Our Christmas tree is covered almost entirely with homemade ornaments – salt dough ornaments, hand-sewn and hand-colored ornaments, cardboard and construction paper ornaments, jingle bell ornaments, and, of course, paper chains. I love seeing our simple ornaments and remembering the fun we had making them together! We got a little fancy this year with this fun Very Merry Ornaments kit that was sent to us by ALEX Toys!
I knew that seven-year-old Emma would enjoy the kit, but I was surprised to find that four-year-old Lily and five-year-old Johnny were equally entranced! Emma was most interested in arranging the strips into patterns, while Lily and Johnny LOVED the stickers that came with the set.
Lily is normally my minimalist kid, but minimalism apparently does not apply to shiny stickers! She COVERED her strips:
All three kids needed help putting their strips on the holders, but that took me a minute. They spent probably forty-five minutes decorating their strips – definitely a successful craft! We did find that the recommended sixteen strips is a LOT if your child has decorated them as profusely as Lily decorated hers, so you might want to cut down the number if your child loves the fancy stickers as much as mine did! I also had to remove a couple stickers that were too close to the holes that go on the pegs.
Is your Christmas tree up yet? We normally put ours up the day after (or the day of) Thanksgiving, but it went up early last week because we needed some cheering up – worked like a charm! Does your tree have handmade ornaments on it? Which are your favorite?
I blog for ALEX Toys, and as part of our agreement they send me products every month, including this kit. All opinions are, as always, my own.
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
Love these! I have decorations here in S. Africa, in Texas, and stored away in Connecticut. It’s ridiculous. We haven’t spent many Christmases in S. Africa so our ornaments are sparse. I’m planning on the kids and I making some next week!
I love how these turned out!! We can only get a real Christmas tree from South Africa and my girls’ devoted grandparents are making the trip down for it in a couple of weeks. It will really feel like Christmas once it’s up. Our ornaments are all in Zambia so we should really make some homemade ones for the tree this year.
How exciting to have a real tree!!! We couldn’t get one when we lived in Bolivia, and I definitely missed it.
We just put ours up last night, and we have a strange combination of homemade and store bought ornaments. The kids love putting their ornaments up.
That was my favorite thing growing up – and is very popular with my kids as well!
How lovely! We need to move some things around in our house before we put up our tree!!
We just stuck ours in the middle of the living room, which works because the tree is quite small – but my house is not as small as yours.
This certainly looks like a very successful and beautiful craft. Our tree is late this year due to all the busyness, but I hope we will set it up next weekend.
You have been very busy! We all enjoyed this craft.
These look fuuuuuuun. I love Alex Toys stuff. Our tree isn’t up yet, but will be this coming Friday; I’m all excited for decorating this year!
They make some great stuff, Jeanette! We had a blast with this kit!
Our tree isn’t up yet but I have the feeling we need a few more ornaments. I love Lily’s fancy ones!!
These were a lot of fun to make!
Lily is right: no one can produce minimalistic work when glitter stickers are involved!
Good point! It was fun to see her go all out with this project!