Christmas Crafts

When we got ready to move we knew Dutch houses weren’t exactly known for their storage so we skimped on packing Christmas decorations. I condensed down to one box that would move with us. When we unpacked the one box my eldest proclaimed the house lacked  Christmas spirit. So we did some crafting.

We made little Santa and Sinterklaas out of the Paper Good Projects book. (Read the review here.)

We’ve done salt dough handprints every year since I had H. This year I doubled the recipe and we made enough to fill our little potted tree. I followed these instructions from Domestically Blissful. I loved the tip about adding white paint to make the ornaments white. I also added a bit of glitter to the dough. We used cookie cutters to make shapes and then beads and jewels to push into the dough. It took a week to dry in the humidity but once they did I let the kids paint a few of them. All in all I got a beautifully decorated tree.

We were missing a tree topper so we made one out of tinfoil and it beautifully suits our little tree.

Still H was not satisfied.

Luckily, the next day we had mommy and me art class here in town. First, we decorated a ball in paint and then rolled it in glitter. While that dried we made winter scape jars. We chose a stick and cut it to fit into our jar. Then we wrapped string around the stick. Next we added some snow balls to the jar and other little ornaments. Some styrofoam and little characters were added to the top.

I had some paper plates we turned into wreaths. The kids helped me paint them and the next morning we busted out the glue stick and proceeded to glue little things to them.

H is obsessed with Reindeer. I found this adorable Reindeer craft at I Heart Crafty Things. I changed things up a bit. I glued three popsicle sticks together in a triangle and let the kids wrap them with yarn. I used the clothespins and pipe cleaners as directed to make these cuties. H and I loved the glitter bows so we each glued one on.

We had a few left over popsicle sticks so we glued them together to make a star and proceeded to bejewel it.

Jeff and H were hard at work while I went to get my hair cut. They knocked out some paper plate Christmas Angels.  Hippie Mama has a tutorial here.

They also ventured out into the woods and collected some sticks to make this adorable stick tree. Jeff trimmed them down and tied them all together. I got the task of using the glue gun with the little ones. O picked out pompoms, H told me where to put the glue and then placed the pompoms on the tree. We of course used a glitter bow for the top of the tree.

A few coloring sheets, a welcome santa banner and we are ready for Christmas!