I was totally expecting a reindeer-trodden pre-k son with a paper grocery bag draped over his shoulders and chest (with a hole cut in the bottom of the bag, which would then slide down over his head).
I was in anticipation of Christmas songs about Frosty the Snowman, and children off beat within the group, all placing their hands on their bellies and practically screaming out, "ho-ho-ho! who wouldn't go?
Can I just pout for a moment? Because, well, I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WANTED TO SEE MY BABY PERFORMING SONGS ABOUT "OH, HOLY NIGHT", WITH AN ALUMINUM FOIL HALO UPON HIS HEAD.
I just did, ok?
The funniest thing of all was that I didn't even realize that nothing was going on until the last five days of school before vacation began. Once it occurred to me that I have heard nada about a Christmas production, and that Zeplin had not been rehearsing songs about wanting his two front teeth for Christmas, songs he was supposed to be preparing in school (for this huge love-fest of a production), I went directly to our school's principle.
Because sometimes you need to go directly to the head-honcho.
Nothing.
The school would be doing nothing.
Sigh.
So, back to the phone call with my momma. Why not do your own Christmas production? In front of your tree, or fireplace? And you can make the aluminum foil halos for the boys... and make Santa beards out of cotton balls... and, well, you get the point.
She was on to something and I would have been crazy not to listen.
She understood that this was not a Christmas defeat, but a Christmas opportunity!
And so I gathered my herd and I gathered the props on sticks we own and I lead everyone to the Christmas tree and insisted on singing. Insisted on dancing. Insisted on a Christmas memory.
Zep sang his beautiful heart out, and Demitri made an occasional appearance in front of the camera. Even Big Strong Man got in on the fun.
And it was fun.
And we did make a memory.
And we did it all with creativity and limited resources.
Are you limited on resources?
Are finances an issue?
Hear me out Momma, you can celebrate and celebrate well!
Sometimes we just need to get outside of ourselves.
Sometimes homemade props and decorations far exceed the store-bought ones.
Sometimes we just need that little nudge form the outside reminding us "make it our own".
If you came to our house during the month of December, you would have seen a lot of d.i.y. decorations around here. And the best thing about those decorations? The thing that those store-bought decorations cannot hold a candle to? They were made in love. Sealed in a memory. We did those. Together.
I hope you enjoy our creative Christmas projects below.
Christmas Stockings:
chose your color and cut out the shape of a stocking
These are traditional style above, but you can also rock a vintage skinny/long stocking
decorate the stocking to your pleasing
add some cotton balls to the top
wa-la!
These are simple circles, cut from colorful magazine pages
(you could also substitute plain paper)
My boys helped glue the circles together
...one circle per letter in their names
I then cut out the letters to their names and glued them on
...then added glitter to the letters
we added cardboard hats, popsicle stick arms, and construction paper scarves
the scarves have the year on them for sentimentality-sake
(edited version of Fun-A-Day! blog craft)
and we made chain-links with Christmas colors for some extra POP
Christmas trees of construction paper and hole-punch scraps for ornaments
...plus some extra balls
Elf on the Shelf...
so...I do not have the tutorial for these. boo.
I could not even find it on Pintrest (the shock!)
Zep and Demitri made these when Zeplin's class had a field trip to the Charlotte Hawkins Brown museum. (Demitri, Thatcher and I were all "volunteers".)
Aren't they rad?
-enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment