It's the holiday season, and Santa Claus has a toy for every good girl and good little boy, but that doesn't mean you can't try your hand at crafting your own great big bundles of joy!
Much of the happiness we get from this time of year comes from spending time with our families, and adding to our ornament collections. Easily the best parts of Christmas are dressing the tree, decking the halls, and pulling out all the nostalgic items we remember from childhood.
Over time, we may lose or break most of our favorite ornaments, but that doesn't mean we can't make more year after year!
Here are a ton of ideas for really creative homemade decorations that you and your close ones can make for the holidays this year!
Mason Jar Christmas Tree
These are fantastic way to spruce up the house, and even make a great replacement for an actual tree! Less mess to clean up and instead of going through the whole trouble of chopping down a pine tree and dragging it needles-and-all through the house, you can pick up all the articles at your local thrift shop or department store!
Holiday Salt Shakers
Want to bring the winter wonderland onto the dining room table? Find some old see-through salt shakers lying around the house or from the dollar store and adding toy evergreens inside the glass bottles. Be on the look-out for reindeer, snowmen, and even jolly Saint Nick's that you can add to a Christmas collection that is worth its salt!
Wood Pallet Tree
Another low-mess option to a real tree or expensive aluminum tree, these can be made of recycled wooden pallets used for shipping. After that, all you need is some buckets of paint and your imagination!
Don't stop with green, either! Grab every color you can get your hands on and paint on your favorite ornaments, bulbs, stars, and then add some lights to get the whole effect. Make sure that the wood you grab is either clean or gets a proper scrubbing before touching it too much!
An Alternative Advent
For a holiday already so saturated with treats, candy, and sugar already, it is understandable that we don't always want our children (or ourselves) to binge out on chocolate the whole month through. What many people have decided to do is start making their own advent calendars that they can fill with whatever they want!
Some good ideas are small toys, non-perishable (healthy) food items, and handwritten notes with words of love are a great gift to give day after day!
You can even skip the box part! Just get some brown envelopes and hang them with strings and clothespins!
Rustic Decor
Don't want to go all out on a tree this year? That makes sense, but if you still wanted to bring the natural world inside then tree branches are a nice compromise!
Try keeping it festive with pine cones, evergreen branches with the needles still on, and placing them in vases or hanging them with some ribbon on doors and shelves!
Coffee Filter Garland
The absolute beauty of this project is how easy it is to really make something extraordinary. Just buy a load of filters, string, and some watercolor paints and pick your favorite colors!
They really create a flowery effect that may not be exactly like regular garland, but just look how pretty it looks over the mantle-piece!
Honeycomb Wreath
Another really simple craft to make is a twist on the front door wreath. Instead of wrestling with fallen branches, find yourself many different sizes of tubes and fill them with your own bells, berries, and other holiday knick-knacks!
Remember to use a strong glue, not just to attach the tubes together, but to make sure the items inside are not knocked about when you open the door for all those carolers!
Pine Cone Ornaments
Another great way to use these crafty little items is to stick them right back onto the tree! Not without some artistic license of course!
You can do so much with these; coat them in white paint, add red and green stripes, dust them in glitter, stick on colorful pom-poms, the list is endless!
After that, grab some string and either tie it or glue it to the bottom, it will hang on your tree the whole season and make you feel like you are walking around in a Christmas-themed forest!