Christmas Craft Ideas for Kids

Heres a few quick and fun ideas for crafts you could work on with your whole family. 

~Cutting Snowflakes: A classic that gets your kids imagination flowing. When you finish cutting them maybe add some color or even glitter to make them sparkle and hang them in the kids room. 

~Handprints: Theres many recipes out there for making molds. You could press the hands of your kids into these molds to make an adorable momentum for your tree. Again painting them after they've baked is fun too. :)

~Decorating Stockings: Make the stockings you hang above the fireplace more personal by adding some fabric paint or anything else the kids think of adding. 

How To: Spread Christmas Cheer

As Buddy the Elf taught us: the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear. This is certainly true, but there's many other creative ways to integrate the holiday season's joy to others who may feel a bit pessimistic about this time of year. Here's a list of a few things you could put forth in your community to inspire everyone to have positive moods this season. :)

~Have a spirit week in your local school: A lot similar to March Madness or Homecoming Week, you can start a Christmas spirit week with a theme day for each day of the week before vacation starts. Christmas Pjs day, winter hat day, white out day, Christmas character day and ugly sweater day are the few themes our local school chose to use for the week. This is perfect for work as well to get everyone in the spirit. :)

~Make a unique holiday playlist: Sometimes listening to the Christmas songs on the radio can be a bit repetitive. Make up your own playlist that combines the classics with a few new favorites of yours. It doesn't even have to be Christmas themed; it could just remind you of winter. Hearing new songs will brighten your mind and connect it to new memories.

~Help the community: There's no doubt that helping out in your community will make you feel good as well as everyone around you. This is pretty much already a given, find what services your community needs and do what interests you most - remember, you'll want to do something you'll be happy doing because helping out with a negative outlook does no good.



~I know these posts may have become more about quantity than quality so please...leave a comment below telling me what you think about this Christmas series of posts; it really does help a lot!~

Handmade Christmas Card Ideas

Handmade Christmas cards are a ton better than store bought cards. They're unique and can say whatever you want. If you're stuck on what you want your holiday cards to look like here are a few ideas that I used for mine. Some basic supplies you might want are: white paper, red, green, black sharpies (skinny are best for detail), scissors (pattern perhaps?) buttons and ribbon. :D

Idea 1: Ribbon as a bow to a gift. Draw a box with a skinny sharpie and decorate the 'wrapping paper' however you'd like. Tie a bow with ribbon and add it to the top of your box. Voila!

Idea 2: Simply doodle whatever you'd like with some red and green sharpies. For mine I did a candy cane, but there are many more options; a tree, snowman, Santa - anything festive. :)

Idea 3: Glue buttons as part of a larger picture. Think about the different things you can incorporate buttons with - a snowman, a wreath a Christmas tree - there's many possibilities.

Idea 4: Include in your card one of the interests of the person you're giving it to. Such as my Doctor Who themed card below. Don't forget to add some references to the inside of your card. 

No Money Gift Ideas

Many of these ideas will probably go without saying, but I hope some of these will be helpful to you. These gift ideas are perfect for your significant other or a close friend. The time and effort you put forth is worth much more than the amount of money you spend. Here's 3 no fail gift ideas that cost very little to nothing at all!

1. The Classic Card: There's nothing like a handmade card with a funny inside joke or an inspiring quote. Make it as personal as possible - the more thought put into this the better!
2. Invite Him/Her to Hang Out: Plan a fun event the two of you could do together over Christmas break. Cheap things could be window shopping in the mall, taking a walk, watching a movie at home, or just a simple get together with dinner at your place.
3. Create Something: Take your talent and put it into something that you can give to someone. For example, if you're good with drawing you could create a portrait of that person or if you're a wonderful singer write them a song. Add in an instrument of your choosing. :) 

Winter Inspired Nails

Here's one of many inspired nail art looks for the winter season. Although it's very simple I think it looks adorable with whatever you're wearing. 

I used these colors for the design. Sparkles are another cute touch also :)

DIY Bold Ribbon Bracelet

Just a quick DIY for Day 6 of 25 Days of Christmas Crafts! This bracelet is a perfect gift to give away or a wonderful piece to a holiday party outfit! :)

What you need:
~Solid colored bangle
~Ribbons

What to do:
Without cutting the ribbon, wrap it around your bracelet and tie a bow; don't worry, it doesn't have to be perfect. Cut off the excess and then untie your bow. You can now use this length of ribbon to measure out the other ribbons. You can have as many as you want; for mine I chose to do three. Simply tie your lengths of ribbon in a bow around your bracelet and pull it tightly. Get creative with other colors combinations like red and white or different hues of blue. :D

Holiday Decoration Inspiration

Need some new ideas for your holiday decorating? Here's 4 new things you can do with your decorations.

1. Display a Scene: This doesn't have to be a nativity scene, there are many more possibilities! Try a winter theme with fake snow and snowmen and possibly some snow covered trees. This scene can be displayed on a shelf, on top of tables or cabinets, in a shadow box or below your Christmas tree. 

2. Focus on the Dinning Table - Your table in your dinning room is one of the main places that you should focus on decorating. Try making a center piece, the options are endless for what you could do. Candles, golden accents and festive trinkets are a must for the holiday season. Chose some colors you really love that you can use on your table setting as well as the rest of the room to pull the area together.

3. Add Your Own Artwork - You don't necessarily have to know how to paint to add a cute photo to the wall of your house, thrift stores are a great way to find unique paintings. You can re-purpose the painting and add a new matte with an intricate frame. In this picture I have two newly matted pictures as well as some cute wall stickers. Though you may not have painted the pictures yourself, the display of them is artwork on it's own.

4. Lights - Think of some different places you can use your extra Christmas lights or maybe even change up the lights you normally use on your tree. Putting white lights on your tree give it a gold like color and a classic feel while multicolored lights add a festive feel and is obviously much more colorful; blue lights are also a wonderful way to create a wintry essence. The best part about the holiday season is that you can pretty much get away with putting lights anywhere and everywhere. Don't be afraid to add a string around a mirror, doorway or window.

3 Spring Outfits

I recently took some photos of 3 of my favorite outfits for spring. I figured I'd just throw it together into a random fashion inspiring post. Enjoy ^.^

Outfit #1

Outfit #2

Outfit #2

Outfit #3

Outfit #3

How to Stay Inspired

This might be something that will help me more than it will help you. I'd really like to keep posting daily on this blog but it's hard to keep inspired and motivated to do so (that and time....). I thought I should just remind myself of some of the things I can do to keep the creative mind flowing while at the same time writing a new blog post. So, here ya go! Feel free to comment any of the things you do to keep inspired down below; it's greatly appreciated. :)

Winter Photography

Random inspirational winter photos:

DIY: Ribbon Board

I adore this cute little way to display the things you love on your wall. It's much prettier than a cork board and works the same way! Here's what you'll need:

~a cork board (I used a piece of wood)
~ribbon
~staple gun
~hammer
~fabric big enough to cover board
~batting
~wire/something to hang with








Step 1: Cover the board in batting and fabric and staple to the back of the board. Use the hammer if you need to push in the staples more, you will probably only need to do this if you use a slab of wood rather than a cork board.








Step 2: Lay out and cut pieces of ribbon so that they are in a criss-cross formation.

Step 3: Staple the ribbon to the back of the board first then staple the places where the ribbon crosses.













Step 4: Slide a piece of wire through the staples to hang your ribbon board with.










Step 5: Slide pictures and other things under the ribbon. :)