I am so, well, uncrunchy and uncrafty sometimes.....LOL. I **want** to make some lovely smelling things for our tree.....inside...and some for the trees outside, for the birds. I would also love to make some holiday gifts, etc. Help? I have heard/seen people mention things like dried oranges....tell me more? How? Cinnamon ornaments....??? How????? Help this so needing help Mama????? Details please.....this is the queen of boiling water and not much else over here. :D

Hey, Denise!

Hmmm, a few days ago there was a big ol' craft post that I started. There were some good ideas in there, like recycled paper ornaments and pine cone bird feeders. Search my last few posts and it should come up for you!

We just made some garland today, to hang out in the apple tree beside the window. We strung a mix of raisins, stale cereal and popcorn. So far, we've had a few little birds stop by!

For ornaments, we made really cute little *rustic* star ornaments. We gathered thin sticks and bent them into star shapes and secured with a bit of wire. (A stripped twist tie would work) We used the wire to make a loop, and covered it with a ribbon.

I'd like to know more about the oranges, too! Sounds neat!

Oranges with a whole bunch of cloves stuck in them. We used to make these, but have annoyinly forgotten how to make them. If I have a moment of clarity (haha!) I'll post again.


One hand typing (holding sleeping baby)

In the past I have made garlands from dried orange slices, cranberries and cinnamon sticks. It looks awesome and smells pretty good, too. I haven't done it yet this year, but it's on my list.

What I do with the oranges, is slice them fairly thin (1/4" inch?) and lay them flat on a cookie sheet in a low-temp oven for a few hours. Or you can just leave them out on a counter on a cookie sheet for a few days. You just need to dehydrate them, and either way will accomplish the same goal (the oven is quicker).

I string quilting thread, dental floss, or any other strong threadlike stuff through the centers of the cranberries, cinnamon sticks and dried orange slices. I usually string this up in windows.

String popcorn garlands for the tree. Get the plain kind of popcorn.

Make pomanders with lemons or oranges. Buy whole cloves in bulk wherever you can buy them cheap, and stick them into the lemons or oranges very close together, so the cloves basically cover all of the lemon/orange rind. It helps me to use an icepick to poke the holes in the rind before sticking in the cloves. Tie thin ribbon into a tiny decorative bow or something, pin it on, and you have a nice hostess gift or something to make your own bathroom smell good. Pomanders keep for years because the cloves preserve the lemon/orange until it dries out.

We make paper snowflakes.

Smear peanut butter onto pinecones and then roll them in birdseed. Hang them outside your windows so that you can see all of the wintertime animals enjoying them.

I'll add more ideas as I think of them. Great thread!

Tara

you can also cut an orange in half, make a basket out of it with raffia or ribbon (poking a hole on opposite sides and stringing the raffia through it). Then fill it up with pb, birdseed and dried fruit. Hang it outside and watch the birdies come. Enjoy!

Deb

Yesterday we made salt dough ornaments.

here is the recipe:
2 cups Flour
1 cup Salt
2 TBSP veg. oil

Paint for decorating and a straw

Mix together the flour, salt and oil. Slowly add 3/4 to 1 cup of water and stir till you get a clay like consistancy. (I used my kitchen aid with the dough hook)

Roll out the dough and make shapes with cookie cutters, free form or do a hand print. We did hand prints for the grandparents. Lay out on a cokie sheet. Poke a hole with straw, so you will be able to hang it. Bake for about an hour on 250. Let them cool, then paint. Last year we added glitter.

We make dried orange and lemon slices for the tree. Slice them and put them in the oven on low(usually takes a few hrs) or dehydrater until dry This year we are going to make dried apples too. When you slice in apple into circles it looks like a star in the center.

Cinnamon applesauce ornaments. Use equal amounts of applesauce and cinnamon and you can add other spices if you like. Roll out and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Poke a hole in the top so they can be strung on a tree and dry in oven or air dry for a few days.

Before we disovered dd's allergy to wheat we baked gingerbread cookies to hang on the tree as well.

Beeswax candles


paper stars and paper snow flakes

Some new ideas for this year are taking cans, fill the with water and freeze. Make a design on paper to wrap around the can and once water is frozen use a hammer and nail to punch in design. Melt ice and place a candle inside.

hmm i know there is more but i can't remember right now. Great thread.

great ideas mamas!! thanks :)

I have made the Orange clove thingies and dusted it with cinnamon and it was **really** good smelling! We used to do this every year as a child and I just love it. I have heard about making the applesauce cinnamon ornaments before and might give it a try this year. I bet that smells yummy! You can always fill a simple cloth sack with cinnamon sticks, cloves, dried oranges (a sheer fabric with a simple ribbon would be lovely)

We dive into the recycling bin and make snowflakes galore. You can take a nice twine and attach the snowflakes for a garland. We are spacing them so that we can use wooden clothes pins to fasten any cards we get. (save them to re-use recycle the next year of course ;))

In the crafty forum those little bendy people that Danielle told how to make are fun and pretty easy to do. I am making a gazillion of them for people!

I will have to look around for that other thread and get some more ideas. I love this stuff!

I am making birdseed ornaments for my bird loving friends. I am mixing birdseed with corn syrup (I don't have the exact recipe with me now) and cutting out shapes with metal cookie cutters. So far I have trees and a wreath shape. I am going to tie twine to them and they will hang outside on the trees. I will take pics if you are interested.


~Wendy

I know it's not a decoration or something smelly....but we make our own wrapping paper from brown grocery bags. Just take them apart, iron them flat, and then stamp or paint designs on them. I also use glitter glue pens to outline. Dd loves it.
We also use pinecones and sweetgum balls (which are really pretty naturally or spray painted gold) for tree decorations, on packages and also on the mantel.
You can make Christmas 'bells' out of little terracotta pots. You can make a set to put on the door instead of a wreath or string them on a garland for across the mantel.
Tin can luminaries have been mentioned already and they're really cool.
Peanut butter pinecones, strung popcorn, etc. for the birds and squirrels.

Make pomanders with lemons or oranges. Buy whole cloves in bulk wherever you can buy them cheap, and stick them into the lemons or oranges very close together, so the cloves basically cover all of the lemon/orange rind. It helps me to use an icepick to poke the holes in the rind before sticking in the cloves. Tie thin ribbon into a tiny decorative bow or something, pin it on, and you have a nice hostess gift or something to make your own bathroom smell good. Pomanders keep for years because the cloves preserve the lemon/orange until it dries out.


Tara, I am up *hours* past my bedtime making these!!! While my fingers are starting to get a little sore, they smell *SO* very yummy!!

Thanks so much for sharing all of these wonderful ideas!!

Today we made the *cutest* little snowmen ornaments out of the salt dough! We had a lone mitten laying around, so I cut of the fingertips for hats.. I'll post a pic in a bit.

Oh, and they had a Buy one Get One Free sale at the store today on empire apples and oranges, so I'd love more ideas on stuff I could make with those!

I did the cinnamon dough recipe a couple of days ago. The recipe I had was:

1/2 C white glue
1 C applesauce
1 1/2 C ground cinnamon

You mix it all together, wrap in saran wrap for about 30 minutes, and roll between 2 pieces of waxed paper (because you don't add flour it'll stick to your rolling pin). I used the little tiny cookie cutters, and made a few bigger stars and moons. They took several days to dry, with me turning them over several times a day, but YUMMY. I'm using raffia for hangers, and the little ones are going on the tree. The big ones are for gift tags, with those paint pens to write on them. I'm very pleased with them, and the dough was very nice to work with.

I bought some clearance holiday color fabrics from the fabric store (remnants are awesome for this) and braided strips. We used that as garland for our tree. Our tree this year is completely hand made or natural ornaments, with the exception of the candy canes, lol. Haven't gotten brave enough to make those yet, lol.

Another idea I found was to gather small sticks, raffia or dried grasses, etc, and make a sort of loose basket with the sticks and some floral wire, stuff with dryer lint and close it up. Hang them in the trees for the birds to find. The birds get the dryer lint from the holes in the "basket" to line their nests in the spring. They use the raffia for nest building as well.

We're considering a heated bird bath, since we have a leftover aquarium heater. The kids love watching the birds bathe out the sliding glass doors.

The scented pomanders are divine. I'm considering one as a tree topper this year. I might use father winter though. Seems a good place for him to reside for a little while.

Have fun!

Here's our salt dough snowmen!! :)

http://www.amitymama.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=795687

Meeshi-those snowmen are too cute...I love this thread...you guys have great ideas. My mom never ever did crafts with us-so I don't have any from childhood-but they will definitely be part of my immediate famil's traditions from now on!

All of these ideas are great... the three I had to add are already here, and also from fond memories of my childhood. My mom said that when she was little they never did the orange ornaments because her parents grew up during the depression and oranges were just too precious money wize. So we did them everyyear and talked a lot about the benifit of living when we do, and the joys of being comfortable in life, as well as just being thankful. I remember very fondly a couple of those evenings, making stringed cranberries and popcorn by the wood stove and talking about all the Christmas's that came long before I was born. That would be a great thing to do with my kids this year. Thanks for the inspiriation. :)

Love Val

I love the ideas for inside the house. May have to try the orange ball.

A question: while working in a national park we were told not to feed the animals because they will get used to it and not forage on their own thus maybe ending up hungry and dying.

How does this work with putting stuff outside for the birds and squirrels?

For me I feed our squirrels and don't worry about it. We all do in this neighborhood... if I don't, someone else does, and we have a grove of maple trees behind our house... so I just don't really worry about them that much. But it is something to think about if food was not so abundent in my area. :) I think it depends on the circumstances too... because if I was passing through the forest park and I fed an animal I would most likely never see that animal again... but if I feed an animal that lives in a tree in my back yard then I know where it is and the conditions it lives in all year round... not just tourist season. ;)

Love Val

We did salt dough today, only to find that we didn't have bring the christmas cookie cutters from my moms house. So, we had a tiny (1.5") star, and did a ton of those, and I am gonna get a bag of cranberries & pop some real popcorn & string garland.

Oh, and the squirrels are evil around here, lol. They ate holes in my garbage cans & just eat out of them. Good thing we don't throw anything poisonous out!

i made cinnamon/applesauce ornaments about 15 years ago. the recipe i used was just mixing cinnamon and applesauce until it reached the consistency of playdough.

i'm still amazed, every year, when i unpack these and they STILL smell great :D

We just had our annual Holiday Fair at the school I work at and there were some awesome ideas!

My favorite one was to make trivets and coasters out of twigs. You need to cut a sqaure peice of cardboard the size of the trivet or coaster. Next cut twigs approximatly same length as the cardboard. Glue the twigs onto the cardboard. When the board has been covered up and the glue is dry, you need to measure around it and cut heavy twine- about 1/2 inch thick. Wrap this around the outside of the twigs to cover up the ends and glue. You have to hold it in place (use crafters glue). These are so nice under a candle, as a pad for hot pans, as coasters, etc., and they are easy to make!

Another idea for something that smells good:

I made lavender dolls for the nature table in my room. You need some kind of material- I used drapery fabric samples, some wool stuffing, lavender, mint leaves, camomile, any type of plant scent that you like, you could also use EO's, and acorn with a cap, a small pine needle branch, thin ribbon, thread. Cut a circle in the fabric you want to use- mine were about 5 inches in diameter. Wrap the wool into a tight ball around the scented plants or add EO's to the wool. Place it in the center of the ball and bring up all sides and tie it as tightly as you can with the thread. You might need to pull up some of the excess fabric to make it tighter. Next, cut off the excess fabric at the top and set aside. Glue the acorn to it's cap, if it isn't already securly attached and let dry. Wrap a ribbon over the thread on the body you have just made. For fairy wings, add the pine needle branch in the back, by sticking it under the ribbon to hold it in place. Fan it out if you like. You can add arms by sticking small twigs into the ribbon also. Add a pea sized dob of crafters glue in the middle of the trimmed excess fabric and glue on the acorn head. You can paint or pen a face on the acorn if you want. I'll try to post a pic of these this week, they turned out really cute and they smell nice too!

Ohhhh......Kayasmommy, I so want to see those!!!! Do post them when you can!!!! (o:

You guys are all so awesome!!!!! I love all these ideas!!!!!!! :D


Susan, we also use craft paper or brown bags turned inside out for wrapping.......My IL's are always thrilled (rolling eyes) to open them......You'd THINK they'd appreciate the extra time spent on the coloring or stamping the kids do on the packages? No......they are more into the $$, shiny, frou-frou crap. :rolleyes: Too bad. If they don't like it, hand it back over. LOL. :p

I'll try to post them tomarrow Denise, you'll be able to make them easier once you see a picture!

BTW, you might not be crafty, but you do have a great sense of style!

:smooch: Thank you Mama!! Made my night.........:p (That and the warm choc. chip cookies I asked dh to make me.....teeheee....)

And yes, a picture would indeed help me more! Your directions are great, but this is a Mama who reads child craft books, and their directions, and thinks ummm, huh? LOL!

Here they are Denise! I didn't make any of the pine cone ornaments, but those look super easy to do and they look nice. On the back of them is a set of those helicopter leaves, I don't know what they are called, but I'm sure you know what I mean, lol.

Here are the trivets, I just love these and they are soooo easy to make! I think they would make excellent, inexpensive gifts!

Here is another one!

One more. Oh, one thing that I think would make the acorn babies better would be if they had some beans at the bottom of the body, which would make them stand up better. If you are going to attach a string to hang them, it won't matter, but if you want them for a nature table or to sit, they need something. You could even fill them with beans or flax seeds instead of the wool stuffing!

Just getting a jump on this year-- thought it might be time to poke at this and the great ideas lol

Such a collection of fun ideas! I'll add mine...

Last year we made wonton wrapper snowflakes. Not real natural, but the wrappers -were- organic, lol! ;)
Let the wrappers come to room temp and fold like you're making paper snowflakes and snip out decorative designs.
Unfold and let dry in a slow oven until stiff but not at all browned.
You can water down some white glue and sprinkle a little glitter on if you make sure not to get them too wet. Or paint them. We liked ours plain :)
We hung ours from the ceiling on different lengths of thread. They are light enough to flit around in a slight breeeze and stiff enough to be packed away and reused.

Also, every year we make bird seed "sculptures" out of seeds, simple syrup and peanut butter. The birds go crazy for these treats!

Ooooo.... thanks for bringing this back up! Head start! I am doing the dried oranges and cranberry garland this year!

Oh and rosehips make a wonderful garland that lasts for years... they work a little better than cranberries because they are bigger. :D

Love Val

One that I haven't made in a long time was a pinecone angel (or fairy). Small pine cone as the body. Large acorn as the head. Large seed pods as the wings (main reason we haven't made them in years, I don't remember what kind of pods we used and I can't find anything similar). Pipecleaner as arms and a golf tee as a trumpet. Glue a hanger on the top and its a tree ornament or just use it as a nature table figure or decoration.

You don't need to use the golf tee. You can also paint all or part of the angel/fairy gold. Personally I like the wings and acron cap painted gold and the rest left natural. But like I said, its been years since I made them (my mom threw them all away years ago too). They decorated my great-grandmother's tree. We always made atleast some ornaments.

Thanks for starting this thread!!!!

neat thread

every year we decorate our real Christmas tree with handmade ornaments. One thing we do is thread KIX cereal. We tie each string we've made together and then wrap it around the tree. The cereal looks like little wooden balls. After a few days the cereal turns rock hard too which is nice. We make dried oranges in the oven. (lowest setting for several hours. Mine turn out best when I use a wooden spoon to leave the door slightly open. My oven gets a little too hot and the oranges will get crispy. They should be slightly pliable. ) We poke a hole in the top of the orange and thread a thin strip of homespun fabric through the hole and then use this to tie the orange slice to the tree. The lights on the tree make the orange slices glow like stained glass. Very pretty! We also nestle bird's nests in our tree (make these with a small handfull of purchased moss) and then the kids put handmade "eggs" and "birds" and other little goodies inside the nests.

Another pretty homemade ornament we do is thread dried cranberries onto thin wire and then shape the wire into a heart or star.. or whatever ... and then use a piece of wire or ribbon to attach them to the tree. These last for years. A dozen of these with beautiful ribbon make a lovely gift for someone.. especically a person or couple starting out who may not have had the chance or the money to purchase enough ornaments for their holiday tree.

I have a gazillion holiday crafts and ideas.. but no time right not to share more.

I am so excited about this thread, these are such great ideas. I love to "craft" but am horrible at designing :rolleyes:, does such a thing exist as a hippie/natural/pagan type craft book? It doesn't necessarily have to pertain to holidays. Im even thinking about things like Meeshis nature table, those mushrooms and fairys are too cute!

More ideas please, lol!

Haven't read the other posts (I am sure you got lovely answers so far) :), but Chinaberry sales beeswax ornament kits. www.theanimalrescuesite.com has lovely oranaments (if buying) and it supports a good cause.

Anyone click there lately?

Jenn

just wanted to suggest using limes in addition or instead of oranges. Its a lighter sweeter uplifting and different smell... SOOO nice :)

wonderful ideas and pictures,ladies, I LOVE the trivets!!!

Just wanted to post that my mom gave me all her Martha Stewarts magazines from 2000 and 2001 and in there there was a plan for taking bee's wax and making candles out of shells.

This is what you do:

large shells
candle wicks (craft store)
bee's wax (craft store or on line)

place the large shells on a pan, put a wick in each one and add the wax up to the top. A few of those, and a box of cookies and you have a neat and original gift for a friend! I thought that was so great! Oh and I am adding paraphin wax to mine so they last a little longer but still have the bee's wax smell... less expensive too!

Love Val

I remember doing the salt dough ornaments as a kid with my mom. This is what we did,

She made each of us girls our of salt dough, we "painted the Hair" eyes, and once baked we got to glue clothing and extras onto it. She put our names and date on the back and I still have some of those creations to this day.

We also did stars, circles, gingerbread men/women, and some other things. We used yarn as ornament holders. hmmmmmm that was a long time ago.

Never did the pomander thing but may try this year.

This year I picked up some walnuts and acorn heads and will be making some walnut babies for the nature table and some acorn babies.

For the birds I use toilet rolls or papertowel rolls if you use these, put the PB on these and roll into the bird seed or other natural food you would feed squirrels and birds. Hang on trees.

Dried Apples: cut the apples across so that you have the star showing. (when I was little girl there was this big magic story about the star and then all the kids got to cut the apples and find the star, it was a magical time. ) lay flat to dry out, or like previous posts, place in oven on cookie sheet at very low temp.

You can
1. string them alone
2. string with berries
3. use as a treat while decorating other natural items
4. using 2 - 3 sticks of cinnamon and some raffia, take 2 - 3 apples, place cinnamon on top, tie up with raffia and place on top of a gift for a natural gift topper.

a really neat thing to have outside besides the bird feeders are chineese lanterns. Especially when doing the winter walk.

Very easy to make. and children love taking the journey to the middle with their candle.

You can also hollow out some fruit and dehydrate it...then, add a candle to the middle and you have a fruity smelling candle holder.

Once you stick cloves in the citrus fruits, what do you do with them? Do you put them in a dish or hang them somehow?

You can do either, most people hang them with ribbon, twine
others put them in a dish with other dried fruit like cranberries, apples, cinnamon sticks and oranges, kind of like a potpourri mix.

Put is all in a basket, tie the basket with either ribbon or raffia and you will have a nice looking sweet smelling decoration... or gift

Just thought I would bump this anew for this year. ;) I've loved these threads every year here. This will be my second Yule with you guys. :D

great ideas here. thanks for bumping it up Jo

I love this thread too! My favorite decoration is raffia. We use it to wrap our presents, we also use grocery bags turned inside out. I also hot glue twigs together into start shapes, then tie together with twine and string up anywhere. I am making a garland out of twine and pinecones. I just tie pinecones on a long string of twine and hang up. We also love to make popcorn and cranberry strings for our tree. Does anyone have any experience with making pine needle baskets? I'd like to try but have not found some easy directions. I'm interested in other ideas!

We made fun pasta things last year. All were copies off of things we had seen selling in Christmas-y type stores for $$, lol.

First, we took wagon wheels in plain, tomato (red) and spinach (green) and glued them together side to side (so the spoke pattern is facing up, yk?)to make trees, candy canes and wreaths. spread a bit of white glue on top and sprinkle glitter. Hang with a ribbon threaded through a hole in a wagon sheel when dry.

Next we made angels - 1 rigatoni for the body and 1 large bowtie glued to the back for the wings. I did use a wooden dool head bead for the head, but you could easily mix up some salt dough as well. When the glue is dry, paint the whole thing while with acrylic paint, and add a face, if you want. We also used beading wire to add a little halo.

I bought a bunch of shapes and let my girls figure out their own things, too. We wound up with a lot of pipe cleaner and pasta wreaths and candy canes, lol, but the girls loved them and were quite proud of their creations.

For those of you with access to a beach - a friend has the cutest little shell angels - two halves of a clamshell glues together at the "top" to make wings (can you picture this? It's like you took a closed one and opened it and stretched it all the way flat). Then she used those "doll" type clothespins for the body.

One thing I did years ago when DH and I were first married and had no money and no ornaments was to use a decorative edges scissors to cut designs out of pretty cards. Some were pretty plain, and we have gotten rid of those over the years, but I have a dozen of so that came out so beautifully, They are the first things we hang every year.

We blow up balloons to about the size of a ball ornament and paper mache newspaper over the whole thing. Let dry and either roll in while glue and glitter, paint, or decoupage holiday colors of tissue paper over them.

Oh, another one from our first Christmas. . . I tied bunches of cinnamon sticks together with a nice ribbon. Again, these have been among our favorites.

I'm so glad I found this thread! So many good ideas. . .

and here i thought denise had come back..lol. then i noticed that 2003 date ~ lol.

subbing to copy these great ideas!! Didn't even realize how old the thread was til the bump for this year came!!

Thanks for sharing.

I have some cinnamon sticks that I NEVER use in cooking because I totally don't know how. Maybe I could just use them to make ornaments. Or maybe I could just tuck them into the tree as is to make it smell good! LOL

Kerri

and here i thought denise had come back..lol. then i noticed that 2003 date ~ lol.


me too!