The following are a few fun Christmas projects and activities which you may find worthwile or fun. If you're trying to cut costs on Christmas shopping, some of these projects can produce very lovely homemade gifts.

Beeswax Ornaments: Nothing smells better or is as aesthetically pleasing as plain old beeswax! There are many lovely molds out there you can use to make these ornaments. Click here for a site where you can see how they are made and to purchase materials.

Magnets (gift idea):

Either buy a roll of transparent plastic drawer liners or plan on laminating sheets at a place such as Office Max. You can use anything: Pictures the children have drawn, peices of material, tiny leaves, little pictures or photograhs, and so on. After laminating between plastic, superglue a little round strong magnet on the back and you have a magnet for the refrigerator.

Stringing Popcorn and cranberries: This project is pretty easy for the whole family to do! Just buy a couple bags of fresh, room-temperature cranberries (they come in a bag usually) and pop some plain, large-kernel popcorn. Set out on the table a few bowls of each... get some needle and thread for each person and get to work stringing! Often the younger children will just pile them on without any particular pattern, but the older children and you may want to choose a pattern you like. It is a creative, enjoyable, inexpensive decoration for the Christmas tree. We used to do this on Christmas Eve or the day before Christmas Eve. It was our "movie night"... we'd all sit at the table after dinner to do this project and would watch a classic such as It's Wonderful Life or Holiday Inn. Good times!

Beeswax Candle Making: See this post for this project. There are also sites out there that sell beeswax for dipping pillar candles.

Painted or colored tin christmas ornaments: You can buy sheet metals (tin or copper) that are thin enough to cut into different shapes. Make stencils out of cardstock or cardboard and hand them out. After the shapes are cut, make a hole where the string will go through and then use wooden blunted tools to imprint your own designs. -A dull soft-grade pencil works well also. Then you can put colored lines in the imprinted lines using your favorite fine-tipped markers. -If you're using copper sheets, I'd just leave them plain after imprinting a design on the surface. The color of copper is perfect the way it is. Click here for a site that sells copper sheets.

Any other ideas out there?


~Sia, in Vancouver, WA