DIY Gingerbread Man Ornament (Tutorial)...

Every holiday, we do a craft for the kids.  Typically at our family Christmas dinner, we decorate Gingerbread houses, my sister lives an hour away, so it is hard for her to get the gingerbread houses home in one piece.  Because of that, I decided to have the kids make an ornament this year.  We have kids ranging in age 4-20 years so we I decided that gingerbread men would be cute for everyone.
This was the demo gingerbread man that I came up with:

Supplies:
Cardboard Colored Card stock
Red Ribbon
Gingham ribbon
White Puffy Paint
Black and red brads
Buttons

Beforehand, I hand cut or each gingerbread man.  The shape is pretty basic, so it was easy to do.  Then we hold punched spots for the ribbon hanger, the eyes and the nose.  This kids placed the black brads in the eye holes and the red in the nose hole.  Then they made their ribbon bow ties, glued the buttons on and tied the ribbon hanger.  We did the puffy paint last so that it could dry without getting smudged.

Super easy, the kids had fun, and they turned out darling!  I ended up making about a dozen extra to use as a garland next year too :)

DIY Yarn Wrapped Wire Candy Cane Ornaments

Yarn wrapped wire candy cane tree decorations are a cute, easy DIY ornament for a Christmas tree or garland:

Even the kids can help make these:

They look darling when placed on the tree or a garland:

I embellished mine with some ribbon and a jingle bell but they also look really cute without any embellishments.

Linking to:
craft-o-maniac-monday
& creative-bloggers-party-hop
& too-cute-tuesday-linky-par-tay
& show-me-what-ya-got

Camp Flags- Kids Craft

I've been M.I.A!  We have been busy having family fun this summer :)  For the 4th of July, we like to camp in Idaho by Lava Hot Springs with a great group of friends.  My Kadee gal isn't a camping girl, neither is my niece J (although we did get both to come spend some time with us in Lava) so all of the kiddo's that we have that camp with us are boys.  I like to do a camp craft for the kids and this year, I decided it would be fun to make flags for each of the 5 trailers that would be there.

Supplies:
*One white bandanna for each flag to be made
*One wooden dowel for each flag to be made
*Spray Tie-Dye set, I went with the camo one
*2 or 3 packages of feathers
*Wooden Beads
*Leather Cord, Jute, etc.
*Puffy Fabric Paint and Paint brushes

My sister and I instruct the kids and help them, but really try to let them do as much as they can on their own. First, use the spray tie-dye, this stuff is wonderful because it's easy and quick, no buckets, no dunking!  The instructions say to heat set it in your dryer but it was hot enough outside that they dried really quickly.

We had each child/family come up with a name for their trailer and used the puffy fabric paint to paint the names onto the flag.  This can take some time to dry depending on how heavy they put it on.

Next, we got the feathers, beads and leather and put them together to dangle off of each flag.  The kids also decorated the dowels with paint and pipe cleaners and then we stitched the flags to the dowel and let them dry overnight.

Hunter with ours.  He named our trailer "Party Central"... Go figure :)

Group shot:  Dalton's was "Elkaholics", Dal & Karson's was "Dirt Broke", Hunter's- "Party Central" Jax's was "Monster Jax Camp" and Dom made one for his grandparents trailer and named it "Camp Jose".

I have always struggled with boys crafts.  I'm big on rhinestones, ribbons, flowers etc.  But I really believe that the kids will remember our little craft time sessions forever.  They loved doing the flags and it would be really easy to alter the decorations and colors for little girls as well.  We will hang our camp flag proudly from now on!