Crafting for Christmas day 1....

My 4 year old has an intense love of Christmas decorations, a love that I may have fed into by referring to (what will be) our dining room as "the Christmas room" all of last year. You see not many of the rooms in the house are what they will eventually become and we out the tree in this room last year, so in my head it is the Christmas tree room until it is settled into an actual dining room....Anyway. Joe has decided that he wants the room to be an entirely decorated for Christmas wonderland. So we started by hitting up local craft stores for cheap decorations. The more I looked at things the more I thought "hey I can make half this stuff for cheaper", so we bought supplies instead and started crafting. We've been doing at least one thing each day to turn the room into "The Christmas Forest"

First up: Glitter Ornaments....

I found this on Pinterest and decided to give it a shot. Mostly because my husband so nicely put it "I love the idea of a decorated room, as long as there is not glitter everywhere. I don't like my work pants, and socks looking like a stripper is doing my laundry." The original post is here but here is our tutorial.

What you will need:

mop and glo floor polish (free from our basement!)

clear glass or plastic ornaments (25 cents each bought at end of holiday sale at Micheal's last year)

fine glitter (walmart craft section, box of 12 for $3)

Step one: pout a little of the mop and glo into the ornament, swish it around to coat the inside then drain into a small cup. once drained pour in your desired glitter (really get a lot in there, you will take most out but using a lot ensures everything gets covered)

Step two: "swirl and twirl and swirl and twirl" the ornament around but "don't throw it around because you could break it" until the glitter covers all the clear spots in the ornament. We put the 'caps' back on the ornaments for this process but if not doing with kids just keep a finger over opening to really get glitter all the way up the neck. Once covered pour extra glitter back into your container.

Step Three: Hey you're done! replace cap if you have not done so and place ornaments upside down into an empty egg carton (so the glitter can be caught when some falls out of tiny holes in cap) to dry fully.

Total cost for 20 ornaments: under $5.00. It cost $5.00 for the ornaments last year, the glitter used so little once done that we have still 99.9% of each color and the mop and glo I found in the basement when we moved in....