Archive for 'Christmas Tree'

Holiday Cinnamon Clay (Fragrant Christmas Shaping Dough)

This will make a sweet smelling dough that can be used to make Christmas Tree ornaments, and or gift decorations.

It should be noted: Humidity can affect the consistency of this dough, and how easy it is to handle.

What you’re gonna need:
1 cup Applesauce

1 1/2 cups ground cinnamon

1/3 cup Elmers glue (or other “school gule” just like it)

1 medium sized bowl

Wax paper

Flat kneading surface

Rolling pin

Cookie cutters (Christmas themed)

Knife

Straw (if you’ll be hanging these as ornaments)

Cooling rack

Puffy craft paints (optional)

Decrative Ribbon

 How to make it:
Mix cinnamon, applesauce, and glue together in a bowl.
Remove the mixture from the bowl and knead it until it turns into a firm “clay”.
Let this sit for about 30 minutes or so.
The mixture is best used at room temperature. You may need to dust your rolling pin, hands, and working surface with cinnamon, or use wax paper as a working surface.
Roll out the mixture with a rolling pin until it is approximately 1/8 of an inch thick.
Use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes.
If you are going to hang your shape, use the straw to cut out a hole near the top of the ornament.
Place cut out shapes on a non stick cooling rack or wax paper. You’ll want to keep an eye on them and turn them over occasionally so that they dry evenly and dry flat.
Dry shapes for approximately five days.
When dry you may put a ribbon through the hole for hanging on the tree or adding to a package.
You can also use puff paint to decorate your shapes, if you so desire.

Tips:
With this recipe you can make all kinds of ornaments to give to your family, friends, teachers, the Postman, and even the Garbage man…Happy Holidays.

Christmas – Projects Ideas and Memories

Inexpensive Christmas Gifts
Christmas is a time of joy, piece, and giving. It is also a time of being broke. Adults often think that the idea of making Christmas gifts is only for children who do not yet have their own money to buy gifts. However, with a little bit of ingenuity, some clever shopping, and a fair amount of free time, you can make some very grown up do it yourself Christmas gifts.

12 Creative Ways to Recycle Your Christmas Cards!
Don’t throw your Christmas cards away! There are so many creative ways to use your Christmas cards, many of which you can do with your kids. We have brought together some ideas below.

A European Christmas
With the holidays right around the corner, it’s hard not to reminisce our childhood memories and holidays of yesteryear. In each culture, there are differing values and traditions which are celebrated in different ways.

Choose Now a Holiday of Significance … (and Less Stress) for Your Family
Get more significance out of your holidays this season by creating and enjoy some new family traditions. You’ll be amazed how Christmas comes alive, right before your very eyes.

Easy Christmas Crafts for Children
Nothing brings out the kid in you better than sharing some together time with your own children and there’s no better time to do it than during the holiday season!

Christmas Gifts Kids Can Make
How kids can make adorable, yet practical Christmas gifts, with secret messages, out of pebbles.

5 Scrapbooking Secrets for the Holiday Season
These 5 scrapbooking secrets are sure to bring out the best in all of your albums and pages. Though inexpensive, they are the wonderful ways to add memorable value to the pages you will cherish and love for many holiday seasons to come!

Whatever Happened To Christmas?
“When I was growing up on our dairy farm forty years ago, the stores didn’t put up Christmas displays until the day after Thanksgiving. No one was really thinking about Christmas shopping before that,” said Ralph, author of the book Christmas in Dairy land (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm) (trade paperback; August 2003; $13.95). “In fact, my mother felt so strongly about it that she didn’t even like to hear the word ‘Christmas’ until after we had finished eating Thanksgiving dinner.”

Country Christmas Idea: Milkweed Pod Poinsettias
At first glance, milkweed plants and poinsettias don’t seem to have much in common. If you live in an area where milkweed grows wild, however, you can use the dried milkweed pods to make poinsettia ornaments for your Christmas tree. Here’s how:

New Ways to Use Old Christmas Cards
Forty years ago when I was growing up on our dairy farm in Wisconsin, my mother always saved the Christmas cards she had received in the mail. In those days, people sent many more Christmas cards than they do now.

Make a Phone Book Christmas Tree
I’m not sure who showed my sister and I how to make a Christmas Tree out of a phone book all those years ago, but someone did, and I it made my mother quite happy. Why you ask? Well, considering that we lived in a fairly good size town, the phone book was pretty hefty, and folding all of the pages to make the tree was time consuming… my mother got an early Christmas gift.

Decorate the Christmas Tree With Popcorn
Part of what makes Christmas so special are the traditions that get handed down from year to year. One of my favorite traditions is decorating the Christmas Tree with a popcorn garland. When I was younger we did this at home and at school. The toughest part about making a popcorn decoration is not eating the popcorn while you make it.

Christmas Trivia
Everyone enjoys the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping and decorating. Children love to write letters to Santa and get a reply with an envelope stamped “North Pole”. But even more fascinating is the origins of many of our beloved Christmas traditions.

Fragrant Christmas Shaping Dough
Let’s face it. Christmas is fun, and making holiday shapes with cinnamon dough will be a joy for everyone involved.

Construction Paper Reindeer
This one is a lot of fun for your children because it involves the use of one of their shoes, and both of their hands.

 

Decorate the Christmas Tree With Popcorn

by John Martin

Part of what makes Christmas so special are the traditions that get handed down from year to year. One of my favorite traditions is decorating the Christmas Tree with a popcorn garland. When I was younger we did this at home and at school. The toughest part about making a popcorn decoration is not eating the popcorn while you make it.

Materials:
Popcorn
A Popcorn popper (an air popper works best because you don’t need to use oil, which means less of a mess)
A good size sewing needle
A spool of fairly strong (white if possible) thread, so it won’t break when you hang it around the tree.

How to do it:

1) Pop the popcorn and let it cool. The best way to do that is put it in a paper grocery sack right after it’s done popping

2) Thread the needle and tie a knot, but don’t cut the thread. Remember this is going to go around the tree several times, so leave the thread on the spool.

3) Start stringing the popcorn on to the needle one piece at a time, by putting the tip of the needle through the center of each piece. Move each threaded piece further down past the needle as it becomes necessary.

4) Once you think you’ve got enough popcorn on the thread… do some more. It’s better to come up a little long than short, because you can always cut the excess off.

5) When you really do have enough popcorn threaded, cut the thread and tie off each end, then and hang your new popcorn garland around your Christmas Tree.

Make a Phone Book Christmas Tree

Make a Phone Book Christmas Tree
by John Martin

I’m not sure who showed my sister and I how to make a Christmas Tree out of a phone book all those years ago, but someone did, and I it made my mother quite happy. Why you ask? Well, considering that we lived in a fairly good size town, the phone book was pretty hefty, and folding all of the pages to make the tree was time consuming… my mother got an early Christmas gift.

Here’s how to do it:

Materials:
An unused phone book or an old paper back that no one wants anymore – the book has to be fairly wide
Tempra paint, or spray paint, depending on how old your kids are, and how much supervision you’re willing to provide
Elmer’s glue, or any other “white glue”
A stapler
Trinkets, buttons, macaroni, or tiny ornaments

How to do it:
Open the book and grab the upper right hand corner of the very first page. Fold the page so that the top now lines up with the spine, and crease so it is flat. Depending on the difference in the width of the book as opposed to the length, there will a space at the bottom of the folded page  once you’ve got the first page done, repeat until you’ve folded every page in the book including the covers. Now, bring the front cover around to meet the back and staple the two together. Paint the tree and allow to dry, then use the white glue to add decorations to the tree, and there you have it.

Inexpensive, Handmade Christmas Gifts

Christmas is a time of peace, joy, and giving to others. It is also a time associated with being broke. Adults often think that the idea of making Christmas crafts and gifts is only for children who do not yet have any of their own money to buy gifts. However, with a little bit of ingenuity, some clever shopping, and a modest amount of free time, you can make some very “adult like” do it yourself Christmas gifts.

The first step in your Christmas crafting adventure is to spend an afternoon at your local craft store, and see what catches your eye as something you would be comfortable sitting down to work on. Some very basic, but very nice possible ideas might be:

(1) Knit (stocking) hats. If you have time during the year to learn crocheting or knitting, Christmas is a perfect time of year to put that talent to good use. You can make knit hats, mittens and scarves for men and women alike on your holiday gift list. With all of the different available colors and textures in yarns today, it is virtually limitless as to what you can do to personalize a knitted gift. For someone of extra special importance, you can work in some colorful beads or “tinsel” yarn fairly easily to bring excitement to a basic design.

(2) Pick up some shadow box frames at the craft store, and make some personal home decorations. For example, if you have someone on your list who is a big fan of a particular musician or sports figure, you can create a shadowbox picture with some music notes or memorabilia in the background with a copy of a CD cover or trading card and miniature instruments or appropriate sports equipment in the frame. Miniature items as well as design ideas for backgrounds and the like can usually be found in the scrapbook section of your favorite craft store.

(3) Jewelry is a great personal do it yourself gift. There are all different skill levels for creating your own jewelry, and lots of different pieces that you can purchase to make your gift as professional looking and beautiful as you want. Jewelry can be made from just about anything but wire and beaded types come to mind as some of the most popular. If you go to a well stocked craft store, they will have lots of different cast settings and different styles/gauges of wire to construct earrings, necklaces, and rings. Also there will undoubtedly be someone in the store who crafts jewelry of their own and I’ve never been to a craft store that didn’t have helpful, and eager employees, especially around the holidays.

(4) Christmas tree ornaments are a great way to celebrate the Christmas season. There are numerous ways to create your own unique ornaments, that you could make a different type of ornament for nearly everyone on your list. You could cross-stitch some ornaments, hand paint a box of regular glass ornaments, create egg shell ornaments with glitter or paint (very nice but somewhat fragile), make picture frame ornaments, bead Holiday shapes with pipe cleaners and decorative beads, or string some Hawaiian flowers for a funky tree garland. You can even go all out and combine several of the above. One of the coolest things about this gift is that you might (hopefully) get to see it every year on your loved one’s Christmas tree.

Best wishess,

Shannon