Advent and Children's Crafts

Last Sunday after we had returned from our Thanksgiving adventures and after my 10 year class reunion, we spent the evening at our church for the annual Advent Festival and the decorating of the sanctuary with greens.  This year's crafts were so cute and most could be easily done at home if you are looking for ways to make some homemade Christmas decor with your kids.  The only one I didn't get a picture of are the Cinnamon Cookie Cutter Ornaments, which of course are the ones I prepared ahead of time.  But I do want to share how to make them because they are really easy and smell so amazing because of all of the cinnamon.  Here is the recipe:

1 Cup Applesauce

1 1/2 Cups Cinnamon

1/3 Cup Nontoxic White Glue

Mix together and roll into ball.  Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or overnight.  Roll out dough and cut out shapes of about 1/4 inch thickness.  Make sure to punch at the top to use to hang them.  Leave the cut out shapes on the counter to dry for a few days and then when completely dried, decorate them.  This recipe makes 30 ornaments, but if you wanted to try this at home, you could easily half, third or quarter this recipe to make many less.

First all the kids decorated their own bags that they used to carry around all of their beautiful art.

 Our first stop with at the table with the bells.  The girls (with Mimi and my help) strung bells onto pipe cleaners.  Then we just looped the pipe cleaner into a circle and tied a ribbon on.  This can be put on a doorknob or hung on the tree or like my girls do, just played with.

 Next stop was to the ice cream cone station.  Not REAL ice cream.  These are made of glass and glue and are meant to be hung on the Christmas tree!  Doesn't sound very much like Christmas, but read this story.  These could easily be made at home if you have a spare sugar cone, a glass ornament ball, some glue or paint that dries white (not clear) and some sprinkles.  Most of these things you probably have around the house.  Make the cone and share the story of the Ice Cream Prayer.

 We made our way over to another craft using pipe cleaners.  These seem to be very multi-purpose and fun for little hands to explore.  This one involved strining a pipe cleaner with red and white beads to form a candy cane.  Magnolia tackled hers all by herself.  It went along with the book The Legend of the Candy Cane (see below).

This one is super easy and smells sooo good.  Take a clementine, poke holes with a toothpick (or not, if you have tough fingers) and stick in a whole clove.  Done.  Tie with a ribbon if you want to hang if from your tree.  Of make a dozen of them and set them in a bowl as decoration.  A friend has some from a few years ago and swears they still smell great and are now dried out and preserved.

 This is my favorite picture of the night...that tongue kills me!

Then the girls played with a Little People Nativity for awhile.

Boothe got a mohawk from a friend of mine's son.  Maybe this was just his way of flirting.

They looked at all of their newly crafted goodies and then it was time to go have pizza, decorate cookies and hot chocolate!