Storybook Christmas Tree

This year the boys and I decorated a tree for our local county historical museum's Festival of Trees. Last year for Advent, we read several Christmas story books and made ornaments to go with them. You can see the posts about the books and links to the ornament directions by clicking on "Christmas book activities 2009" on the sidebar of the blog. Since we already had the ornaments made, it was pretty easy to decorate the tree. I bought a white tree at Dollar General for $20, which I thought was a great price. I had also bought some red and tree ornaments from my favorite local thrift store. I made a chain garland with alternating red and green pipe cleaner circles. And I sewed some little Christmas bunting garland too. I used green tulle and red pipe cleaners for the topper. To illustrate the fact that our ornaments correlate with stories, I scanned the covers of all the books and made laminated ornaments out of the scanned images. Then I hung the "book" ornaments next to the ones we made to go with each book.

The full-length tree is shown below.

Close-up of the topper............

Cinnamon gingerbread ornaments............


Green pinecone trees.............

Pipe-cleaner trees...........

Popsicle stick snowmen (these are my favorite ornaments)............

Craft foam Rudolphs............

Felt poinsettias on juice can lids.............

Craft foam "J" is for Jesus candy canes.........

Felt Santa hats............

Glittery gold popsicle stars..........

Clear "snowflake" ornaments..........

We placed the actual storybooks around the bottom of the tree.

I'm not sure if we'll decorate a tree every year, but it sure was fun this year. I already have an idea for next year's tree brewing though! I need to start working on ornaments now because the ones I have in mind are hand-sewn from felt. They are REALLY cute!

We have been to the museum twice to see all the other trees and to vote for our favorites. You can vote for your favorite in the Youth and Adult categories. It cracked me up that my sons picked other favorite trees in the Youth category instead of voting for their own tree! (I totally voted for our tree both times, in case you were wondering!)

Advent Book Activity: The Legend of the Poinsettia & Poinsettia ornaments

For our sixth advent book activity we read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola. Who doesn't love Tomie? Seriously. He's a genius. This is a great story, set in Mexico. Of course we had to make poinsettia ornaments to go with it. I got the pattern here, but revised it somewhat. We used juice can lids (from frozen orange juice) as a base. I cut a green felt circle to glue inside the metal lid. Then I cut the petals using the pattern from two shades of red and also from pink felt. We layered the petals together to make the flower. Then I pulled out my stash of buttons and let the boys each pick one. I sewed them through the center of all the petals and then glued the whole flower onto the green felt. The final step was to glue a loop of ribbon on the back so they could be hung on the tree.





These look sweet hanging on our tree.

On an interesting side note: I accidentally knocked over our other Christmas tree on Friday. One of the legs snapped off and we had to lean it against the wall. On Saturday I went to my favorite thrift store to see if Terri had any trees for sale. She didn't, but told me to go to the Episcopal church in town where they were having a cookie walk and rummage sale. She had been there earlier in the morning and saw two trees. I headed right over and found a tree nearly identical to the one I broke for only $10. So yesterday I took all the ornaments and lights off the broken tree and took it apart and put up the new one. When I was getting ready to put the lights back on I got a HUGE shock from the lights which were plugged in as I was untangling them. So I had to throw that strand of lights out. I was pretty tired of the whole ordeal by Saturday night so I waited until today after church to put the ornaments up on the new tree. Hopefully this one will survive until Christmas Day. I would not relish putting up a Christmas tree for the third time even though I love to decorate for Christmas.

Advent Book Activity: The Christmas Hat & Santa hat ornaments

On Wednesday the boys and I read The Christmas Hat by A.J. Wood for our fifth Advent book. To go with this book we made little Santa hat ornaments. They were basically the ones shown here, but instead of gluing the ribbon and felt I sewed them on my sewing machine. I folded the triangle with right sides together and placed the ribbon INSIDE the fold, sewed up the side seam and then turned it right side out. The final step was gluing the cotton balls on. These were SO cute, but I think they would have been much harder and more frustrating to make had we glued them.





Below you can see the little hats on the tree. I think they look so cute. I wish we had made more of them.

Advent Book Activity: The Little Fir Tree & Pinecone tree ornaments

Over the last few days we've been working on our ornaments to go with our fourth advent book, The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown. This book is SO beautifully illustrated it's almost breath-taking. It is a really sweet story as well. I love pretty much everything written by Margaret Wise Brown and it seems that every year or so I discover something else she's written. We have owned this book for a few years. The first time I read it to my oldest son he was quite teary and touched by it. I won't spoil it by telling you why........you'll have to read it yourself. We made pinecone Christmas trees to go with this book. I was loosely basing them on something I'd seen online, but we kind of did our own thing too.



During the snowstorm on Tuesday I gathered some pinecones from one of the trees on our property. Then the boys helped me paint them green. I only had lime green paint and kind of wished they were darker, but they will show up well on a darker green tree. Below you can see my oldest son painting a pinecone.



After the paint dried we (I) glued sequins on to make little ornaments on the teeny tree. It is pretty hard to handle such tiny sequins. I ended up putting a dab of glue on the pinecone and then picking up the sequin with the glue. The boys were both excited to find some snowflake sequins (there were only 2) and we used those for the "stars" on two of the pinecone trees.




I tied some very thin gold cord around the pinecones to hang them. We made glittered pinecones last year and the hangers fell off some of them. This time I tied the cord around the pinecone and put a dab of glue on the knot. Then I used the long ends to tie another knot to make a hanging loop. I also put a dab of glue on that knot.

Advent Book Activity: Snowmen At Night & Snowman Ornaments

This is my third post for today. I really wanted to post this now since we started another Advent book project today that I want to post tomorrow. Please keep scrolling down to catch up on what we've been doing. The other two posts I wrote are below this one. :-)

For our third advent book activity we read Snowmen at Night by Caralyn & Mark Buehner. We already owned this book and while it's not exactly a Christmas story, it seems to fit the season quite well. When I was looking up the Amazon link to embed in this post I noticed that Caralyn & Mark have written a book called Snowmen at Christmas. We may have to add that our stash next year.









Our ornaments this time were snowmen (of course) inspired by these. We didn't add stick arms, although we could go back and do that. We used stiff black felt for the hats and orange craft foam for the noses. The boys added face details with a black Sharpie marker. I think they turned out so cute. The first photo below shows the two my oldest son made and the next one shows my little boy's ornaments.

And here they are on the tree. So simple and cute!!

Advent Book Activity: If You Take a Mouse to the Movies & Popcorn strings

Tonight we did our second advent book activity. It looks like this week and next week our schedules will only allow us to do 2 books during the work week plus 2 on the weekends. That's making me really glad I didn't try to do 25 activities this year. My little boy unwrapped the book If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff. However, he didn't sit and read it with me and his brother. And I didn't force it. I don't want to ruin the spirit of the activities by forcing them on the boys. My oldest boy and I enjoyed the book. It is charming in the spirit of all the "If you give a mouse" books.







Since the mouse in the book makes a popcorn string to put on a Christmas tree that was our activity. My little boy didn't participate (other than eating a lot of the popcorn) but my big boy was able to string several pieces onto a thread and only poked himself once with the needle. No bloodshed, thankfully. He tired of doing it after stringing about 8 inches and I added a little more. Instead of making it a long string I just tied the ends together and made it into a circle which we hung on the tree. If you're interested, go read my original post about this book. I linked to an edible popcorn wreath recipe that looks fun, although we didn't make it.




Here's our popcorn "wreath" on the tree!

Advent Book Activity: Dream Snow & Snowflake ornaments

On Monday evening the boys and I did our first advent book activity. You can read about the concept behind these activities in this post. First we decided which boy would get to open which "paper". We decided my oldest boy will open the books in polka-dot paper and my little boy will open the ones in green striped paper. The boy who doesn't open a book will get to pull the activity description out of the felt stockings (Scroll down in this post to see a photo of the stockings. We are just using 15 this year instead of all 25.) Below is a photo of our advent books all wrapped and ready.







Tonight we opened the book Dream Snow by Eric Carle. This is a brand new book for our family. I bought it after Christmas last year at Barnes and Noble, 50% off. It's a great little story with awesome illustrations. I LOVE Eric Carle!!







We made glass snowflake ornaments to go with this book. In my original post back in July I had a link to a specific project from Michael's that inspired our ornaments. The only adhesive backed snowflakes I could find at Hobby Lobby (much closer for me to shop at than Michael's) were multi-colored. I had envisioned using all white but couldn't find a package like that. I picked up 2 glass ornaments with another bonus ornament at my favorite thrift store for 75 cents. Can't beat that price!! So...........our materials were: glass ornaments, foam adhesive-backed snowflakes, and ribbon for hanging the ornaments. I had some snowflake ribbon in my stash. Perfect!

This was a quick and simple ornament to make. The boys were both successful and were excited to go downstairs and hang them on our $3 garage sale tree which has been reserved especially for our advent book ornaments.

Below you can see our finished ornaments. They look so pretty and definitely spruce up a previously bare tree. Just last night I was thinking I'd like to somehow turn images of the book covers from each book we read into ornaments. My wheels are turning on that one. I think that would look really cool. I'm sure Modge Podge will be involved in this project in some way. If you have any thoughts, let me know!

Wrapped and Ready

I know many of you have been following along on my posts about the Christmas Book activities I'm planning to do with my boys during the Advent season this year. If not, read this post to get an idea of what we're doing. You can also click on the category label "Christmas Book Activities 2009" and that will allow you to read the posts about each individual book I've selected.

This afternoon I wrapped all 15 books in Christmas wrapping paper. My two boys were right there in the room with me, so I wasn't trying to keep it a secret. They did ask me what I was doing and I told them I was getting something ready for our Advent activities this Christmas. (I think they thought that was a little weird since it's still summertime.) I had pre-determined the order that I want to do the books this December. Remember that since I found it too difficult last year to do a planned Advent activity every day from December 1st-25th, I only selected 15 books for our project this year. So...........I decided which order we'll read the books in and made a master list. I wrapped all the odd numbered books in red polka dot paper and the even numbered ones in green printed paper. Obviously you could use whatever you have. I happened to have a lot of each of these papers left over from last year. And the little OCD person inside me insisted that they be wrapped so every other day was a different paper. Gotta keep the inner princess happy you know! Then I used some little white stickers I had and labeled each book with a number. We will open them in order, read the book inside and make the corresponding ornament project. My next step is to find and organize all the ornament materials so I'll have them ready. I'll post about that once it happens. I'm hoping that will be SOON!

I placed all the wrapped books in order in a wooden book box my dad made us. We have several of these and they are awesome! Then I stashed it in a closet and smiled to myself that I have planned ahead for ONCE IN MY LIFE and won't be scrambling to pull this together after Thanksgiving.

If you are interested in this project but don't want to tackle it with 15 books, think about a Christmas book you already have. If it's one on my list, you could even use the same ornament idea. If not, do a Google search and you'll probably find a cute idea to go with your chosen book. Just plan ahead to do one book and activity with your child this season. Chances are it will be a very special memory for both of you. And doing just one is just FINE!

We will be hanging our "book" ornaments on a separate tree. Just this morning my mom called me from a garage sale to let me know she had found a tree for $3 and should she buy it for me? Um.........YES, please! So she did and it's in my basement now. It's bigger than what I was thinking.............it's actually about 5-6 feet tall. But I think it will work just great..........and you can't argue with the price. If you aren't out there thrifting by now after reading all my thrifting posts, then get going! There are great deals to be had!!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore

The book pictured above is the exact version of this story that we have at our home. I love the classic illustrations in it. There are many other beautifully illustrated versions of this poem. I thought this version which was featured on BellaDia last year looked really neat. For our ornaments, we will make these "sugarplums" that I found on CraftElf. When researching ornaments for all my other books I came across that gumdrop ornament idea and was hoping to pair it with a perfect book. Then I realized that the gumdrops looked like the "sugarplums" in the poem. I am looking forward to making these. (And maybe eating some real gumdrops alongside!)

The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell & Guy Porfino

There are many different versions of this book. I decided to order this one for us. I think the little boy looks so adorable. This is such a sweet story. I remember my mom reading me a version of this when I was little. We will definitely make an angel ornament to go with this book. I am thinking about these clothespin angels. Here is another possibility. Or maybe we'll make this version using white felt and doilies.

Santa's Snow Cat by Sue Stainton & Anne Mortimer

This will be a new book for us this Christmas. I think we'll all love it since we love cats around here. The illustrations look beautiful. For this book I think we'll make popsicle stick star ornaments. I chose this book and activity directly based on the idea presented by BellaDia (The Crafty Crow) last year.

Snowmen At Night by Caralyn & Mark Buehner

Technically this book is more of a winter story than a Christmas one. However, we already have it and it's a favorite. There are SO many cute snowman activities and crafts out there too. I looked at several and I THINK we will make these snowman craft stick ornaments to go with this story.

The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado

This story by Max Lucado has such a powerful message about tolerance and acceptance conveyed within the context of the Nativity story. This is one of the new books I've ordered from Amazon for our Christmas book project. We have several other Max Lucado books and they are among our very favorite. I am pretty sure this book will leave a lasting impression on my sons. I hope so. For this story we will make wooly sheep yarn ornaments. I think they will be SOOOOO cute. They may turn out to be my very favorites from all our projects this year.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May

I love the original version of Rudolph. We have a hardcover copy of the original book that looks just like the one pictured above (photo courtesy of Amazon). However, I couldn't find an Amazon link for the actual book we own. There are many versions available. We will definitely make a reindeer ornament to accompany this story. We may make these clothespin Rudolph ornaments. These candy cane Rudolphs are also really easy and cute. And these popsicle stick Rudolphs may be the easiest of all........and still are very cute.

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff

This is a fun holiday book in the "Give a Mouse" series. We already have this book but I don't remember ever reading it to the boys! I just love the little mouse in these stories. He's so cute. I think an obvious "ornament" to go with this book is stringing popcorn for our "book" tree. I haven't done that yet with both boys and I think by this Christmas my youngest (who will be 4 1/2) will be able to do it without too much frustration. This link has a recipe for an edible popcorn wreath that would be fun to make.

The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown

I bought this book a few years ago after seeing it reviewed on someone's blog. It is THE most beautifully illustrated book. I'm serious. The little boy in this book is so precious and reminds me quite a bit of my oldest son. The story is so touching as well. It is about a little boy who cannot walk so his father digs up a little fir tree each year to bring into the house for him. My oldest son wept when I read him this story for the first time. It is such a sweet story. I won't tell you how it ends though! Since we are making pipe cleaner Christmas tree ornaments to go with another one of our books, I thought we would make pine cone Christmas trees for this story. Last year we made glitter pine cones as one of our Advent activities and those would be great with this book as well.