Christmas Projects

Nothing brings out the crafty in us all quite like Christmas.

Daphne is SO into projects right now so I do my best to come up with fun things for her to do.  She's also very into decorating, meaning many things we've made now adorn her bedroom and fill it with Christmas spirit.

(FYI, Daph is usually belting out Christmas carols as she works.)

(Also FYI: most, if not all, of these projects were inspired by Pinterest.  I do not have the creativity to come up with anything on my own.)

She had fun gluing cotton balls to paper plates to make a snowman.  I loved that Christian wanted to join in as well, and while he didn't get glue, he picked up cotton balls one by one and set them on his plate, just like his big sister was doing.  I didn't even realize he had been watching her that attentively. 

Of course as all good projects go, mere seconds after that first photo was taken, we had this situation going on:

But then Daph was back at work, this time with Christian (whoa, for a second there I couldn't remember how to spell his name.  AN or IAN at the end?  weird) just watching and getting into the fruit bowl and maybe yelling?

She painted these lovely canvases for her bedroom.  I put tape on the canvases and she painted over them, then she added the fake snow to the tree later.  Beautiful.

We also used the fake snow to make these fun snow globes out of mason jars.  Fake snow sure does leave a snowy and sparkly mess all over the place.  At least it's sparkly, which is kind of nice.  It's hard to get mad at a mess of sparkles.

I don't know why she makes such weird faces for the camera

Christian looks angry here, which is strange since it's his favorite to ferociously tear all the felt ornaments off this felt tree.  This was an easy project I made that both the kids have loved.

note all ornaments in a pile on the floor

I got to make this little felt nativity ornament for an event at our church.  I just love it so much and Daphne loves it so much.  Because of that it became her ornament from me this year and it is displayed prominently in her bedroom (because we know, thanks to the mini pumpkin incident, how she steals her favorite decorations and keeps them for herself).

David cannot be left out of the projects, either.  He built this little stable for the Playmobil nativity.  Daphne plays with it daily.

Also he and Daphne decorated marshmallows with Sharpies.  Nothing says Merry Christmas like a decorated marshmallow.

please don't tell Daph that I recently threw those away

My personal favorite for this year is my little empty frame collage thing that I've got going on in the dining room.  I spray painted these old frames several months ago and have been having a great time filling them each season.  So far Christmas has been my favorite:

Last year since Christian was still so tiny and sleepless we weren't too creative in our Christmas decorating or craftiness.  I feel like we're making up for lost time this year. My right shin has cramped up several times thanks to hovering too much over the pedal thing that runs my sewing machine.  What is that thing called?  Anyways, who knew working it too much could cause actual physical pain. And just wait til some of you see what I made you for Christmas.  'Amazing' would be a good word to describe it.

If you can even believe it, we've still got much craftiness to fit in this coming weekend.

So much crafting, so little time.