Christmas Presents!!!

Ok!  I am starting to get my thinking hat on and coming up with my Christmas ideas for this year!  If you have been following my blog for some time then you know that I like to get the kids involved with making Christmas presents.  I have done this for the past two years and I plan to continue this tradition this year.

I have also found several easy things that I want to make for my kids for Christmas this year!  I have found so far an idea for a felt Mr Potato Head and for a felt checkers game, along with some other things I am thinking about!

As far as the presents for my kids I can post them on this blog because my kids don't read this blog and therefore will not find out the surprise (the hard part will be figuring out how to make them so that they don't know what I'm making...I guess I am going to be doing some nap-time sewing :-)

But as far as the gifts I want them to make - a lot of the family that we will be making the gifts for read this blog...so I can't exactly share on this blog.

Last year I set up a separate blog - Watson Homemade Christmas - where I would post what we are doing.  I think I am going to plan on doing that again.  You can click here to go that blog.  I encourage you, if you are wanting to know what we are doing (maybe you can get some ideas to do with your kids) then go ahead and head over there and sign up to follow the blog or receive blog posts by email.  (fair warning family...if you sign up to do this I have the right to remove you - all for the sake of keeping you from ruining your Christmas surprise).  And note, due to the family thing, I will not be sharing my posts on Facebook since all of my family is on Facebook.

I will note that last year's gifts, even though they were all about the kids, didn't involve the kids much in making them.  This year I have some ideas that the kids will be very involved with helping to make the gifts...in fact they will be doing most of the work in these gifts.

Oh how I love Christmas time and love instilling in my kids' minds "it is better to give than to receive!"

Our Handmade Christmas Blog is up!

Hey guys!!  I have decided how to share my handmade Christmas presents with you to give you ideas for fun,easy Christmas gifts.

I have created a new blog specifically for this.  The main reason is because my family, who I am making these gifts for, reads this blog and I don’t want to ruin their surprise (so family please please please do not go to this other blog until after Christmas!)

Iwante to be able to share my ideas that I have found in hopes that you will find some ideas so that you too can have a handmade Christmas!!!  I really think too much emphasis is put on how much we spend at Christmas…who gets the most expensive gift.  I do not think that is what Christmas should be about!  Christmas is all about giving (we are celebrating the birth of our Saviour – who gave his LIFE for us).  Christmas should be about creating and sharing memories!  Having a handmade Christmas helps accomplish that!

Some of these gifts my children have helped me with…some of them they haven’t (mainly due to their young age).  I will do my best to give clear instructions.  Most of these ideas I have found from other websites and I will give credit where credit is due!

And I love comments!!  So please please please let me know what you think and if you found any of these ideas useful.  Please feel free to share links to these blog posts!

So if you would like to see what we are doing for our handmade Christmas please click here to go to the blog (family please please please do not click that link!)

Window Clings

Here is another great Christmas decoration idea.  I found this idea online…I knew my kids weren’t quite old enough to do it themselves this year but I wanted to try it to make sure it worked and it did!!

An easy way to make fun window clings – simply take dimensional fabric paint  (I was making snowflakes so I used white and silver glitter paint).  Make your design on wax paper and let dry overnight.  (If you need to you can draw your design on a piece of paper and place under your wax paper).  After you let it dry for about 24 hours simply peel it away from the wax paper and stick on the window.  It will cling to the window!!

Here are the snowflakes I made.

We will definitely be doing these every year (I don’t think I will try to save them…I don’t think they will survive the summer heat in the attic) and I am already thinking of ideas for other seasons that we can do with these since they are so easy and so cool!  We could do hearts for valentines, eggs and bunnies for Easter, flags and fireworks for 4th of July, etc… Oh the possibilities are endless!

Raising Rockstars - Christmas

I want to make sure my kids understand as early as they can the true meaning of Christmas.  Therefore all this month our Raising Rock Stars focus will be on the story of the birth of Christ…the true meaning of Christmas!

We put up our Christmas decorations today and we tied our Raising Rock Stars lesson in with setting up the nativity scene.

The first thing we did was gather at the buffet where we were going to set up the nativity scene (as you can tell it was a pj day!!)

I pulled out the bible and turned to Luke 2 and started reading about the birth of Christ.  I brought out each nativity figurine at the point that they were mentioned in the story.

We talked of Mary and Joseph and that they came to Bethlehem and that baby Jesus was born in a stable.  He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

We talked about how the angel came to the shepards in the field.  (Our nativity set did not have an angel so I decided to use the angel that is usually our tree topper)

The angel said that there would be a sign for the shepards – they would find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

We then went to Matthew and discussed the wise men that followed the star and brought gifts to the newborn king.  (side note…the pic above cracks me up…it looks like that camel is smiling for the camera from the angle that I took the picture).

We will come back to this table many times in the next few weeks, reading the story over and over, looking at the figurines and learning the story of the birth of Christ.  This is where our emphasis is going to be during this Christmas season.

Click here to see other Raising Rock Star posts.

Making Our Christmas Decorations

We had a busy day today putting up, along with making new, Christmas decorations.  Below are pictures and instructions for the decorations we made!

We made 2 different kinds of Christmas trees. For the first one I took a cone-shaped floral cone and wrapped it with green felt.  We wrapped a red pipe cleaner and a shiny green ribbon around it.  I then had the boys take colored ball pointed straight pins and stick them through the foam for ornaments.  They boys enjoyed this because it was easy for them to do :-).  We then took pom poms and pinned them to the top of the tree and a few more around the tree for added effect.

 

For the 2nd tree I took a green pipe cleaner and folded it in half and twisted it.  I then took other pieces of pipe cleaner and twisted them around the first piece to make branches.  I stuck the tree in a piece of floral foam.  I then had the boys put plastic beads on the branches for ornaments.  We put a sequence star on the top.

 

Here are some pictures of the finished trees (on top of the piano mixed in with other decorations).

 

Another thing we did was take some mini foil muffin cups (red and green) and cut a hole in the middle and put them on Christmas lights to give the lights a glow.  Really the only thing the boys could do for this one is point to where they thought I should put them.  They really turned out cool…with all the lights out they have a pretty cool glowing effect.

 

I tried to get some pictures without the flash to capture the glowing effect…these pictures really didn’t capture the effect…but they kind of looked cool anyways :-)

Another thing we made was an ornament wreath.  I bought some pretty red balls (some were shiny and some were glittery).  The site where I found the idea said to use a wire coat hanger…but I can never get those to work very well…plus I don’t think I had enough ornaments to fill one of those…so I just used heavy guage floral wire.  I twisted two pieces together to get the size circle I wanted.  We then put on the ornaments (this was actually a good simple patterning lesson…and Aaron did very well with it…he would hand me a shiny one saying “shiny” and then a glittery one saying “gitter”.  I would ask him what was next and most of the time he gave me the correct one!  I was so proud).

Now my wreath looks more like a pile of ornaments instead of  a circle…but I still think it looks pretty :-)

  

I was so excited when I opened one of our decoration boxes!  I had totally forgotten that we had made garland for our tree last year until I saw it in the box!!  It brought back memories of last year!!  It made me even more excited about this tradition we are starting of making seasonal decorations to enjoy every year!

(this garland was simply a foam bead kit that came with the stringing wire and plastic needle!  We bought two kits and it made enough garland to wrap our 6 1/2 ft tree.)

 

And don’t you love Alyssa’s stocking?  If you didn’t catch the post about us making this stocking then click here to go see it…it includes a giveaway for a Creativity For Kids kit (any kit you would like to try)

 

Christmas Wishes Ornaments

We have started making our Christmas decorations.  Our new tradition of making seasonal decorations to enjoy and add to year after year got off to a great start with our fall decorations!  Now it’s time to put those away and start on our Christmas decorations.

We started today with our Christmas wish ornaments.  I found the ideas for these here.  I instantly fell in love with the idea and knew that we had to do these ourselves!

I did make some changes to the supplies and steps due to what I had here at the house.  Here is how we made ours:

On the Disney site they called for a wooden spool that you paint…which would be very pretty…but I didn’t have any.  I did have empty plastic spools that I have saved back for crafts.  Since I already had these I didn’t see any need to buy any wooden spools. 

Since I had plastic spools that did not have pretty ends, and I did not want to worry with trying to paint them, I cut out circles from pretty patterned scrapbook paper the size of the end of the spool and attached them with scrapbooking adhesive tape to the end of the spools (oh I punched holes in the middle of the circles before I put them on the spools so that I could thread the ribbon through.

Then I thread through a piece of ribbon through each spool (I found that wrapping the end of the ribbon around the bottom end of a skinny paintbrush helped to guide it through the spool and come out easily on the other side).  Once I got the ribbon threaded I tied the two ends together.  I then used the scrapbook tape to attach the ribbon to the spool where it threads through to keep the spool from spinning on the ribbon.

The site that has the idea stated to cut strips of paper to fit the width of the spool.  I found that party crepe paper was the perfect width of the plastic spools that I had!!  Yeah – no extra cutting!!

So for each spool I cut a piece of crepe paper long enough to put their lists.  If your child is old enough you can have them write their list with a marker on the crepe paper.  Since my kids are too young for that I just had them tell me their list and I wrote it down.

I then attached the list to the spool with a piece of tape (hint – I left some space at the top of the piece of crepe paper so that I could tape it at the bottom of the spool and as it wrapped around the list actually started at the top of the spool.

I then got decorative scrapbook circles and attached them to the end of the ribbon (where I tied the knot) and put the kids name on them!

We hung them on the tree!!  I am hoping that we have started a new tradition with this and this will be our first ornaments to put on the tree every year!

Christmas Presents

Well once again the kids are going to help make Christmas presents this year!  I think I have found some really cool ideas!!  I hope they turn out as well as I have them imagined in my head!  :-)

I am trying to figure out what to do…I would love to post them as we are working on them so that you can get ideas on what to do for Christmas…but…the problem is that most of the people that we will make these gifts for read this blog!  I don’t want to give away the surprise!

I have thought about creating another blog that requires an invitation to view.  Then anyone who wants to see the gifts can ask for an invitation to view the blog.  That is the only thing that I have thought of at this point. 

BUT I am open to any and all ideas you have!!  If you have any ideas on how to do this please let me know by emailing me or leaving a comment on this post! 

I am serious when I say I have found some really cool ideas!  I am so excited!!

My First Review and My First Giveaway

I was recently contacted by Creativity for Kids asking if I would like to be a part of their group of bloggers to review products for them!!  This was after they saw this blog post about their puppet kit that I got for the boys to do and how much fun we had doing it!  I was ecstatic to be a part of this!
We got our first product to review this week – a stocking kit!  You can view this kit and purchase online for $21.99 here.

Let me say how much I love their kits!!  They are so easy to put together!  This kit did not require any extra tools.  My boys are young (age 4 and age 2) and they were still able to help.  I could have let them loose with it and we could have had a very interesting design but I decided to oversee the design of the stocking :-)!
The only downside was the fact that the kit only included one big stocking (it also includes a very small stocking…big enough to hold a few candy canes).  We decided that since we have not gotten Alyssa a stocking yet that we would make this stocking for her.  Here is what the finished stocking looks like!  We were all pleased with it!  (and the picture does not do it justice…you can’t see the sequence beads that are all over it)

I did let the boys loose with the little stocking.  They each got to decorate one side of it.
   
Here is Seth’s finished side.

Here is Aaron’s finished side.

And now for the giveaway!!!
This company not only is gracious enough to send us a kit to review,  they are also donating a kit of choice to give away to one of my blog readers!  So you get to play a part in this fun as well!!  Aren’t you excited?!?!?
Here are the rules for this giveaway!!
1. For your mandatory entry – go to the Creativity for Kids website and browse around.  Then come back here and leave a comment on this blog post letting me know what kit you would choose and why.
Would you like extra entries???
1. If you subscribe/follow this blog then leave me another comment letting me know.  (if you don’t then use either the subscribe form in the right hand column or add my blog to your follow list and then come back and leave a comment letting me know that you have done so!)
2. Write a blog post on your blog telling about this give away and then come leave 2 additional comments with a link to that post.
3.  If you have my blog on your blog roll then leave me a comment (make sure to leave the link to your blog on the comment).
This give away will be open for USA and Canada only.
Contest ends December 14, 2009.  The winner will be announced here and emailed (your email must be in each comment/or enabled in blogger).  The winner will have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen.
Good luck!!