GIft Tags 2009

This year M and E's gift tags to their friends and cousins will have a second purpose, they will also serve as ornaments for the child's home. We try to keep the cost of the tags under a dollar each time and easy to make, as multiples will be needed.

The Santa and snowman door hangers as well as the angel where purchased at the Dollar Store costing .50cents a piece. The snowman bottle cap and Santa jingle bell ornament where purchased online at Oriental Trading Co. and also cost .50 cents a piece.

The Santa, Snowman and angel are great to make with ages 2 and up.The foam parts came with adhesive backs and have few parts.

The bottle cap snowman, I would say 4 and up, as their is quite a bit of dexterity needed to put the stickers on just right and to thread the ribbon through very small openings. We chose to use a needle to thread the ribbon through and found it much easier than doing it by hand as the directions in the packaging suggested.

The Santa jingle bell I would recommend for 6 and up. The kit comes with all the parts un-assembled and there is quite a bit of gluing. I do recommend using a hot glue gun made for kids (they are available at JoAnn's fabrics)to attach the wooden pieces to the metal jingle ball, it adheres better than using standard glue.

By the way if you are noticing that there is no pictures of M&E making the gift tags, it is because I accidentally erased both my camera and computer pictures of this craft session along with M's 7 year birthday from a few days ago.Yes I am officially a horrible mom for making such precious memories disappear.

Gingerbread House 2009

It is time for our 'Annual Gingerbread House Decorating'!

This year the girls had a bit more creativity behind their design. I was most surprised by something new to us, Icing writers by Wilton. These Icing bottles were easy for M&E to use and looked great once on the house. The kit we used is the same as every year, available at JoAnn's fabrics from Wilton for $10 dollars and the icing writers $2.49 are also available at JoAnn's.

This is a fun project for the whole family, young and old can participate. The hardest part of this kit is building the foundation, it requires some time and patience. The candy taste horrible (thank you Wilton)so does the icing, so no worries kids will prefer to decorate with the candies rather than eat them.

This is also something you can expand on and build more things for your village setting but my girls usually want to stop after the house is done.When you complete yours send us a picture as we would love to see yours.

Christmas Card Exchange

M&E are participating in a kids Christmas card exchange this year and boy are we excited!

Crafty mom at Kids Craft Weekly sponsors this great event.
M&E received 10 addresses from Amber, the 10 addresses are for kids around the world and some within the US, we even got lucky and got one local family.

Both girls enjoyed making the cards and typing up our letter that told each child a little about our family and how we celebrate Christmas.

If your family isinterested in joining this card exchange please visit kidscraftweekly.com for details.

Christmas Gift Tags

This week we will be distributing gifts to our friends and family and I had to figure out a way to incorporate the girls crafts. Although they would rather help me wrap presents, I also know that last year when I had them help me wrap they would tell the recipients of the gift what they were receiving.I guess when you are 5 and 3 you can not be expected to keep a secret for more than a day or more like an hour. So the best idea was to have them make gift tags for all those presents. I am hoping they will be so busy gloating about their homemade tags that they will not (cross your fingers)tell what is contained in each box.

Supplies for the Christmas Tree tags

You can use the template below for the tree if you are apprehensive to draw your own tree.

http://www.coloring.ws/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.coloring.ws/simple-shapes/tree.gif

Finished and ready to hang.

Gingerbread Men

Fashionable Gingerbread Girls

Using stick on jewels, rick rack and lacy doilies.

For The Hana's
For KATE the GREAT!

Gingerbread House

For this week the girls decided they would like to make their gingerbread house.Some years we have had a design plan or a story to go along with the house and so it has a theme.Not this year it was to be just a house of sweets one like both M and E would like to live in. Armed with the supplies below and full tummies so as to not feast too much on the candy we began our candy house.

E begins to decorate her part of the roof.

M decorates her part of the roof with happy faces as she is my happy and sunshine days girl.

I swear she was a free spirited hippie in her past life!Really.

E's completed side with missing candy that mysteriously disappeared.
The candy isn't very tasty for this project.So I said to E "let the punishment fit the crime."
Little Miss Sunshine's side.

Holiday Ornaments

So the Christmas season will be officially upon us tomorrow. Thanksgiving is a blur and we did little crafting at home to remind us of a such an important holiday. Okay so the holiday didn't go completely to way side it is one of the few holidays still celebrated at school so much of the Turkey crafts where done while in school. I am not posting the school crafts as they are not as creative since my girls made one of many of the same crafts as their classmates following the direct orders from the teacher with little room for self expression. Not too completely turn my nose up at school crafts as they have their merits too.

Santa TP

For the template follow the link.

http://www.dltk-holidays.com/xmas/mpapersanta.html

When using crafts that are set encourage your child o make it their own by adding to it or cutting it differently. The girls never fail to be innovative in what they use to embellish.

Embellished with glitter and cotton for the beard to be fuzzy.

The finished product! You can't really see the glitter or fuzzy beard in the picture.

Do you remember making these when you were little? I do and it was a craft I loved. I don't know why, the simplicity behind it and the outcome I guess. My mom still has my reindeer she even has the one that Reva the little girl she nannied for over 12 years made with her.So I decided it was time my girls join the tradition. They both enjoyed the process and where most impressed that the outcome was a cute ornament not just and A as E called it.That night while hanging them I could tell they really felt proud of what they had made.I felt so nostalgic of my childhood yet happy to be in the present moment to pass on a simple tradition.
Supplies: 3 tongue depressors;red small pom pom;2 googly eyes and 2 brown pipe cleaner