Christmas Crafts

We just finished Spring Break, but I am just now posting the pictures of the craft projects that we did over Christmas break. I know; I know. Such is life.

This year my girls had a full 9 days off school before the much anticipated Christmas Day, and, in all honesty, I was worried. How was I going to keep them happy and entertained as the excitement level increased on a daily basis?

So, I decided that we would create a little schedule for Christmas break: work in the morning, lunch and rest around noon, and a craft project every afternoon. It really went quite well and gave them something to look forward to each day. Several times, we invited friends over to play and make the crafts with us.

I do not have pictures of everything we did, like building gingerbread houses and making licorice and cookies. But, here is a sampling of a few of our Christmas crafts with a big thank you to all my friends who find and post cute ideas on Pinterest for me to see and steal!

Mindful Jars / Snowglobes

It is a little hard to see but the jars are filled with colored glitter glue, a little elmers glue, water, and large sequins. We glued items to the lids to make snowglobes, but since my girls decided that they wanted to add some food coloring to make the glittery substance more vibrant, the objects were a waste and hard to see. The glue helps to suspend things so that once shaken up they settle gradually and are pretty to watch.

I had read about these from someone who used them for their kids instead of a timeout -- they took the jar shook it up and were supposed to sit and settle their feelings down while they watched and waited for everything in the jar to also become still. I loved the idea, but it did NOT work with my kids.

Sure, they thought it was a fabulous way to relax themselves in theory when we made the jars. However, after the initial day, the couple of times I tried to hand Maggie her jar and invite her to sit on the couch and calm down with it she was so spitting mad that she threatened to chuck the jar full of glittery glue across the room at me or another object. And, then I worried I would have both an angry, out-of-control child and a HUGE mess to clean up.

Whoever the mother is who came up with the idea must have had more level-headed and less fiery children than I have been sent!

Headbands with T-shirt Pom-Poms

This was a great project. Just used old, stained t-shirts cut into strips. My girls (6 & 9) and their friends had a harder time cutting the shirts into narrow, straight strips than I had expected. I had to help a lot with that part of the process. But, they were able to wrap the bands with the t-shirt strips entirely on their own. They also liked wrapping the strips around their hands to form loops. I then tied the bunch of loops together around the middle and let them cut the loops to create the pom poms. They also loved customizing their bands with a series of three smaller poms or some of only one color. I secured the pom poms and the wrapping over the bands with hot glue and this easy project was a hit.

These turned out darling to go with their gray knit Christmas dresses and tied in a pop of red for the holiday ensemble.

Owl Bags

These were a last minute improv made without a pattern. We used a canvas drop cloth that was left over from a painting project for the bodies and lining and fun scraps of fabric I already had for the backs, straps and details. I cut out a pattern for each kid and they cut out their own eyes, wings, beaks and straps, and I cut out all the bodies. I simply zig-zagged the wings and eyes and beaks onto the burlap, following the edges. Then I sewed the outer body sections and the lining together, placed the lining inside and rolled the edge of it over the outside to create a look like a bias strip. After that I secured the straps and they were done.

These were the home-run project of the break. All of it, including helping four children pick out fabrics, cutting everything out, and sewing five bags together took between 3-4 hours. Not too bad. Maggie gave one to her school teacher, and the others have gotten a lot of use by Mia and Maggie and their friends, Sarah and Spencer. They are perfect size for scriptures and a notebook for church, a few books and magazines, or even a folder and papers from school.