Christmas Card Boxes

I have a hard time throwing cards of any kind away...so a few years ago I started making these boxes with all the cards of Christmases past. They work great for all the little ornaments and such that the kids make to give for gifts. It's good measurement practice for my older two, not to mention an exercise in precision.


Step 1: Get your card. And separate the front from the back. The front of the card will be your top half of the box and the back will be the bottom. Step 2: Measure. You want to mark your measurement on each side- I usually do about an inch, unless the card is small or I need a larger and narrower box. I make the bottom just a hair smaller than the top so that the top fits nicely over it.

Step 3: Once all your measurements are marked, connect those marks on opposite sides to make the grid for your box.

Step 4: Next you want to snip on one line of each corner. I usually go every other line all the way around. This creates a flap that will be used to assemble the actual box.

Step 5: Fold. I use the edge of the ruler to get a good crease....if you happen to have the tool made especially for that purpose it would work too. Fold up each side, making sure to crease each of the of the flaps too.

Step 6: Assembly. Fold up each side one at a time. Fold the flap on the inside and tape to the adjacent side to create a corner. Once the insides are taped place an additional piece of (invisable) scotch tape on the outside of each corner.

And it's done. A nice sized box for little gifts...no wrapping paper required.

Chirstmas Ornaments

Each year we make some sort of ornaments for our Christmas tree. From simple salt dough to apple cinnamon to salt cermaic. This year we have started a little early, moslty because a homemade Christmas is on my mind a lot these days and I am playing around with a lot of different ideas to see how they would do as gifts.

So I am using up some of our numerous eggs. Blowing out the insides and painting and decorating them in various ways. Cale's been itching to use the pressed flowers we've had since the beginning of summer.

Here are the supplies I used to blow the eggs:

You could use any thing really to hold the egg, I just happened to have this egg cup. First you want to tap a hole in the top- I used longer nail for this step. Then tap a somewhat larger hole in the bottom. Then use a needle- or anything long and thin that can fit inside the holes- to break apart the yolk.

As for the actual blowing- I did just that. Blew into the top hole and the insides came out the bottom hole. My mom gave these a try too and used a bulb syringe- she cracked a lot of eggs. And my step father tried his air compressor- and I am sure you can figure out how that turned out. I still find blowing by mouth the best way.

Once the egg is empty you want to rinse it to wash out any remaining whites/yolk and let it dry for a few days. Once dry they are ready to paint. For the kids to do this part, I used the above egg cup for my 3 yr old and used wooden skewers to hold the eggs up for easy painting/decorating for the older 2. We used acrylic paint, some glitter, glitter glue, stickers, dry pressed flowers, etc. You can use anthing that is relatively flat to decorate with.
This one is Cohen's. He painted and painted. Added some snowflake paper punches and painted over all of them. I did finally talk him into leaving some white snowflakes on the outside. I think it turned out to be one of my favorites

Once painted and dried, I covered them in Mod Podge a couple times and let them dry again. Then used wire and beads to hang them by. We've still got a couple eggs shells in need of paint and I am still trying to talk Rylan in to doing one- He doesn't want to get messy-maybe he could paint it with mud? He doesn't seem to mind getting messy that way.