Our Homemade Christmas

We've had a busy month of projects here but I didn't want to post them all before as many were going to be gifts for special friends and family who happen to read this blog :)  I was impressed by how much we were able to get done and it worked great to schedule some of our projects as special activities on our Advent Calendar.

Snowman Handprint ornaments (I saw this on a number of places on pinterest)
 - We painted the kiddo's hand and carefully put it on the ornament.  After it dried, I decorated the fingers to look like snow people with paint pens.  Then we put some paint inside and swirled (blue, white and gold).  I added a layer of mod podge to keep the paint from flaking off.  With the ornament is a small message that says, "These are not five ordinary snowmen, as you can see I made them with my hand for you to hang up on your tree. Now every year at Christmas you can look back and recall not so very long ago when my hand was just this small. Love, (Child's Name) Christmas (YEAR)"

Salt Dough Ornaments (source here)
- My little boy had so much fun with these so we did them twice.  He loved rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutters.  He also really enjoyed painting them.  They look great with a little glitter.  I coated them with mod podge to help seal them.  

Puzzle piece snowflakes
- We didn't have any extra puzzle pieces so I cut them out, used glue dots to connect and then my son painted them white and added glitter.  On the back you can add a note saying "Thank you SNOW much".  I don't think we'll do this one again unless we have puzzle pieces to use -- maybe from a garage sale?

Snowman gifts
-These were super simple and lots of fun to give.

Cute Christmas Tree Cards from yarn
- My son found some left over yarn from another project and asked to make something.  I'd seen tree pictures made from varying lengths of paper, so we tried it with yarn.  It took a lot of glue but it was good to practice ordering the yarn by length.  We added some glitter since it already had lots of glue. 

The Felt Play Stove (previous post)

Christmas Tree Felt Activity for the Busy Bag (previous post)

Wrapping paper and bags
- All through the month my son colored plain white paper to use as wrapping paper.  We also painted and used stamps on some.  He thought it was so much fun.  He also decorated some bags to use as gift bags with ribbon, Christmas stickers and a green triangle of paper :)

Wood Gifts from the Shop
Because my husband loves to use all his wood working tools and didn't have a heavy travel schedule this month, he made quite gifts as well: A birdhouse, Squirrel cafes, Kid Height Rulers (similar to this from hgtv but with family name on it too), and a unique candle holders.

It was so much fun to give a few homemade gifts to some special people in our lives!