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 will do some potato printing to make Christmas cards. I think my daughter will love the mess!

we have drawn christmas tree pictures then put glitter tinsel and baubles on them, stuck on stickers for baubles and sticky stars on the top

DD (10) and I are making a 'skirt' to go under the Xmas tree. DD chose a selection of Fat Quarters of pretty fabrics and we've used them to applique a Christmas scene onto a big circle of fabric. Then we'll quilt it and bind the edges and add some buttons.

I host a big extended family Christmas get-together. I don't have my own DCs (yet) but the DCs within my extended family will come to mine and we will be decorating cupcakes and gingerbread shapes. We will also be making little gifts for their respective parents. We love Christmas and it's a great excuse to get all of the little ones together whilst parents relax!

I am making a nativity trail down the banister which basically consists of 25 small numbered envelopes pegged onto string and garland with a treat in each one and an activity for each day. DS's birthday is just before Christmas so a couple of the envelopes are about that but others say things like 'make a card for granny' and 'write a letter to Santa'. As the days he gets nearer to the bottom of the stairs and the last one says 'open your presents'. The first says 'meet your Christmas elf' as I am planning on doing the elf on the shelf type thing only with a stuffed elf i bought from sainsbury.

We have already had a decoration making day with his cousin where we made salt dough and so we need to finish off decorating them before we get our tree.

I'm also planning in making him a Christmas eve box with a film, popcorn, key for Santa and reindeer food etc.

This is the first year he's going to truly get the excitement of it.

We make lots of homemade decorations: cut-out snowflakes with tons of glitter, felt sewn tree decorations. One year we made little tiny boxes and hung them on the tree with sparkly ribbon. Yes our tree is untidy but it's ours!

We'll be making Christmas cards, making calendars for presents, making decorations - request for paperchains and baking. So nothing too stressy hopefully just fun.

I have my gingerbread house cookie cutter kit here ready to go so we will be making that together - it won't last long as we love eating it as much as making it!

We make a gingerbread house every year. The children love making the gingerbread almost as much as decorating it. We decorate it on Christmas eve morning before breakfast and then it's ready for the big day!

We make paper snowflakes too which we then tape to our patio doors. I love making them and seeing the different shapes the children cut out. They are reluctantly taken off the doors in January, although if I had my way they would stay until spring.

Lastly dd, who is 8, was given a sewing machine for her Christmas last year and is making everyone aprons this year.

I make a Xmas cake and ice it plain white (or buy one if I'm rushed), put out tubes of icing and loads of sweets, sprinkles, etc, and let the dc decorate it in one free-for-all frenzy of sugar and food-colouring.

It never gets eaten until January, and every year I think "why bother?", seeing as none of us are that keen on Xmas cake (apart from me!), but they love the decorating.

we are making needle felted decorations this year.

This year me and my dd (age 6) will be mostly baking mince pies, making paper chains and xmas bunting and of course she'll be "helping" me decorate the tree -no theme here, just random mix of tinsel and various baubles/home made decorations of previous Christmasses of x

We'll do some handprint Santa cards to give to relatives and some painted salt dough tree decorations.

We'll make paper chains, and snowflakes for all the windows. DS has just learned to tie-dye, and he's going to make tie-dye t-shirts for his four cousins as their presents. We're also in the middle of doing our Christmas card picture this weekend; stage one involves making reindeer antlers and red noses for us all

Our Elf on the Shelf (Holly) will be bringing DD and DS an activity to do every day instead of an Advent calendar. This year that will be potato print wrapping paper, saltdough ornaments, decorating Christmas Cards and icing and decorating the Christmas cake.
As they are only 3 and 1 there will be a lot of parental intervention, but I really want them to develop a love of crafting and this seems like a good place to start!

We will make Christmas decorations together, last year we made a really nice hanging window decoration which had some cut out pieces covered in different coloured tissue papers to make a stained glass window effect. We will also make some decorations out of clay and some biscuits - hopefully some we can hang on the tree although we haven't made any before! We will do se christmas cooking; mince pies and muffins/cakes and shortbread.

We make paper snowflakes (they go on every window ) and loads of paper chains. Wish I had time to do more!

Christmas crafts over the years here include paper snowflakes for the windows, paperchains for the hallway, a decoration for the tree (we've done salt dough shapes, painted pinecones, pom poms, origami stars, a ring of jinglebells, popcorn chains), made playdough (we have red and green and scent them with allspice or almond or peppermint essence and add lots of glitter), pomanders, potato print wrapping paper or cards.

Food wise we've made gingerbread snowmen, made and decorated the cake, made the Christmas pudding.

I love Christmas crafts.

We're colouring in fill-your-own christmass crackers (last year's crackers had handbells, so we'll be stuffing these with the same... I can see this becoming a family tradition!)

We always cut out paper snowflakes and cover the windows with them!

Every year I say I'm going to make a gingerbread house, and every year I totally fail to do one! Maybe this year?

We do salt dough decorations, make our own garlands through a mix of woodland walk forages and garden centre purchases, mixed with sliced baked oranges, and of course, lots of glue and glitter because they are 5 and 3 yrs old!

This year we will be making bead decorations (my eldest loved this last year), paper chains and pom pom decorations. Keeping it simple as eldest is just getting into crafts

We make a living wreath and garland for the fire every year. We are making paper chains this year from old books. We also make decorations every year, this years theme are Christmas trees made from buttons.

Can you tell I've been planning this years activities?

I'm going to have a go at making salt dough ornaments this year - saw some with handprints made to look like Christmas trees, if it works out that will be grandparents' presents.
Also going to try making a Yule log to take to my mums - DD is allergic to nuts and it's hard to get nut free cakes in the shops - not sure how that'll turn out, I bake v v tasty cakes but can't decorate them to save myself!