DIY Christmas

Partly out of neccessity and partly out of the desire to be creative with my kids, we are having a bit of a DIY Christmas this year. (DIY=Do it yourself) It started with me not wanting to find the boxes of Christmas ornaments and decorations. We are moving shortly after Christmas and really, within the midst of packing boxes, it just seemed silly to me to start unpacking more boxes. We had a tree, we just needed decorations. Well, we have paper, we have markers and we have imagination. The homemade Christmas ornament project began to unfold.
We started with a paper chain. I took an old magazine and cut out 2cm strips, lengthwse from the magazine. My 5 year old began looping the stips and I taped. He really had fun with this once we saw how long of a chain we were making. We did a few stop and measures to see just how far down the hallway he could go. Our paper chain is now our Chritmas tree garland.

My second idea was to make snowflakes. I cut 4 squares for each boy out of a couple of sheets of white paper, folded them into triangles and let them cut with scissors. It's such an easy little project, and it always looks pretty. Their snowflakes are now hanging on our tree.
My oldest asked if I would cut him out some Christmas shapes and let him decorate them. Sure. He made a bell, a candy cane, a tree, and a stocking like that.
For stars, I cut out star shapes from a piece of thin cardboard. The boys then glued pieces of aluminum foil onto them to make them shine.
They each made an angel as well. I cut a circle out for the face and took a triangle of paper for them to decorate. Once the triangle was finished, I made it into a cone shape (for the gown) and taped the faces onto the top of them.
We've had a lot of fun figuring out decorations this year. In fact, I may not get out the box of ornaments next year either. This little project of ours turned into a great way to spend an afternoon together. I know they enjoyed it too (especially my oldest) as they have boasted to several people about their Christmas tree this year.
We had so much fun with the tree that I looked for another Christmas project for us to do together. I found a gingerbread house. Last year, I attempted to bake my own, but my shape sizes got all out of whack and my royal icing flopped. This year I saved us some grief by finding a kit. It was well worth the $8.00. Very easy to put together and a lot of fun to decorate. They both love having their house as our dining room table centrepiece (especially if they can sneak a little treat off of it when we aren't looking!)