Rudolph Glitter Ornaments

Now that the kids are older, we can do ornaments that are a little more complex. These Rudolph ornaments weren't really hard, just easier to do with older kids. ;0)

We needed Pledge Floor mop solution, clear ornaments (we used plastic), brown very fine glitter, goggly eyes, red puff balls, brown pipe cleaners, and hot glue.

First, we poured about 2 teaspoons the floor cleaner into the ornaments and swirled it around carefully, making sure we covered the entire inside. We poured the excess out. 

Next, we poured glitter in and swirled that around. We had to add more glitter after the first swirl and we also covered the whole with our hands and shook it upside down to get the glitter everywhere inside.

Next, the kids fashioned their pipe cleaners in to antlers, and they hot glued those and the eyes & nose onto the ball.

Here are our Rudolph ornaments!!

I think they turned out super cute!!

Felt Tree Ornaments

I saw this cute ornament idea to make felt trees on Pinterest (of course), and decided to try this with the kids. To be honest, this was a lot more time consuming and harder than I thought it was going to be. But the kids had a lot of fun and liked designing their own ornaments, and I think they did a good job, especially for their first sewing project. :0)

We used green felt (I picked out three different shades, so they had a choice for the front of the tree color and the back of of the tree color.), brown felt for the trunk, and yellow felt for the star. We also used beads for the garland on the tree and buttons and sequins for the ornaments.

The threaded their own needles. (I got ones with fairly large eyes though to make it easier for them.)

After we cut out triangles in the color of felt they wanted on top, they started making their garland on the trees. I knotted their thread for them and then they pulled the thread through the felt at the top of the tree. Then they put beads on the thread until they had enough for the section of garland they were doing, then pulled the thread through the felt again and back up to do another section of garland. They all did three sections of garland.

After their garland was done, they sewed buttons and sequins on for ornaments. This was actually harder for them than the garland, but they got the hang of it after I helped out a few times.
When they were satisfied with their ornaments, they chose their back felt color, and sewed around the tree to connect them on 2 1/2 sides.

This was actually really easy for all three of them. I think they had the sewing part down by this time. :0)
After they had 2 1/2 sides down, they stuffed it with cotton balls, then closed it up.

Originally, we were going to cut stars out of the yellow felt, but we all decided we weren't very good at cutting out stars, so I ran to Walmart and got these cute beads. (because I couldn't find star beads or buttons.)

They sewed their "stars" on and I added the string so they could hang them on the tree.

Here is Lily's:

Riley's:

Zach's:

They all did a good job, and even though this took us over 2 hours (seriously...) I think they had fun and I know they are very proud of their trees. :0)