Christmas-y Crafts

As I have mentioned many times before, I am not a very crafty person. But during the holidays I do get a little more willing to be creative, if only for the sake of my Christmas craft-loving kids. Here's a quick look at some of the highlights from our holiday season.

For her last Girl Scouts activity of 2014, Celeste made a home-made "snow-globe," featuring Olaf, the talking snowman from Frozen. Her "globe" was actually a Mason jar, and it wasn't filled with water (the troop leaders were worried about the potential messes that might result). However, Celeste was still able to fill her jar with glitter and make a mini "blizzard" inside it by shaking it up. It was a cute project, and I suspect she will hold onto it for a while.

For the last few years, I have had the girls each make their own Christmas-tree ornament. I have usually picked up mini-kits at Michael's Crafts to make into ornaments, and this year was no exception. This year, I decided the girls would make ornaments out of melted beads.

We already have a large tub of melted beads that the girls have been using for years now, making a variety of designs. This particular project proved more challenging, since they had to follow a specific pattern in order for the picture to turn out right. This was made even more complicated in two ways: the pattern included in the kit was printed in black and white, so it was hard to tell what colors to use; and the image was mirrored (reversed) from the pattern to the full-color illustration of the completed image. So thanks for nothing, melted bead ornament designers! This project ended up taking way longer than all of us were expecting, mostly because of the terribly designed instructions.

I had expected the girls to make these ornaments all on their own. In reality, I ended up helping quite a bit (in fact, I did most of Aurora's wreath myself!). But they all turned out all right, and the girls ended up being even more satisfied than they might have been otherwise, due to their hard work.

Plus, they looked really cute on the tree!

For the last couple of years, we have also helped the girls make gingerbread houses. I am still too much of a chicken to make my own gingerbread squares for the house (maybe next year, I can have someone show me how it's done?). Instead, I pick up a kit from the store and have the kids build that. This year, we decided to try something a little different...a gingerbread train! There were three cars, and the girls each had one car.

This proved to be a little more complicated than the gingerbread houses, mostly because of the train's "wheels." It made assembling the trains and balancing them a little tricky.

But we managed to muddle through, and the girls had fun sticking candy all over their trains.

As usual, the girls each got a crafty item or two for Christmas; we've gotta fill the post-holiday doldrums with something fun, right? One "craft" the girls were very excited about was a "building" project of sorts...

...each one of them got a gift card to the Build-A-Bear Workshop! The girls all love stuffed animals, and they've all wanted to take a trip to Build-A-Bear and create their own friend. They started asking for that gift way back after last Christmas! At long last, they were getting their chance.

I'll blog more about the girls' post-Christmas craft adventures (including Build-A-Bear) a little later...after all the holiday chronicling is done. But it is fun to have girls this age; they are all in a very creative, experimental phase, and Nathan and I have enjoyed coming up with projects, crafts, and other ideas for them to try. I hope we can continue to nurture their resourcefulness and creativity in 2015.