Pinterest Christmas Windows

Like many of us, I get a lot of my ideas from Pinterest.
Whether or not any of these pins actually get tried, or just dreamed about is sort of a luck of the draw.
This particular pin intrigued me and I needed to try it out for our windows!

Tension rods are wrapped with garland and ornaments hung with ribbon.
I decided that since my valances covered the tension rod anyway, I could simply drape the garland to make it prettier. The ornaments were hung with fishing line because I want to add cottonball snow later when I find the time, and also I had it handy whereas I didn't have a lot of ribbon.
It was so simple, and only took about three hours, but would have been less had I not had to juggle the kitten, the 2 year old and the cat all around while I was stringing and hanging :)

I did the first window in red and green with gold accents. I took the picture before I straightened out the fishing line and got them all hanging evenly, so whoops!

The second window was silver and white. I was going to add blue accents, but couldn't find any dollar store ornaments in blue, so it will either not happen, or maybe I'll be lucky later in the season.

And a closeup of the gorgeous snowflake ornaments! :)

What I learned:  Cats and hanging ornaments don't mix well. I would make them shorter next time and not quite so handy to reach for little hands and paws.
Still it gives an overall cheer to the windows, and while I don't think it would hold the lights (my original plan) it may just be enough.

Advent calendar

Remember the paper modeling post from a few days ago?

I found a great little advent calendar shaped as Santa's workshop from Delta 7 Studios! It was relatively easy to cut and glue, and to get color on it, I simply traced all the lines and colored the backside of the paper that I printed out on my black and white laser printer.

Next time I'll make it a lot easier on myself and alter the pdf files in photoshop first so I can simply color the printout, but for now, I think it turned out great!

Tot is super excited about it and loves to carry it around by the chimney.
This is going to be her secondary one for fun, as I've made up a great advent with scriptures and activities to do day by day in December. I'm super excited!

Paper Modeling

Lately I've been looking into paper modeling. This is a super fun, cheap and fast way to some good times. It takes some patience and a little skill with scissors and paper folding, but most older children will be able to do the simpler projects. There are a multitude of sites that give you free patterns (including Disney buildings and characters which we'll visit later) but the following I did came from the super neat site of Illinois where you can build paper replicas of most of their historical downtown buildings. The site is here and you should definately go and try it!

First you will have to download the pdf files, and then simply print them out. They are full color and look realistic, but I only have a black and white laser printer at the moment, so my models are all greytoned, but still fantastic.

There are instructions and each piece is well labeled, so it's pretty simple. The model I did was 15 pages and cutting it out only took a few hours (probably less if I wasn't also juggling Tot's activities to keep her occupied over the few days I spent on the project).

After each piece is cut out, you fold and glue them together.

Once the building is complete, it is surprisingly sturdy.

That was the gardeners museum from the Illinois site.

And the other building which is only partially done at the moment.
Tot loves to carry them around and play with them. She calls them her castles. She isn't completely gentle with them, but she hasn't fallen on them either, and they're still in very good shape.

That pic is after a few days play. Still fun!
I'll be doing more of these in the future for sure!

Turkey Handprints

We've all seen the turkeys made out of handprints, whether they're painted, cut out of colored construction paper, traced, stamped, or just freestyled on the paper.
Sometimes, you just can't go wrong with tradition!

Tot had a LOT of fun with this one. She adores tracing her hands (and I adore the cute little handprints left behind) so it was a breeze to get her to pose her hand all in a circle for our turkey.

I'm not ready to let her go all out with paint yet, so we did ours in crayon, but there's so many different ways you could go with this one, you really can't go wrong!

We did two papers with her hands traced. I colored her turkey, and she made the masterpiece below. She is BIG on circles right now, so she filled the page.

A wonderful and fun November afternoon!
What Tday traditions are on your plates this month?