Home made crafty bits and pieces ...

[ChunkyMonkeyMother]

I'm looking for some inspiration really; I want to make this Christmas really lovely and stretch out the excitement for my DS (3) - so far we have made and decorated some salt dough decs for the tree and they look really good even though there are 5 dinosaurs! I'm not particularly good at thinking up ideas but can turn my hand to anything craft wise so I'd like to know what the mumsnet collective are making with their young children ?

We've made Xmas decks with Hama beads which worked well. Going to do cinder toffee covered in choc with dc for dh. Always do homemade Xmas wreath with holly from park and spare pine from Xmas tree and ds2 wants to make a advent calendar for his hamster . Bought a cheap Xmas cracker kit from poundland for homemade personalised crackers. Dc love decorating the gingerbread house from ikea on Xmas eve which is the main table dec for Xmas dinner also keeps them out of my way for a couple of hours. Gps always get a huge pot full of spring bulbs planted by dc as Xmas pressie.

Oh I love the gingerbread house/crackers idea! We're going to my parents for Christmas Day so I could make and take them as little table gifts, thanks!

Love the idea of a wreath and actually did make a big salt dough ring and heart shape with the intention of doing it but have been out off by the err, spikeyness of the holly

Make your own christmas cards perhaps? Cut out Christmas tree shapes and stick onto cards and then give your ds free rein to stick on lots of glittery bits? Or you can make nice reindeer out of hand and footprints - footprint for the head and handprints with fingers spread wide for antlers.

One year when they were tiny we made a Christmas tree of hands - got all visitors to make a green handprint and then I cut them all out and assembled them into a tree (fingers pointing down)

I often aim (and often fail - run out of time) to make Christmas biscuits and decorate.

Paper chains are easy and fun if your ds has sufficient dexterity. Usually try and make some kind of homemade decs for the tree.

Are the paper chains just the strips of card glued together? If so I have loads of lovely coloured paper to use up!

Great idea on the biscuits front - could use the same cutters as the salt dough decs - do you have a good biscuit recipe please? I made shortbread once and it was cack - didn't know you had to mix it so much ha ha

P.s love the sound of the tree - DS has asked to have a tree in his room so that would look lovely!

Paper chains can be made out of old comics and magazines.

salt dough stars, when you bake them make a whole in the middle, add a hard boiled sweet and it will melt to look like stained glass

snowflakes, where you fold the paper up and snip shapes, I hang these with wrapping ribbon on the dc bedroom ceiling

Hobby craft do inexpensive crafty sets, me and the dc did peg angels and painting snowman suncatchers last weekend.

We collect cones from the park and the dc add loads of paint and glue to them and tie ribbon on them