Santa Handprint Ornaments

Every year for a family tradition we want to have our children make a Christmas ornament.  It is tough coming up with ornaments that a newborn can participate in.  This is the perfect ornament for small children to make or help with.

Step 1:  Make the salt dough:
            * 1/2 cup salt
             * 1/2 cup flour
             * 1/4 cup water (a little more or less)
          Knead until dough forms.
Step 2: Trace infant's/child's hand on a piece of cardboard.  Cut out cardboard hand.
Step 3: Roll dough flat and place cardboard hand on top.
Step 4: Trace around the hand with a knife.
Step 5: Poke a hole in the palm of the hand with a straw or pencil.
Step 6: Bake the hand on a cookie sheet at 200 degrees for 2-3 hours.
Step 7: Paint
Step 8: Put some ribbon through the hole and hang.

Enjoy the reminder of how little your kids once were as you hang the Christmas ornaments on the tree each year.

You can also give these ornaments as a gift with this poem:
"This is to remind you when I grow so tall that once I was quite little and my hands were very small."

Simple and Inexpensive Christmas Gifts

I love the Holiday season for many reasons; One being, that I love giving gifts to others.  Sometimes it gets hard when you have a lot of people you want to give gifts to and a tight budget.  

Here are some inexpensive, quick, and easy Holiday gifts.

 

Present: Brownie or cake mix (can attach wooden spoon too)

Note: Christmas is Jolly, Christmas is sweet.  I'm stressed out so make your own darn treat!

Present: Candle
Note: May your days be happy, your heart be light, your Christmas merry, and the New Year bright!

 Present: Chocolate with gift card

Present: Popcorn
Note: Popping by to wish you a very Merry Christmas
More details here

You can find 6 other great inexpensive gifts here.

Popcorn Christmas Gift

I love giving gifts for Christmas, but it can get really expensive once you starting giving more than just gifts to your family.  This is a simple and inexpensive gift to give to friends.  All you need is some paper, popcorn, ribbon, and buttons.  

Instructions:
1. Cut white paper in half. Wrap around popcorn.  Tape.
2.  Cut hat and glue hat on snowman. Put a button on the hat.
3. Draw face on snowman.
4.  Tie ribbon around snowman.  This is a great way to use up your random small pieces of ribbon.
5.  Write on the back of the snowman, "Popping by to wish you a very Merry Christmas."

Felt Christmas tree

Christmas time is such an exciting and fun time for little ones.  There are so many fun activities for kids this time of year and decorations help children get even more excited.  Some little kids love to help decorate the Christmas tree by putting on ornaments.  Why not let them have this experience all season long.  I made this felt board activity for a Felt swap.  Each person picked a month to make a felt activity and then we swapped with each other . We now have a fun felt board activity for almost each month of the year.  

It is best to buy felt at JoAnns when it goes on sale for 50 or 60 %off.  For the light bulbs I glue the yellow light bulb to the black part with tacky glue.  Everything else, I just cut out.  

Let the kids enjoy decorating the tree all season long!

Hot Chocolate Bar

One of the first things that come to mind when I think of winter is "hot chocolate."  I love sipping hot 

chocolate on a cold winter night.  It always tastes better with a little bit of toppings.  My favorites are peppermints and whip cream.  

We had a fun activity at our church for all of the ladies.  Afterwards, we had a hot chocolate bar.  

Hot Chocolate Bar goodies:

Hot Chocolate

Cream Puffs

Peppermint candy and crushed peppermint

Cinnamon sticks (Bulk at Winco is cheapest)

Marshmallows

Peppermint Taffy

Whip Cream

Pretzel bites (pretzels with chocolate)

Inexpensive Christmas Party Table Centerpieces

Sometimes I daydream about how I would decorate my home and for parties if money wasn't an issue and there was no budget involved.  However, that is never the case.  I was in charge of decorating for a church Christmas party.  We had less than 50 dollars to spend on decorating tables for 200 people.  With little money and lots of table centerpieces needed, we had to be creative.  Many of the supplies we used for the centerpieces were reused items.
We put wrapping paper squares on top of the table clothes to add more color and variety to the tables.  Half the tables had wrapped presents and the other half had Santa cans with evergreens and berries.

1.  Presents:
     Wrap empty boxes with pretty paper and tie ribbon around them.  This looks great and is very expensive when you have to decorate a ton of tables.

2. Evergreen Santa Cans:

    I got emptied number 10 cans (large metal cans that contain food) from an elementary school kitchen.  I spray painted them red.  It took 2 coats of paint.  Then I cut a long strip of black felt for Santa's belt and attached it with glue to the can.  Next, I cut out a gray square with an empty square in the middle for the belt buckle.  I glued the buckle on top of the Santa's belt.  That's all to make the can.  For the greenery, I used the extra pieces from our Christmas tree that we cut down.  We still didn't have enough greenery for all the tables, so we went up to the mountains and collected some more evergreen branches.  I bought the berries from Michaels craft store.  

 What do you do with all the centerpieces when it's done?

       I took all of the wrapped presents to the elementary school I taught at.  They put them under their huge tree which is used for kids to throw gloves and scarves on that they are donating to people in need.

I emptied the Santa cans and used the cans to put gifts in.

Simple Christmas gifts

Christmas comes way too fast each year.  I always am so busy shopping for presents, decorating the house, going to holiday parties, and enjoying all of the Christmas time activities. It can often be overwhelming.  It is important to find time to relax and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas.  Here are a few gift ideas that are thoughtful, don't drain the bank account, and are simple. 

1.  Gift: Snuggle fabric softener.

    Message: " Snuggle Up!  It's cold out there!  May your home be filled with Warmth and Love this Special Season."

2. Gift for ladies I visit teach:
               * Gloves: "To warm your hands"
               *Candy cane: "Wishing you a heartfelt and warm Holiday"
               *Visiting teaching message: "To warm your heart"
                * Hot cocoa: "To warm your tummy"
         I also put in a recipe book from Relief Society
       The container is a number 10 can spray painted red with a belt made out of felt.  Here are more details on the can and how to make inexpensive Christmas centerpieces.

3. Gift for the parents who volunteer in my classroom.
Gift: Soap and Lotion
Message: "Thank you for your HELPING HANDS.  Have a wonderful Holiday Season.

4. Gift: Chapstick

Message: Hope this chapstic is dandy when the mistletoe is handy.

5. Gift: Bubblegum
Message: "Blowing Christmas Wishes Your Way!"

6.  Gift: Kleenex, chapstick, hand sanitizer, EmergenC, and any other "health" items you want
     Message: We "tissue" a Merry Christmas and "healthy" New Year!"

Check out some other great gift ideas here.

Jingle all the Way

I  absolutely love these!  They are so cute!  I couldn't help myself by making a bunch.  

 

The frames came from Michaels.  We had someone cut the vinyl out for us.  We got the paper in  a Christmas packet of scrapbook paper.  The jingle bells are from Michaels and JoAnns. 

Wedding Ornament

I found this cute idea at the blog:  From glitter to gum drops.  I had clear Christmas ball ornaments laying around and our wedding invitation nearby so I decided to throw an ornament together.  I am going to change the ribbon on it- just have to get to the craft store.   Sorry for the poor quality of pictures.  I took about 20 pictures and these are the only ones that turned out semi okay.

- Cut the wedding invitation into strips so that you can read all off the words.
- Roll each strip around a pencil and then put it inside of the ornament.
-  Add ribbon and other decorative items to the ornament.

This would be a great wedding gift or Christmas gift for newly weds.

Snowman Soup

I made this snowman soup for everyone I work with at School.

Snowman Soup: One candy cane, few kisses, hot chocolate, and mini marshmallows.

Christmas Count Down

I bought blocks a while ago to make a Christmas count-down. I mod-podged Christmas paper to all the sides of the blocks. My mom is letting me use her Cricut for a while so I cut out numbers to put on my Christmas count-down. I haven't finished this project yet because I need to figure out the lettering for how I want the bottom part to look. I guess that will have to wait until next year.

Christmas centerpiece

After making the wreath, I had left over pinecones and ribbon. So I decided to use what I had to make my house more Christmasy. I put some pinecones into a vase, cut up some ribbon to mix with the pinecones, and then tied a bow around the vase.

Christmas Wreath

This Thanksgiving Garrett's sisters and I got together to make homemade wreaths.

Gluing beautiful items onto the wreath.

Kami is an expert at making beautiful bows.

The finished products.

Christmas Advent Calendar

I do an amazing job at looking at peoples' blogs, getting ideas, thinking about doing their idea, and not following through with the idea. I have been wanting a Christmas advent calendar. I have looked around in stores and couldn't find anything that appealed to my eyes or taste. I goggled "Christmas advent calendars" and got the idea to make one from a muffin tin. The most amazing part about it is that I got the idea Wednesday and completed the project two days later! It was a very fun project.

Here is how I made my Christmas advent calendar:

1. I bought a 24 cup muffin pan from Walmart for 4 dollars.

2. I bought sheets of magnetic paper from Hobby Lobby.

3. I bought cute Christmas paper, stickers, and embellishments.

4. I cut 24 squares that were 2 1/4 inches.

5. I glued the paper squares to the magnetic paper and cut out the squares again.

6. I used punched out circles to put number stickers (1-24).

7. I inked the edges of the circles and squares.

8. I added embellishments to some of the squares.

9. My amazing husband drilled holes on the top of the pan so that I could thread ribbon to hang it on the wall.

You can put treats in each cup. I am going to put a piece of paper that has something for us to do for the day. Such as bake cookies, watch a Christmas movie, look at Christmas lights, make hot chocolate, etc.......

The finished project, hanging on my wall.