’re getting our scissors and glue out for another quick craft – kræmmerhuse (cones).  Which – along with paper woven hearts – are a common decoration hanging on Danish Christmas trees. You can, of course, buy Danish designer ones in the shop. But, as you can no doubt guess, they come with a hefty price tag..

Kræmmerhus are very easy to make – just ask any Danish nursery kid… Giant ones, tiny ones: you can use them in lots of ways.  Make a large version, fill it with a gift to give to a friend. Hang them in your hallway or in windows. Or, as we usually do, on the Christmas tree – filled with nuts,pebernødder, a clementine or some konfekt (homemade sweets). Buy you may have to refill them…’cos pesky little nisser (elves) have a habit of empyting them when you aren’t looking!

But as usual, I digress!  To make kræmmerhuse you’ll need a piece of paper or carton.  Wallpaper works really well for this so, if you have any offcuts lying around, now is the time to declutter them.  Draw a circle (using a small or large plate as a guide) and cut out.

Fold the sides of the circle in, so you have a pointy bit at the bottom and a large, open end at the top.  It’s entirely up to you if you want a very open cone…  (I stuck a paper doily on the back of this red circle, to give my cone a bit of ‘oomph’.)

Or perhaps you prefer a more streamlined, longer, slightly more closed cone. (Please note the very Chrismassy fingernails of my bestie H!)

Use a big dab of glue or a piece of tape to hold it together.  If you just want to fill it with sweets to give to a friend or neighbour, then you can stop here.

Otherwise you’ll want to add a handle for hanging on a tree, door handle or from the ceiling.  Cut out a long thin strip of paper (always cut longer than you think you’ll need, don’t ask me how I know this!) and glue/tape the handle to the inside of the cone. Ta da, done!  You can now start adding glitter, lace, sequins, glansbilleder (scraps), ribbon, buttons or whatever takes your fancy in order to jazz it up a little.  Here are a selection of the cones my besties and I made last year.

So, now that you have some kræmmerhuse, all you need is et juletræ (a Christmas tree) on which to hang them.  But – as we’re in Denmark – it will be a real fir tree (no plastic please!). So that won’t be coming into the house until the week before Christmas.

See you tomorrow!

Diane