Last Minute Christmas Goods!

So I have been meaning to post on these earlier this month, and just haven't come around to it, I guess getting all our presents ready, made, and lined up were just more important on my to do lists. But either way I thought I would share some more fun Christmas/ Wintery like crafts I've been up to. Hope you enjoy!

 Remember how I made pumpkin baby food jars for salt/pepper shakers for the fall? Well I thought it would be fun to do for winter too and made snowmen!

 If you ever get the baby food meats they come in really short and stubby jars, which worked great for these. I put the salt and pepper in the "heads", then put a magnet on the bottoms so they can magnatize to the metle lids of the bottom and so they can be more stable on the bottom jars.

 I just put rocks in the bottom jars so they wouldn't be top heavy. Then I just painted them however I wanted!

Yeah for happy snowmen!

This little fun-ness I actually made last year for my nursery kiddos at church, but because I jumped into labor for my little girl I never got around to posting on it. But thought I'd still share the goodness. Here's how to make "Christmas in a Nut-Shell!"

These are an easy gift for people, if you want to do it bulk, like I did here. First get the peanuts, and peices of clothe. I sorted the peanuts from largest to smallest aswell.

 Then using some "hey" from a crafty decroative broom I had laying around, I cut enough hey for each manger.

 Then I also broke enough popcicle sticks for the mangers, and hot glued the hey. I also painted the top part of the sticks brown.

 Then I glued the clothe onto the peanuts. I had the largest be Joseph, middle be Mary, and the smallest (usually the one with only one nut works best!) be little Jesus!

 Then I added a little touch of faces with a marker, but you wouldn't have to. I also attached a little note to it along with string so it can be an orniment.

Here is the quote up close, in cause you'd like to read it!

 Then, remember how I made halloween candle jars? Well, again, thought it would be fun to make winter ones. So I painted snowmen heads. And it is a little hard to tell with this pic, but the snowman on the right is actually a girl. She has a bow on her hat instead of a bow tie. Then to add a little extra ease and fun, instead of putting candles in I just had our Christmas lights go up, in and around them, along with being around our window frame. Now I don't have to remember to blow the candles out! :)

 We really want Christmas to have a better focus on CHRIST in our family. So we did a little research and made this Christmas Symbolism chart. Since we only have one kid and she's still little, we hope to use this as a guide as our family grows and we can talk and share about the real meanings of Christmas. We are also in the process of making our decorations more traditional and old fashioned so they will follow the symbolism better. I am really excited for this tradition in our family! If you want a more printable, or viewable version of this for your family, I saved a copy to google docs HERE. (oh and all we did was print on a pretty Christmas scrapbook paper and modge podged to a wood plaque, super easy!)

A fun Christmas tree with our hand cut outs! We really wanted to try it with paint...but maybe when Addie is older, she isn't a huge fan of the paint, slimy stuff, or at least a fan of making nice flat hand prints, it would have been very smeary and crazy!

Well folks, I think that's all the updating of my little Christmas crafty-ness going on! That fun block nativity I said I was gonna make has been a kind of on hold project, so...if I even finish it before Christmas, I probably won't post on it till next week, or even save it for Dec next year. Oh well...and maybe if you are lucky next week I'll share the lovely presents I made for my family too! I am so excited for them!

I hope that you have a wonderful Merry Christmas!
"Christ" + "mas" (means "more" in spanish), More Chirst! Christmas time is sharing MORE of Christ time! I hope you all have a Merry Christmas time this year, filled with the love of our Savior and all those around us! We really are so blessed, we just need to open our eyes!