Christmas Crafts

The great thing about having an almost four year old is that she's up for Christmas crafts. Usually I have to tap into my Martha Stewart tendencies all by myself but not this year! I now how a partner in crime. Plus I really wanted to spend some quality craft time with Elise before the babies.

Our first craft was to make glitter pine cones. We gathered pine cones from our yard and we painted on glue and dusted them with glitter. When I say 'dusted' I like to think that it was a non messy project but it wasn't. But we both had a ton of fun with glitter hands, faces, clothes, chairs and floor!

 Our drying pine cones....

Some of them I used in a centerpiece in our family room with candles and pine tree branches but the rest I tied red bows around. I intend to share our glitter love by spreading glitter into other people's homes too...

And of course Home Depot had a Christmas craft. The month of December was a Christmas picture frame. Elise and I glued, hammered, screwed and painted our frame to perfection. Now we have to find a suitable picture to place in it...

 Notice the people in the background. I think they are saying that Elise shouldn't 

be waving a hammer around in the air. They are jealous of our skills!

Who wants boring store bought wrapping paper? Elise's gifts are wrapped with extra love as she made her own wrapping paper.

With a roll of brown paper, Christmas stamps and multiple ink pads, Elise went to town decorating her paper. It was a fun a simple project that she did before school one morning when we had a school delay.

After naptime, we wrapped her gifts. She cut the paper herself and I helped tie the ribbon. For the grand finale, she wrote her name and the person's name on top. Of course we had Demi look the other way when we wrapped her gift.

What to do with all those cookie cutters that I have? How about making cinnamon scented Christmas ornaments?! Elise had a great time sorting them all out. I instructed her to pull out only the green ones as they were the Christmas cookie cutters. In the end, she pulled out the green ones and any of the cookie cutters that had anything to do with dogs-- 2 dogs and bone. 

 Of course we got a little silly too!

Our recipe consisted of cinnamon, nutmeg, applesauce and glue. It sure was crumbly but eventually came together.

 Boy, the house smelled so good when we baked them.

 Afterwards we decorated them with glitter puffy paint

 Some of my favorite...

I was most looking forward to making the snowman hand ornaments... thanks Pintrest for making me obsessed with holiday crafts! Elise and I had to actually do this one twice since I bought the wrong paint the first time and it flaked off when it dried. At least we could reuse the ornaments!

Elise never minds a messy craft with paint. I don't either as long as we don't get it on our clothes or furniture! You can see I was living on the edge since we didn't use a paint shirt!

Now that Christmas has passed and we've passed out our treats to our family, it's now safe to post all the fun events that Elise and I have done together. Hopefully, even with the babies, we'll be able to squeeze in a few small Valentine's Day crafts as well! Me, and my little helper, Elise.....