Christmas Craft with the Kids

Lara creating Christmas paper-and staying out of mischief.

So ideally this post would have been uploaded before Christmas, or even a week after, but I have a two year old and a 9 month old, and Christmas is a crazy enough time of year without trying to entertain busy little people. Seriously, I'm still trying to recover. 

The big plus of having kids at Christmas time is that they bring the magic of Christmas back...the downside is that my husband and I, who are self confessed Christmas grinches, need to find some magic and help the kids create it. The best way for me to do this is to get into Christmas crafting.....and by getting Lara crafting all my inhibitions are lost. The tricky part is to let go of control and not limit her creativity. We create for fun and enjoy the process. Hand made cards and wrapping aren't meant to be perfect, they are meant to be unique and created for the individual that we are giving them to-and I'm sure our family and friends loved the fact that they could tell that our little lady made them something.

Utilising the playpen to protect Olivia and the Christmas tree from each other.

At the moment Olivia is too young (9 months) to really create anything, but she is content watching Lara make things-as long as I give her something to play with whilst she is strategically seated (restrained) in her highchair. Whilst Lara and I painted with washable finger paint and "roll, roll, roll" with Christmas stamps to create wrapping, Olivia scrunched paper and drew with Twistable Crayons....next year may be a little more tricky since Olivia thinks she can do whatever her big sister Lara is doing.

Rolled wrapping paper and watercolour painted gift cards.

The benefits of letting kids make Christmas paper are endless; they are doing an activity so they aren't climbing the walls, their craft gets put to good use, and the recipients of the gift get to marvel in your little ones' creation....not to mention that you can buy a huge roll of packing paper dirt cheap and make unique wrapping paper.

I also added little embellishments to individual gifts. Grandma loves purple and red, so they were the colours we chose to stamp her wrapping paper with, and Lara loves lady beetles, so her card had an extra little something on it, and her appreciation made it so worthwhile.

Personalised gift cards....it's the little things that make a difference.

Unfortunately, as I look back through thousands of photos it has become apparent that I didn't take any photos of the great Christmas cards Lara made. We were too busy creating, and having fun is exhausting work. Initially Lara needed a fair bit of help working out how to select items to stick on cards, how to lay them out to make a card, and then glue them on. But after day one of sticking cupcake cases (that she had stolen from the kitchen draw and were no longer food safe) and cut outs of doves, stars and snowflakes on cardboard cards (from cardboard that was already in the cupboard from one of my previous craft projects) Lara was off and running, creating Christmas cards that I'd be happy to say I whacked together. Most days on the lead up to Christmas she would ask me if we could make Christmas cards, so she just kept getting better and better at creating...I struggle to say no to the little cutey. If only I'd managed to have taken photos, oh well, there is always next years craft....and next year we will start it much earlier in order to really get into the Christmas spirit.....and maybe next year we will be a little more prepared for the hairy fat man in the red suite...

"Cuddle me Mum, cuddle me!".... despite being cuddled.