Christmas Ornament Craft Ideas 2 & 3

The tree doesn't go up till the day after Thanksgiving, so the consul table stems are the temporary ornament hold.

 Last week L and I made the classic apple/cinnamon Christmas ornament dough, rolled it out and cut them out with L's favorite heart shape cookie cutter. Do you know what I am talking about? It is a no bake dough that is made with:
1-1.5 cups cinnamon
1/2 cup apple sauce
2 tablespoons Elmer's glue
You just mix it all together till it becomes the consistency of sugar cookies. It takes about two days to harden and dry completely then just decorate with glitter glue. Joe actually still has one that he made around the age of six. (Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the making process).

An up-close L masterpiece. She did the entire thing, roll, cut, puncturing the hanging hole with a straw, and of course decorate.

I like initial monograms, a lot actually.

Then on Monday we met some friends at CHAP in the Pearl (http://www.chap.name/). A very fun place to go with toddlers and preschoolers. L and her friend's Kate & Carter thought getting to paint on all the furniture, statues, toys-you know all the naughty stuff at home-was the best part. I thought not having to clean anything up afterwords was pretty grand.

At CHAP they had regular Christmas ball ornaments that you could purchase and decorate with all their supplies-glitter, stickers, feathers, sequins, ect.-for an additional $5. And although I am all for supporting CHAP I didn't really feel like spending the $5 for something we have everything at home to create. So I promised L that we could do it at home.

Sure enough the moment we pulled up to our house L shouts, "Ok MOM, we are home lets DECORATE our Christmas balls! YEAH!"

I have to tell you this is seriously the EASIEST craft to do by far. I can't believe that I didn't think to do it. SO simple. L only wanted stickers, and glitter on her Christmas balls as she calls them. (Note all the paint still on L from CHAP).

L started with adding stickers.

And then she told me she needed glitter, and not the glitter glue type. I gulped, and let her give it a go.

So after detailed instructions and a mommy demonstration she was ready to go. (A mess helper I learned from my uber crafty California neighbor, Brenda, pour the glitter in a flat Tupperware container and use the glitter cap to pour over the glued area)

Carefully adding the glue (she still wanted to use glitter glue for the glue)

Scooping up the glitter with the cap. (I may or may not be holding my breath at this point.)

And then carefully pouring it over the container (along with a deep sigh of relief from me).

Of course the final step of carefully blowing the excess glitter off but doing it over the container (is it possible to have two extremely careful children? Will the genepool work that way twice?).

A very proud picture with all her ornaments hung.

An up close picture of one Christmas ball ornament. There is glitter on it, but very hard to see.