We celebrated Christmas yesterday, according to the Julian calendar.
It’s more church, and few gifts (we do most gifts on the 25th), and it’s our family’s official end to the holiday season….
…Now what will I do, now that I don’t have the holiday excuses not to work on all the projects I’m supposed to be doing.
Happy Winter!
These were a fun way to keep the kids occupied yesterday. They loved making them and getting to go through pictures from the last few months to choose just the right one for their ornament.
They’ll hang on this year’s tree a little while then get packed away for next year, when we’ll marvel at how big they gotten since ‘last year’.
We used craft foam, scissors, favorite recent photos, glue sticks, ribbon or fabric for the ties, a permanent marker to write the year and a hole punch.
The one extra thing we do is to cut a matching piece of foam for on the back to secure the picture in place better and to make it look more finished.
Happy Crafting!
Ever since Jarod made this neat Tin Punched Car at church last month I’ve been working on ideas for making some punched things for Christmas.
Frozen orange juice lids (the cross design), those round metal ends that come off the package of crescent rolls (the star design), and canning lids (the snowman) made for some fun ornaments of different sizes. And for kids, they all have smooth edges that won’t cut fingers.
We started by drawing a design on the lid in pencil and then we tapped a nail 2 to 3 imes for each hole, along the drawing.
After the design was punched we spray paint the lids in gold or silver and then added embellishments with a glue gun, color with permanent markers and acrylic paint and on some we had to add glitter, of course.
The kids loved making these, and are already working on more designs for our tree. As soon as our tree is up (I have two weeks yet), I’m sure they’ll look beautiful hanging with lights glittering through the holes.
I’m so excited. We got our Christmas cards done early this year.
They’re not mailed yet, so there’s still no guarantee that I’ll get them out early, but I figure I at least have a good shot at them arriving at people’s home before New Years this year.
For these cards we decided to raid the fabric scrap bag. You’ll notice we used all types of fabric, not just Christmas themes. There’s some from dresses I made the girls, as well as fabric from an old shirt that added a little variety.
This was a simple card that all three kids could help to make.
The twins cut the fabric triangles and Alexandra (who is two) was able to help mod podge the ‘trees’ on the card. Then we used fabric paints to outline the trees and for the stars.
We picked a bible passage for the saying inside and printed it out on some name badge labels I had laying around (8 per sheet), and the kids stuck them inside the cards.
If you’d like to see last years stained glass church cards made from recycled crayon the post is here.
As I sit here thinking that it’s early for me to start our Christmas packaging, but in the dark recesses of my mind, I also know that every year I think it’s early and then all of a sudden it’s a day or two before Christmas and I’m in frantic mode .
So we started our Christmas boxes this week, and since we give lots of food we thought these boxes would be perfect. There’s a little window to show through the mixed nuts or candies or cookies that are tucked inside in a sealed plastic bag.
Trying to be green (and frugal) we used all recycled stuff.
Pasta Boxes (ours had the window on the bottom but many have the window at the top or middle which I think would be cuter)
Old Wrapping Paper, Construction Paper, Tissue Paper, and Magazine Pages in the color that we needed. Some ribbon and Mod Podge.
Oh… And a stapler to attach the ribbon handle at the top sides.
For bigger recycled gift boxes ideas check out this post.
There’s nothing much easier or quicker to sew than pillows.
So this January 7th Christmas, as time was running, out I raided my fabric stash and found fun fabrics to make pillows for the girls.
Alexandra is a kitty freak so she got kitties on one side and cows on the other. Why cows? Well the color scheme worked with the cats, and I always like to have the two sides of a pillow different in case you get bored with the one pattern. 
I thought she would go crazy over it because of the cats, but alas, being a temperamental 18 month old, she liked her sisters pillow with the horses and dogs better. Oh well.
Jarod didn’t get a pillow but another super quick project. He was thrilled to get a guitar pillowcase of his very own. 
Up until now he had to steal his dad’s pillowcases all the time. Give the kid anything with guitars, cars or trucks on it and you pretty much can’t go wrong.
I’ll share more of the homemade Christmas gifts I made for the kids as soon as I get some pictures taken.
For all of you who celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar today have a very merry and blessed Christmas!
Our kitchen is a mess.
Our Carpatho Rusyn Christmas Eve dinner consisted of string bean soup, lima bean soup, mushroom soup, bread, cooked dried fruit mix, pirohi and a special bread type dessert and I had made nothing ahead of time (no surpise there) so I made lots of pots and bowls dirty.
The bad part was the dish fairy (my mom who generally does the dishes) was feeling tired and did not clean up the kitchen while I was getting the kids to bed. I will admit, I’ve been getting spoiled since she started doing the dishes almost every night about a month ago.
But since I’m finishing and wrapping the kids Christmas gifts, the dishes will sit. And I’ll get up and wash them just in time to start getting more dishes dirty making Christmas dinner tomorrow.
The holidays were so much simpler when I was a kid.
I will admit that we have never had an organized Christmas card display technique. We try to stand them all on a shelf where we can see them each day, and then the kids get after them, and they never stay standing and they end up on a nice pile on the shelf.
And then, well now, it’s time to go through the stack of cards and recycle them into something useful. They are always so pretty and I can’t stand to throw them away when someone was thoughful enough to send them, but I can’t pack them up to use another time either.
Why? You ask. Well because we already have 3 boxes of old cards stacked in the basement, some dating back as far as 40 years….I’m not kidding…and I can’t bear to throw those away either.
So rather than stack the cards in the basement for all eternity, we made them into some fun bookmarks and gift tags for next year.
We made the bookmarks to use as gifts, plus we each made one with a favorite card and wrote a few memories and special gifts that we gave or received on the back as a keepsake. There’s a video and directions of how we made them at our main kidoozy website.
The cards that weren’t really usable for bookmarks we used for gift tags to dress up next year’s gifts. We cut out any size and shape depending on what worked with the design, and then we wrote ‘To’ and ‘From’ on the back or front.
So if you have bored kids, and some Christmas cards still floating around, get a head start on Christmas 2009.
A fun horse drawn ride through fields of tiny white lights lining fences and sleigh bells and hot cocoa. Throw in the farm experience with goats and horses and pigs and it sounds so festive and great for the whole family. And apparently a lot, a whole lot of other people thought so too.
And I’m sure the kids won’t remember that we stood in line for 2 hours waiting for our 10 minute ride in the very very bitter cold. Sure, the kids and their cousins got a bit ‘wild’ waiting in line that long at night, and the baby got really unhappy about an hour and a half into it and I our toes almost froze.
But the kids really loved it and want to go help volunteer at the farm so they can spend more time with the animals, and that’s all that matters, so it was worth it.