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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Nothing says Christmas like some marshmallow crafts

The girls and I planned a light, fluffy day after Thanksgiving, and it involved plenty of marshmallows (which I don’t eat, by the way, because who on earth would eat those things when there are Hershey’s Kisses to be had?!). Anyhow, first we gathered our materials for the crafting:DSC_0221LR

The stuff: Multicolored toothpicks, big and small marshmallows, orange TicTacs, a tube of white frosting, mini chocolate chips, fruit roll, Hershey’s Kisses (get two bags right off that bat, because if you’re anything like me you’ll eat an entire bag and be ticked off that you have to go back to the store to restock), pretzel sticks, paper towels, and kitchen shears.

Now from that list of stuff, you can just go hog wild with the Christmas crafts and create all manner of festive (and edible) decorations. We chose to make snowman ornaments and star ornaments for our tree.

Snowman Ornament Instructions: To make a snowman, first get a couple of toothpicks and jam them through three marshmallows to hold your snowman body together. Then break a pretzel stick in half and push the halves into the middle of your snowman to form arms.

DSC_0222LR

Poke an eye hole with a toothpick, then put a glob of icing on the pointy end of a mini chocolate chip and push it into the hole to make an eye. Repeat for the other eye. Do the same for the nose, but use an orange TicTac.

Cut a long, thin strip of fruit roll, fringe the ends, then wrap it around the snowman’s neck and twist to make a nifty scarf. I only bought cherry fruitroll, and wish I had picked up a few more colors to add some variety to our snow people. Next time I’ll get a few of those horrid-looking green and blue fruit rolls too.DSC_0224LR

I tasted the cherry fruit roll, but there’s no way I’ll taste that blue stuff. I know two little folks who will, though... Ree thoroughly enjoyed the fruity delight:DSC_0228LR

And I don’t even know how many marshmallows Ro ate. Every time I turned around she looked like this:DSC_0230LR

Use a gob of icing to stick a Hershey’s Kiss hat on the little dude. And make some buttons the same way you did the eyes. Then let them dry. Voila, snow people! I think they came out really cute! Ree’s is on the left, mine is in the middle, and Ro’s is on the right:DSC_0232LRDSC_0234LR

We’re going to use a needle and some dental floss to add hanging hoops so we can put them on the tree.

Christmas Star-like Thingamajigs: Next we went all freeform and decided to make, ummmm, for lack of a better descriptor let’s call them Christmas Stars. Yeah that’s it. Heh. Probably don’t even need to say what we did, right? DSC_0240LRDSC_0242LRDSC_0243LR

I sort of went for the minimalist approach:DSC_0245LR

Ro was kind of in the middle with the amount of marshmallows she used:DSC_0251LR

And Ree, well Ree clearly went down the “more is better” avenue. That thing is actually heavy.DSC_0254LR

Lopsided and funny looking for sure, but definitely endearing. And, most importantly, we had oodles of fun and they’ll look really cute on our tree.

Cheers, and happy Christmas prep! (Alrighty, who has the tree up already? Come on, spill it. I’d love to be one of those families who gets the lights on the house as soon as the turkey is cleaned up, but the reality is that we’re kind of late-December decorators by the time we get our act together...)

16 comments:

  1. Anonymous11/27/2010

    I love these little snowmen! My little one has a birthday in a week....I believe I found the perfect thing to bring into her class....the kids will LOVE making these!

    Thanks for sharing, Kim Evans

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  2. Cuties! Both the snowmen and the girls. :o)

    We do not have our tree up yet, because I hate our tree. For a fake tree, it sheds worse than a green golden retriever. Shaun's mom is apparently downsizing her tree, so I'm going to appropriate her very nice 10 foot prelit one for my living room. Not sure if it sheds, but at least I won't have to put lights on the darn thing!

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  3. Such cute ornaments! Tree and decorations up, only bc I have a couple of killer weeks coming up at work and it was a now or never kinda situation here... Plus my birthday is on the 14th and being ready is my present to myself :-)

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  4. Looks like lots of fun and very cute!

    Our black Friday was spent decorating so we are good there. The shopping needs some work but that's what the internet is for, right?

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  5. I had my tree up the Friday BEFORE Thanksgiving. I've been stuck at home with four kids...what else would I have done to keep my sanity. Then again hanging ornaments with them was chaotic.

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  6. Yup started even before Thanksgiving this year. Our dinner guest had never seen a Christmas tree up close so i wanted it done when he got there. I keep adding decorations throughout the house as the month goes on.

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  7. These crafts are totally great, and way better than getting the tree up early.

    Our tree is up, but only because the girls BEGGED and BEGGED, and we were excited to have an new spot for it in the middle of the living room. Greg's out putting up lights because it's a balmy 48 degrees, which is the warmest day we'll see until March.

    Happy Holiday'ing!

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  8. Cute, cute, cute!! Hey--where did you get the flowers in for the girls' hair?

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  9. Ummm...disregard the unnecessary "in" in the above question! My brain is pretty non-functional these days!! 2 weeks until we get that baby!! YAY!

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  10. We always decorate our tree on December 5th - it's our anniversary and decorating the tree is one of my favorite activities of the year. (And the Tongginator has that flower dress!)

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  11. Very fun crafts. Our tree is up but that's only because it's 4 feet tall and stays fully decorated so all we do is bring it down from the storage room, remove the rubbish bag cover and plug the darn thing in. Have fun getting your place decorated.

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  12. Two trees up inside and one tree in the yard -- it's a community tradition and everyone puts a yard tree with Charlie Brown lights in their front yard. When we moved here we were repeatedly told about the yard tree tradition by our neighbors and it was April!

    It really does look cool to look down the street and see all the matching trees.

    No snowman crafts though . . . just trees.

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  13. oh what fun. i LOVE those snowmen!! and those dresses?? sheesh. so dang adorable.

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  14. So cute! Too bad our cat (or kids) would eat the ornaments when unsupervised! lol. We put up our tree the Monday before Thanksgiving due to a snow day and we were all bored. Usually its 12/1. And this year we'll be spending 2 wks in FL so we wanted to enjoy it early.

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  15. You come up with the most clever crafts! May try that today. Thanks!

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  16. Adorable Christmas crafts! I think we might still be a year too young but who knows, we may give it a try! So much fun!

    The best part to me will be saving some of the decorations they make and hanging them on the tree year after year. A friend still places a sparsly wooled sheep in her tree that her son made when he was 3...and he'll be 43 in January! So fun and every year he looks for it!

    Can't wait until Hannah has an annual decoration for our tree. She started making Christmas crafts at daycare yesterday so I'm sure at least one of them will adorn our tree this year.

    No tree yet but hopefully soon!

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