Some of my favorite memories from the holidays are decorating our apartment and making homemade crafts together with my mom (besides baking. Check out this post for my favorite treats to make for the holidays).
Over the years, I inherited people’s old Christmas decorations but a couple of years ago I donated most of them in order to save on the storage space and to keep more of a minimalistic look to my decorations.
The only things I kept were two stockings (one of which is mine that I’ve had since I was a kid), one large Santa face that I got for $1 many years ago that I put on our wall every year and a small box of ornaments that are either from my childhood or were gifted to me from my aunt.
So this year I invited my family over to watch Christmas movies/listen to Christmas music and decorate my apartment. Here is what we made:
- Stringed popcorn to decorate the tree, this is so easy to do and is a pretty meditative experience. All you need is some thread, a needle, and popcorn. We pop ours on the stove (you don’t want it to have any butter on it). It is perfect to do while a Christmas movie is playing.
- Paper snowflakes, all you need is paper, scissors, and tape (to hang them up). There are some great tutorials on YouTube to help you make some really fancy looking ones. Here is one of my favorite tutorials:
Here are some other crafts we have made in the past but didn’t have time to make this time around:
- Stringed cranberries to decorate the tree
- Green and red construction paper chains to decorate the tree or put up on the walls
Crafts that I haven’t made yet but plan to try this year:
- This 3-D paper Christmas tree:
Making the snowflakes with my six-year-old niece was the highlight of my decorating. She made some really cool snowflakes and took creative control on how to display them in my apartment (I suggested taping them on to our windows and she said, “Aunt Judy, you have to trust me and do it my way” lol, she was right her way was totally creative and better).
It is so awesome seeing kids express their creativity. Way better in my book then going to Target and buying a bunch of decorations to put up.
What decorating crafts have you either made or will you attempt to make this year?