12 Days of Christmas Ornaments – Day One Snow People

Our family Christmas tree has always been a hodgepodge of different ornaments. A few are handmade, a few mark special events, but most are just random. Does this sound like your tree? Or are you one that has a theme for your tree every year? Does every ornament have sentimental value, or does it just fit the theme of the year? Or somewhere in between?

This year I decided our tree needs a new look. Besides, our youngest daughter needs some cheering up. She is my vivacious people person, so this lockdown has been especially hard for her.

We started making the ornaments and a few things stood out to me. She was really only able to focus long enough to make 5 of each ornament, perfect because their are five in our family. For some things I was a little too ambitious, so we moved on. The point is to make happy fun memories.

Before we started, I did what most people in 2020 do when they want to craft, I scanned Pinterest looking for ideas. I saw lots of cute things, but only one stood up to the test of keeping it fun for my daughter. I’ll link some of the other super cute ideas in case your Pinterest decides to show you the some 2 posts with 20 different images (so annoying).

Snow People

We finally choose to make a Snow People family.

What you need :

For older kids 8+

• wood beads
• white paint
• buttons
• fine tipped sharpies (at least black and orange, we also used red and blue)
• craft thread (brown for arms, plus criminating string to match the hats and make the scarves)
• tiny pompoms (optional)
• pipe cleaner (optional)

What we did:

The bottom of the beads had a pretty big hole, so we used a tiny button to close it up, we had buttons with one side white, so we made sure the white side was down. We made sure the button was close to the middle of the thread, and put both ends of thread through both beads, then spit them again to thread through the ‘hat’ buttons. For the black had we made a triple knot as close and tight as we could. Other options include threading on a pompom, or tying a know and gluing down a piece of pipe cleaner over the top hole. After threading on what ever options you choose, tie a knot, then about 2 inches higher tie a second know to form the loop for hanging.

After all the pieces are secure glue on any additional pompom’s, like for ear muffs. This is the point you add the arms. Next, I created arms. I did this by taking about 2.5 inches of brown thread and tied knots at each end, then tied it between the two beads. After that I made and added the scarves. For each scarf I chain stitched 15 stitches out of thread, but you can easily use a small piece of heavier yarn or sliver of felt. Again I tied it around the neck.

The last thing we did was add the face and year. I choose to put 2020 down the front of the body, my daughter had fun making the faces.

Other super cute idea’s:

Salt Dough Footprint Snowman- https://www.craftymorning.com/salt-dough-footprint-snowmen/

We made this last year, Bottle Cap Snowmen- https://alwaystheholidays.com/bottle-cap-snowmen-diy-ornaments/

PomPom Snowmen –https://www.craftideas.info/html/pompom_snowman_b.html

Bloopers:

So we tried to make these cute stencil ornaments, only they don’t have any holes to string them up, sooo, I need to drill holes. Also, apparently the wood needs a nice clear coat of something like hodgepodge, so that the paint lines stay crisp and don’t blead. The bleeding really annoyed my daughter, she did to then said enough and was done.

Homeschool Fun Through the Holidays

This post is my first one in a series along with 20 or so other bloggers. You can find links to their posts on my series page. It’s your go to page for keeping it FUN for this Holiday Season!