You can wow your friends and neighbors during the holidays and upcycle at the same time with a few well-placed, handmade seasonal accents. Grab some glitter and the hot glue gun and make fanciful gift toppers, custom snow globes, or sparkly ornaments. Light up your night with an ice lantern or Mason jar candleholder. Or craft a set of whimsical pinecone elf ornaments for the tree and potato-stamp gift wrap for the presents under it. You’ll spread the good cheer and have a one-of-a-kind holiday that provides a lifetime of memories.
Tag: christmas decorating
Keep the Kids Occupied With Christmas Crafts
It’s always a challenge to keep kids occupied, and during the holidays, your productivity (and sanity) often depend on how busy you can keep them. To get the house decorated and entertain the children at the same time, set them loose on craft projects they can hang on the tree or display on the mantle. Cardboard-and-string ornaments, cookie-cutter wrapping paper and gingerbread cookies are just a few of the ideas Extremely Good Parenting suggests to keep idle young hands busy as you ramp up for the holidays.
Easy Ways to Add a Touch of Holiday Decor
Holiday decorating doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, Apartment Therapy says. Simply fill a decorative bowl with painted pinecones or holiday ornaments for a festive centerpiece. String greeting cards up for display with ribbons and clothespins, and they’ll make a nice conversation-starter without adding to surface clutter. Grab a bough of evergreen and put twinkly Christmas lights and/or jingle bells on it. Or for a holiday touch that will last through the winter, plant a poinsettia in a pot wrapped with shiny paper.
Decorations Need Decluttering, Too
Part of any holiday decluttering should be to get rid of the decorations you don’t want, can’t use or are saving for no good reason. Strings of lights that don’t work, for example, should be among the things you eliminate from your home immediately, Apartment Therapy says; admit to yourself that you probably aren’t going to fix them. Toss those greeting cards from Christmases past, too, and any specialty baking accessories — cookie cutters, colored sugars, etc. — you no longer use. Finally, donate surplus ornaments and holiday tchotchkes to ClothingDonations.org, where they can find new homes while helping fund veterans’ programs.
Declutter as You Decorate
The season is upon us! And in the process of digging out boxes of decorations to bedeck your home, you have likely discovered some clothing and household items — holiday-themed and not — that are no longer your style or too worn to use. Do yourself a favor, and set that junk aside for donation or toss it in the trash now, while you’re looking at it. If you just shove those things aside to get to your decorations, they will still be there a year from now, and they will still be getting in the way. Luckily, ClothingDonations.org has pickups available throughout the holidays, so you can declutter as you spread the cheer.