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Crafty Christmas Countdown - In Review

All  in all, I'd say the Crafty Christmas Countdown was a success. Here's the breakdown:

The Good:
  • I loved having the excuse to sit down with LM everyday and create something together. Especially with a new baby in our midst, it some great one on one time. This was by far the best part of the Countdown!
  • I tried to make ornaments out of as many of our crafts as I could so that we could use them on our tree and have a good excuse to keep them until next year.
  • We got to be pretty creative. Which was really fun for both LM and I, and was a satisfactory result of me not having a plan for each day's craft.
  • LM really enjoyed making all these crafts. 
The Bad:
  • No matter what, Christmas time always seems to be accompanied with busy schedules. Some days, we were pretty rushed to get a craft done, and somedays we just had to put it off and do 2 crafts the next day! I didn't like feeling like it was just a chore to be done, but luckily MOST days were not like that.
  • I don't like clutter, and so I didn't particularly want to hang onto all the crafts we made. That is why I tried to make ornaments out of them so we had a good reason to keep them. Some we threw away at the end, and some we might keep.....and maybe throw away in July. At least I have pictures of all of them!
What I would do differently:
  • I did have the idea to take all our crafts that we didn't want to keep and go sing carols at a Nursing Home and give them to people there, like Christmas cards.....but we ran out of time! I think it would be a fun thing to do though. Make the crafts each day with that intention, or something similar.
  • If I had time to be more organized with it, I might look up craft ideas and mark the calendar so that I knew which ones were coming up, and could be a bit more prepared.
  • I would try to find craft ideas that were all simple and easy for someone LM's age to make. Most of ours were, but some I had to do quite a bit of the work.

Dec. 24 - 10 Little Snowmen


On Christmas Eve, we made 10 little snowmen. First, I traced snowmen on white cardstock from our snowman cookie cutter and cut them out with scissors. The whole time I traced and cut, I kept thinking how nice it would be to have a die-cut machine, or one of those cricut machines you see on the infomercials. Nevertheless I trudged onward, cutting out 10 little snowmen. Later that day, however, I looked in a yardsale bag from a while ago and found these bad boys that I had purchased for like 12 cents or something.
Oh well. Now I have MORE snowmen for other fun activities!
So with the 10 little snowmen that I so carefully cut out, I drew on some little faces, while LM colored the backs.

Then I wrote numbers 1 - 10 on them. We sang the song 10 little snowmen and had fun playing and singing together!

Our version of 10 Little Snowmen:

One little, Two little, Three little Snowmen.
Four little, Five little, Six little Snowmen.
Seven little, Eight little, Nine little Snowmen.
Ten little Snowmen on Christmas Eve!

Dec. 23 - Ornament Cards / Gift Tags



December 23rd, we used a few holiday foam pieces to make some mini cards. Here are the ones Mommy made:

And here are the lovely creations of LM:

We decided to use these to put on our tree. But you could also easily use these as gift tags or mini Christmas cards!

Dec. 22 - Jingle Bell Sticks



For the 22nd day of Christmas, we made Jingle Bell Sticks!


I thought of this idea because LM has learned to sing Jingle Bells this season. We had some jingle bells and I wondered how we could make them into something easy to jingle. So here is what I came up with:
We used a paper-towel roll & tp roll, some wrapping paper, pipe cleaners, and jingle bells of course.



We taped the paper over the rolls, then punched some holes into each end.I did double holes so I could string the pipe cleaner in and then back out like so:

These have added some sweet percussion to our Christmas Melodies!

Dec. 21 - Stamping Christmas Shirts



The 21st day of Christmas, we went over to our Neighbor's house and stamped some shirts with Christmas stamps.
We didn't have any plain white shirts for LM to decorate, so we used one of these tie-dyed ones. But I think the green and white match the festive stamps quite well. :)


We used acrylic paint and a few of the hundreds of foam stamps our friend had. The hardest part was choosing which ones to use!



We also stamped a couple of onsies for LB. Just in time for the last few days of Christmas!

Dec. 20 - Embroidered Ornaments


This is definitely a Mommy Craft. Since Sunday was a bit too busy to get a Kid craft done, I will post about some homemade ornaments that I made a few days ago! Still crafty and still festive.


Similar to our other craft ideas, I tried to use just the resources that I already had on hand to create these. I had some fabric left over from an embroidered wall hanging I made when we moved in, so I pulled that out, and used it to embroider the word "Joy." I then cut those out and stitched them onto the larger squares on the fabric. I ironed the material and then I cut out each of the squares.




Next I taped them around some cut out foam board squares that I cut out the same size as the squares.








Then I used some hot glue to glue a sparkly gold ribbon on the back to use to hang it on the tree. I also glued a square of the material on the back to cover up the tape and the rest of the foam board.





And that's all it took to make an array of homemade ornaments!


Dec. 19 - Egg Carton Snowmen





It's so easy to make a snowman. Which is probably why we have made several varieties during this crafty countdown to Christmas. The snowmen made on December 19 were made out of an egg carton, cotton balls, construction paper, and ribbon.


First I cut the egg carton apart into 4 sections with 3 cups each. Then I trimmed them down around the sides.



I gave 2 to LM, and 2 to myself.
(I find that this is a fun way to make crafts. Have 1-2  for me to make so I can show LM how to do it, and 1-2 for LM to make so he can do it himself after he sees how!)

Next, I put some glue inside and around the sides of each cup and we pulled apart some cotton balls and put them in the cups.
 

Then, I used a hole-puncher to punch out some small black circles for the eyes, mouth, & buttons. Glued those on, and then glued on a small orange triangle for the nose.

Finally, I used some gold ribbon to tie around the snowmen for scarves.
Ta da!

 Last of all, we put string through a hole in top so we could hang them on our Christmas Tree!

Dec. 18 - Wrapping Paper Folder Games

 I can't remember if I read about this idea on someone's blog, so if it's YOUR idea, please feel free to let me know so I can give you the credit!
I have been making some file folder games for LM to play and for Dec. 18th's "craft", Mommy made some file folder games out of Wrapping Paper!
Out of this wrapping paper (the same one I used for the thank you cards) I made a matching game. I think I'll cut out another set of cards and make a memory game too!





And then I used this wrapping paper to make a snowflake & snowman counting game:




And finally, I used this wrapping paper to make a pattern matching game:
(Could also use the cut out reindeer for a memory game.)




Dec. 17 - Thank you cards



The 17th day of Christmas we decided to make Thank you cards out of Wrapping paper scraps.
We used scraps from this wrapping paper, and LM colored on the cardstock while I cut out the pictures. We glued them on and wrote thank you! We have already used a few, and are ready to give them after we open our Christmas presents in a few more days!






Dec. 16 - Paper Cookies


Today's craft was making cookies -- out of paper! We had some friends over to play and I was going to make and decorate real cookies, but decided the paper variety would be fun, and much less messy!
I traced cookie shapes from cookie cutters, and then cut them out while the kids colored the papers.
We glued the "cookies" to the paper plate and then added the "candies."
The only bad thing was that all these pretend goodies left my mouth watering for some REAL ones!

Dec. 15 - Scrap Tree



Just like the old adage: "One man's junk is another man's treasure," today's craft was made with the junk from yesterday's craft to make quite a treasure indeed! I present to you, the Scrap-Tree

All I did was draw a triangle on the paper, put glue inside it, and let LM go to town placing the green scraps on! After the triangle was full, I placed a few more dots for the red scraps, and one big one for the star on top!

Dec. 14 - Hand Wreath



We started out by tracing LM's hand onto green paper, and LB's hand onto red paper.




(the trick is that we traced them only a few times, because we folded the paper so we could cut  2-4 at the same time!)



Then we cut out circles from an old cereal box to use for the wreath and decorated them with the green hands first, then the red hands.




Dec. 13 - Wrapping Paper Christmas Cards






For the 13th day of Christmas we cut out some pretty designs on left over wrapping paper scraps and glued them to construction paper, colored on the paper (LM's specialty), and wrote Merry Christmas! A quick and fun way to make some Christmas Cards for family and friends!

Dec. 12 - Party time!

Though no crafts were made on December 12th, it was quite a fun-filled day anyway!

We had our cousins over all day for a little Christmas Party

Included in the day were the following activities:






  • Christmas Cookie Baking and Decorating
  • Pin the Nose on Rudolph (I just printed a picture of Rudloph off from the internet and cut out red circles for the nose. Easy, I tell ya.
  • Traveled to Bethlehem (which is surprisingly close when you have a car) where we walked through the markets of the city got to see what it was like at the time Jesus was born.
  • Came home and played Christmas BINGO (again, printed off the internet). I also added a last minute twist. Every time someone got a BINGO, I gave them a candy corn from a package I got for 90% off after Halloween. It was flavored like Carmel Apple, and each time they got a candy corn, they got a chance to try to guess what the flavor was. It took them a while, and a couple hints, but they got it! But I think they probably could have gotten it sooner......maybe they just wanted more candy!
  • Ate pizza and Danced to Christmas music.
  • Went on a Treasure Hunt to find where I hid their Christmas Presents. (This also was a last minute idea. Before they got there, I just went around and wrote the clues as I hid them.And the presents were cozy blankets that I bought on a killer sale for abt. $1.50 each! Can you tell I love bargains?)
  • Cozied up with the blankets and watched a movie.
So as you can see there was not a specific "craft" completed today. But with all the fun we had, I'd say it was worth about 4 crafts at least!!!

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