Christmas crafts

I basically dropped the ball on Christmas crafting with the kids. We did craft, but not much, and look: I'm blogging about it now, on December 29, while the girls play next door and the boy naps (and I eat ice cream on the couch), and sharing Christmas crafts is practically irrelevant. But we ARE Catholic, and the Christmas season actually has only just begun! So... Here's what we've been up to!

Gingerbread people decorating. The kids helped (I use the word loosely) cut out the people. I baked them, covered them in white icing, let it harden, and then we all made ourselves with edible ink markers. Fun stuff. 

It was an easy craft even my little Buddy could do. 

My amazing roommate from college mailed the kids some foam craft kits (and personalized fleece blankets!), which gave us an after-dinner activity that did not involve a screen (yay!), and self-adhesive foam crafts ALWAYS win. 

Another way to stick craft foam is with water. To any smooth surface, especially glass or tile. And it's virtually mess-free and never permanent. 

My children thoroughly enjoyed building and rebuilding snowmen. 

Super easy: white, black, orange, and brown craft foam cut into the appropriate shapes, water, and brushes. Boom. Window snowmen. Clean up? A dish towel wipes away water. Or just let it dry. Once you get tired of seeing snowman pieces on your kitchen floor for a few days, you stick them in a ziplock bag, hide them in the closet, and the kids don't even notice their game is gone. 

We couldn't leave the kids out of the gingerbread fun. They each got to decorate their own mini houses. 

Another craft all could do, and Paul and I worked on our big house right alongside the munchkins. 

We all got into it, plus it doubled as dessert. Some of us ate more than we decorated...

Hooray for screen-free family time!

Then there was the traditional candy cane pipe cleaner craft. 

Katie doesn't quite have the patience to do it all, so hers became a bracelet. 

An Anthony-friendly activity: stamping. 

For the big one: paper ornament making. 

We also painted ornaments for grandparents, colored a lot, and just plain ignored half of the crafts I thought I'd plan for us to do, but no one seemed to mind. I was terrible about keeping up with their sticker Advent calendar and cottonball Santa beard; plus, I never had their daily book ready on time, and there are a few that we never got around to reading (ooops). I'm so glad we don't Elf on a Shelf because the kids would have been so disappointed at my lack of creativity. Christmas snuck up on me, and I barely had my wits to pull myself together, let alone a bunch of extra crafts and things. Good thing no one noticed but me. Good thing that what we did do was enough. Good thing that Christmas is so much more than that.