I love the holiday season and getting the house all decorated and festive. I love the magic of Santa and counting down to Christmas with Ryan. I love hanging the stockings and filling them with goodies. I love reading The Night Before Christmas and leaving out homemade cookies and milk. I love creating memories with the family.
I want to share some of those memories with you… crafts we have made during the holiday season, Christmas decor and gift ideas involving the kids, and a way to document it all. (Some of these I posted about in detail last year so click the links for more info)
Our Christmas Advent Calendar: I made this last year so I love that we can reuse it every year. There are 25 squares for each day of the month until Christmas and every one has a different holiday activity (watch a holiday movie, bake cookies, etc. – check the link for the whole list).
Handprint Christmas trees on canvas: I bought those thin canvases in a 3-pack at Walmart and used Ryan’s handprint to create a tree. I let him use red fingerprints for ornaments and he painted the star and tree trunk himself (with a stencil). Add some ribbon for a border and to hang it!
Countdown to Santa! I think I originally saw this as a printable or something you could buy, but we made our own with foam, construction paper, ribbon…. Add a cotton ball every day during the month of December until Christmas–once Santa’s beard is complete, he’ll be visiting! I made this last year and it was really easy (thankfully) to reuse – the cotton balls, which I had glued on with Elmer’s, just pulled right off so we could start over!
Cookies for Santa! I love this plate and mug set I found a couple of years ago. We leave cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve and the kids awake Christmas morning to an empty mug and half eaten cookies. The mug came with a marker and I think this year will be the first time Ryan gets to “write” on it himself – a Merry Christmas message to Santa! This pic is from last year:
Christmas Tree traditions: we have a photo like this each year of Ryan putting the star on our tree as daddy holds him up. When Rebecca gets old enough to do it, I suppose they’ll have to take turns! We also put the ornaments up together as a family and read a Christmas book under the lights.
Kitchen decor: I’ve seen people turn their white colored refrigerators into snowmen with foam or construction paper black coal eyes and mouth, orange carrot nose, red scarf… but we had a black fridge… so I glued strong magnets to ornaments to make our fridge more festive. Be careful with these though – if they fall, they’ll shatter.
Snowmen crafts: these were fun to make. It’s basically like paper mache on a plastic bottle with the bottoms cut off. Add construction paper or foam for the face and buttons and some ribbon or felt for the scarf and hat. I topped my hats with colored pom poms 🙂
Geez, I better get moving this year! Most of these pics are from last year. I blame our move into our new house just over 2 weeks ago on being behind on Christmas crafting this year! Oh yes, we did do this table runner:
And we’ve made ornaments with handprint snowmen and fingerprint reindeer–we used them as gifts for the whole family last year, they’re super cute (I just don’t have photos, so check out those pins).
Up next this season: a gingerbread house (Ryan’s first!) and clay or salt dough ornaments the kids can paint or we can put handprints in–any tips on making those??? I’ve never made them before.
And finally, to document the memories! Having personally seen the amazing DVDs and online features produced by YesVideo, I can definitely recommend using their services to preserve those precious holiday memories. Send in your photos, your videos, your files… and get back something truly special. Gift idea for Christmas?!
Check out the memories (and share your own!) with YesVideo on facebook, twitter (#YesMemory hashtag), and on Instagram. I’ve been attempting their #photoaday challenge, but I’m a little behind–oops! Maybe in January 😉
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
This post was created in connection with my appointment as an Ambassador for YesVideo. Visit www.facebook.com/yesvideo to join the conversation! All photos and opinions are 100% my own! You may use photos with credit and link back.
That picture of the two of them is super sweet! Love it!
Great ideas – definitely will be pinning these for Christmas crafts.
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Those are all such great ideas! We may have to do that beard next year, it’s super cute!
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I loved looking at all your festive pictures! I can’t wait to make special traditions and memories with my kids some day.
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Love all your ideas… the ornaments on the fridge are very cute… a way to make it safer would be to use the plastic shatterproof ornaments that still look real 🙂
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