Christmas crafting & a DIY

The day before December happened the boys and I had a fun little morning activity in our jammies.  Breakfast was still in our teeth but I couldn't wait another minute to cut snowflakes out.  I have several uses for them this year; but the other's are a surprise.  Brody enjoyed it!  H of course just munched on snacks and wandered around.  This is one of those "what this mom does" things.  I'm still interested in what kind of activities you do with your kids!  Please share.

We hung them on red and white bakers twine with mini clothespins much like at my Christmas in July Party.  Our living room doesn't have our Christmas tree in it so I needed something festive there.  I did add lights to our two fake trees- which I might leave up forever now :p

For this craft, I flew solo... sorry boys.  Mason-jar-glitter-waterless-snowglobes!  I've seen it everywhere around blogland and instantly had to do this.  It's unclear who the original mastermind of this craft is, so thanks pinterest.  So anyway, I had everything minus the trees so it would be easy, right?  Wrong!  Well, the craft itself was.  But finding my trees was near impossible.  If you are one of the unlucky ones, like me, maybe I can help.

So, before Thanksgiving even happened I went to Michael's and two other craft stores to find these trees.  I looked online and wasn't finding exactly what I wanted!  It's like Anthro bought every last one.  The only ones I eventually could find were at Hobby Lobby- but they didn't have the cute snow bases.  Just those cheap looking wooden circles.  You know what I'm talking about.  Also, I could only find medium to small trees.  I wanted an 8'' one or something for my big jar.  No luck.  So, I improvised.  I decided to take white felt to cover the hideous stands- and since I didn't have a tall tree, I decided to make a tall base out of cardboard and make a "mountain side" & set the tree on top.  I even did it for my medium size jar so the trees wouldn't get covered up by the lid too much (pictured below).  I really love this craft idea.  And since I had most of everything already this entire project cost me about $4!

What you need:

• Bottle Brush Trees
• Mason Jars (Small, Medium, Medium-Large and Large)
• White Glitter
• White Felt (optional but encouraged)
• Hot Glue Gun and Glue
• Velvet Ribbon or Christmas String

And finally, not too long ago I saw my blog friend Leenie posted about some cute twine crafts.  She had one that really stuck out to me and I was like, I'm doing this!  Plus I had twine left over from B's third bday party (most of these leftovers were from that. ha.)  So, I went to the craft store where I was going to get a big wooden letter to make it.  But i realized the letters were $5-10 each for the size I wanted.  Not worth it.  So I thought for a moment.... I could easily make a letter.  Here's what I did....

::cut out cardboard with exacto knife::glued three of the same letter together for fattness::then wrapped in twine and displayed!  (I just wish I had fatter twine.  Oh well!)  But what's great about cutting the letters yourself is you can customize their shape anyway you want.  I was in a rush so I made mine simple.
Easy!  And cost me... $0!

Crafting on a budget.  Happy Saving!