Little Christmas Happies. . .

Making salt dough ornaments at Christmas time is becoming a tradition around here!!!! I moved the benches and chairs away from the table in the kitchen so that the boys could stand and work. I thought this would be easier for them. They loved getting to roll the dough! Here they are. . .

Rain, Erik Daniel, and Elijah just kind of walked around watching us. Elijah helped cut out some shapes with cookie cutters, though!!!

Then, the next day after school I sent the boys up to find white t-shirts and Santa hats. While they were gone, I set up the table for painting. When they came back downstairs, I told them that they were in Santa's workshop and that they were elves!!!! They had toys to paint!!!! They ate it up!

Here is the table. . .



I think it is easiest when doing crafts like this to have one paint brush for each color and let the children take turns. Using one brush and having to rinse it out every time they want to change colors is time consuming, and the colors end up getting mixed up and watered down. The painting went really smoothly. No major messes or catastrophes this afternoon!! Woo Hoo!! :-)

Here are the cute little elves. . .

Precious. . .


Lijah even painted in his own little controlled environment!

In fact, here is one of his ornaments! I love it, and it will hang on our tree until his wife steals it from me or I give it to her or whatever. . .

After the boys went to bed that night, I put on the finishing touches, and I think they turned out just fine!!!


The ones that they gave away to their friends, I wrapped up and the finished product looked like this. . .

Here is a quick picture of the happy I made for Joshua's class this year. It is a bag of hot chocolate, some marshamallows, and a candy cane. . .