We are now back from our (irresponisbly unannounced) holiday haitus, a break that was from the computer only, not so much from life. As it turns out my biggest issue with keeping up with the blog over the past few weeks wasn't at all a lack of things to post, but rather a need ot keep said things secret. Crafting is fun to post, when it isn't meant as a gift for someone else who happens to visit the site on a regular basis, like the grandparents.

The Christmas holiday to us is a lot about tradition, family, and showing others that you care, sometimes through gift giving. In previous years we have included Calvin in both the gift giving and getting, but this year I thought was the right year to really get him involved in a more active way, and something about having him pick out gifts for us to buy so he could give them to others just didn't sit well with me. Instead, we decided to have him make the gifts he gave so that they would most truthfully be from him. I scoured the internet for general ideas and gave Calvin a rather long list to choose from. In the end we made wine charms for the men in his life, and painted book bags and a Christmas Caroler decoration for the women. I will post about the others later, although as crafts they are pretty straight forward, and here I will tell you about our Christmas carolers because they were the biggest hit of all.

Christmas Carolers

The idea for this craft came from a Disney kids idea guide; they had made a caroler out of a tube, pretty much as I do here, and set it on a mantle. Calvin and I expanded on the idea by making our carolers three, and giving them a base and a snow scene. Here's how we did it.

Supplies: cardboard tubes, paint & brushes, construction paper (light peach for faces, and mitten and snow colors), marker (black), colored pencil (petal pink), children's socks, raffia, cotton batting, styrofoam sheet(s), craft glue & brush, hot glue & glue gun, snow flake punch.

1. First we collected our paper tubes. I actually took wrapping paper tubes and used a saw to cut them down to size—about the size of a paper towel tube, a toilet paper tube and something inbetween, but the wrapping paper tubes were thicker and stronger. Then we painted our tubes, using a different color for each caroler, and gave them an afternoon to dry.

2. While Calvin was napping I cut the construction paper (actually I used scrapbooking paper) in the necessary shapes—ovals out of the peach and mittens out of three other colors. Then, after his nap, I drew the faces on the ovals with a black Sharpie and Calvin used the colored pencil to give them pink cheeks. Calvin put dabs of glue on the faces, used a brush to spread it around, then I adhered them to the tubes in the proper places.

3. To make the hats we cut the ribbed portion off of each sock (Calvin was actually able to do this while I held the sock), folded one end back and tied the other with raffia. Calvin did the folding and cutting and put the hat on each little caroler. I did the tying, and I added a dab of hot glue to each raffia knot and a line of hot glue under the edge of each hat.

4. To make their books we found some unused double-sided music (you could also print some off the web), and folded it in half lenghtwise. I held the paper while Calvin cut out each book from the folded edge. We glued the mittens to the music first, then to the tubes, Calvin again applying the glue and using a brush to spread it around before I did the attaching, holding it in place until it adhered well. Now are carolers themselves were done!

5. To make the bases I used my chef's knife (it will never forgive me!) to cut 1 inch thick sheets of styrofoam down to the size I wanted—I think about 12 inches by 5 inches. Then I posed the carolers on the sheets and traced around them, then used a butter knife to cut along the traced circles, making a groove wide and deep enough to seat each tube down into the styrofoam about 1/4 inch, then I lined each groove with hot glue before sliding the caroler into it.
We used cotton filling to make the snow; Calvin pulled it apart and I added dabs of hot glue just before he pressed the pieces to the syrofoam base. Lastly, Calvin used a snowflake paper punch to cut flakes from papers in dark blue, light blue, and sparkly white, then he pressed them onto dots of hot glue I added to the top of the cotton. Done.

We've been busy with our paints, stamps, papers and glue gun this week. Crafts, like baking, are a favorite part of the holidays for me, and now that Calvin is old enough to really take part it's kind of like a license to go crazy. I think the handprint turkey is my favorite. I've been wanting to do that one since the kid was born.

I'm not the greatest artist myself, but a quick Google image search for Thanksgiving coloring pages produced a number of iconographic salutes to run off for more Crayola usage. We colored these, then I used two of them as starting points to make larger outline drawings of a turkey and a cornucopia on newsprint, which we promptly painted over, some of us more thickly than others. I love the smell of art room paint almost as much as that of paste, and it's a good thing, too.

Our felt counting turkey, complete with song (think something like Five Little Speckled Frogs, only with turkey feathers and, oh nevermind).

And the Thanksgiving icons we made to go with Calvin's Thanksgiving book (the one I reviewed a bit here). I did most of the cutting on these guys, and all of the glue gun handling, but Calvin helped stick some of the pieces together. (In case you're wondering, that's a harvest moon...)