What Christmas activities will you be doing with your DCs? Tell Hobbycraft for a chance to win one of three £100 vouchers! NOW CLOSED

[MichelleMumsnet]

The team at Hobbycraft would like to hear about the Christmas arts and crafts activities you’ll be doing with your DCs this year.

Hobbycraft say, “We all remember our own special Christmas family traditions whether its making homemade decorations for the tree, helping bake the Christmas cakes, writing cards or simply the excitement of Father Christmas coming down the chimney! Here at Hobbycraft we’d love to hear about how your Christmas family traditions.”

So, what crafty Christmas projects will you be doing this year? Do you decorate the Christmas tree together? If you do, do you make your own decorations? Or perhaps you bake Christmas cakes and treats together?
Whatever you and your DCs will be making this Christmas, Hobbycraft would love to hear about it.

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where three lucky Mumsnetters can win £100 Hobbycraft gift cards
Please note your comments may be included on Hobbycraft's social media channels, and possibly elsewhere, so please only post if you're comfortable with this.

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

We make Christmas cards. I cut up shapes/apply glue, then let the toddler stick and glitter glue.

My daughter and I love Christmas crafting! She always makes little homemade gifts for family members so was busy at the weekend decorating porcelain frames and making calendars.

Then we've bought some papier mache stars which we're going to Decopatch for the Christmas tree instead of the usual baubles.

And lots of lots of Christmas baking - novelty cake pops, mince pies, Christmas biscuits, sweets and chocolates for gifts.

Finally on Christmas Eve we make some magic reindeer food - porridge oats mixed with glitter which she sprinkles outside for Rudolph to find.

Happy times!

We make reindeer gingerbread biscuits together, we use gingerbread men cookie cutters, turn the biscuit upside down , the legs become antlers after a bit of icing is piped on, a red smartie nose and chocolate button eyes!
We also make paper chains and collect pine cones which get painted and glittered.
I have always made Christmas tree decorations out of felt with buttons and sequins, youngest DS is just learning to sew and is helping this year.

Oh, and this year we are making a Gingerbread house that will last for years.
It is knitted!

We plan on making christmas tree decorations as well as baking up a few christmas treats too, we saw these great rice krispie cakes in the shapes of christmas trees and thought we might have a go too. My two boys also love making christmas paperchains and they always look so pretty when they are up.

My favourite craft was cutting up DD's old nursery paintings (you know the ones where they just cover the whole page in a mess :o) and assembled it into a snowman with scarf. Added some orange foam for a carrot nose, buttons for eyes etc.

He lives in our kitchen :o

This year I'm tempted to do a mural. This half term we had a great time doing a family project - I had collected some scraps and a roll of corrugated blue card, and we turned it into a cityscape - skyscrapers, church with tissue paper windows etc. We worked on it for a few days, it was great fun.

I think I'll get a roll of darker blue and make a nighttime Christmas scene with a big tree, stars, Santa and reindeer flying, snow etc. Just need to collect the bits together, shouldn't need much extra as they have loads of bits and pieces from their craft box (their favourite Xmas present last year)

We'll be trying snow globes for the first time, Xmas cards with glitter obv & there'll be a big snowman cut out for dd1 to stick cotton wool to and "dress" to go on her bedroom door. Also tried out the I made them myself biscuits from MN book and think they will be hanging on tree, although we'll probably make the dough soon and just defrost to make biscuits for the tree in Xmas week.

We are making Christmas hats for a school project tonight. Ds is having a reindeer hat made out of a woolly hat and gloves with eyes and nose se2wn on.
Closer to Christmas we will be making Xmas cards - fingerprint bauble cards and reindeers I think.
We will also do some Xmas baking - brownies and xmas cupcakes for our neighbours. I also have some lovely snowflake stickers for the windows which will save us a job!

My sons are just young so we keep it simple, glue and glitter on paper then I will cut out decoration shape so we can hang them up.

I have two DDs, 3 and 6 and I get ridiculously excited about Christmas crafts and cooking.

We'll be doing:
Paper chains (easy enough even for the little one and they brighten up a room very quickly)

Glittery snowflakes to hang in the windows

We'll all decorate the tree together, making it a really big event- Christmas really starts once the trees up in our family. My 6 year old wants to make some of her own tree decorations. I'm not yet sure what or how but we'll figure something out! Possibly involving collecting and glittering fir cones.

Christmas cooking- gingerbread biscuits, chocolate shapes, chocolate Yule log

And this year I'm getting really into knitting, so I'm knitting miniature stockings for each of us. The girls can help me make a fireplace and I'll pop a little gift in each day instead of a shop-bought advent calendar.

Making a gingerbread house.

When younger, DD used to like making tree decorations out of hama beads.

We're painting mugs as presents for grandparents this year and making short bread for Santa. We will also be making our own reindeer food and some x-mas cards.

DS is only 2.5, but I'm just starting to get him into crafts! We will probably have a Blue Peter moment with toilet roll tubes and cotton wool, and I might get him to do so scrubby pics for Xmas cards.

I might let him do some biscuit decorating on Xmas eve, but they will probably end up in his mouth.

I've just started planning a list of advent activities. I'm making a box with 24 little boxes inside & in each box is going to be a scroll tied with a piece of yellow wool. The wool will go into the manger on the top of the box, to prepare the manger for Baby Jesus' arrival. Each scroll will have on it: an activity to do that day, a Bible passage & an image related to the Bible passage. The idea is that the Bible passages will cover the big stories of the Bible up to the birth of Jesus & we'll make something related to the story to hang on a Jesse tree so we can look back at it as advent progresses.

I'm really excited about it. The DC are 3 & 1 & won't care at all but I'm excited! I wrote a looong list of all the things I'll need & went to Hobbycraft on Saturday. I spent £8 on felt alone! I'm making a felt nativity scene for the DC to play with. We're not doing Santa so it took a while to come up with non-Santa/reindeer/presents-related activities for each day but I'm very excited by the list I've got now. Have I mentioned I'm excited?

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

DS is 4 so just getting old enough for christmas crafts. Am planning biscuit making (including the stained glass effect ones which we might hang on the tree), gingerbread house, paper chains and paper snowflakes. Can't wait!

We are making jam jar Christmas scenes this year. I'm collecting Christmas cake decorations and empty jars. We will spray the jar lids gold and silver, then use glitter, twigs, cotton wool and the cake decorations to make scenes. We will hold everything in place with modelling clay and use a glass marker to draw falling snow on the outside of some of the jars. Once they're made we're going to arrange them on the windowsill with some LED candles.

We're making lavender bags for the grandparents , from squares of material with ribbon to hang them & maybe embroider with their name ( but that be a bit ambitious ! )

We'll be making a Christmas tree out of shortbread stars. We've made it a couple of times before and it's lots of fun!
We'll also be making lots of paper decorations - chains and paper dolls etc to decorate the house

I'm also making limoncello and arancello for gifts but didn't think it was fair to involve DS in those as he can't taste the results!

We make hundreds of snowflakes from whatever wrapping paper we fancy and stick them to all the windows and string them from the ceiling.
I've promised them we would make a few jam jar snow globes this year too.

We always have a gingerbread house kit and a snowflake, shortbread stack to make a Christmas tree, I might do it chocolate flavour this year and ice with green icing and edible glitter.

I want to make some wreath decorations from everyone in the families hand prints too.

Pine cone decorating & paper chain making has become our tradition. Also we will be making Xmas biscuits & chocolate snowballs for presents for nanny/grandad/ nursery teachers etc

We will make some handprint Christmas cards, adding a red Pom Pom for a nose and googly eyes so they look like reindeer!

We've already made our christmas baubles - we go to a pottery place each year and decorate a bauble each, with the year marked on it, they are my favourite decorations.

We've also done cards, both DCs have painted a picture (DC2 just hand prints sort of in the shape of a tree!) and they are being printed up as our christmas cards - I did one year where DC1 made all the cards individually and it was rather hellish, one made each keeps their attention and it's not that pricey to have them printed.

We'll do ginger bread shapes, usually stars and we traditionally use a cutter that's supposed to look like a reindeer but DH always comments that "ah, you've made gingerbread fat dogs again."

We also do wrapping paper, roll of brown parcel paper, some christmas stamps and sliver paint. Doesn't need to be neat, and grandparents particularly love it and it stops my dad being annoyed that my mum insists on smoothing out and keeping all the wrapping paper rather than just bunging it in the recycling

We do a similar thing for gift tags, some luggage labels and stamps.

Baking gingerbread men

DD will put Christmas stickers on anything and everything!

We have started shrinkydink tree decorations, good fun, we'll make more.

Gingerbread house , yes. Paper chains, yes. I also have a wreath base, not sure what will happen with that. Neighbouring wreaths quite posh.