Homemade Ornaments

I had a baby! She was my biggest yet, weighing in at 8 lbs. 12 oz. It was a beautiful birth and we have some amazing pictures and video thanks to our dear friend and photographer, Camille Garrison. So grateful to have this little girl in our family. We named her Jane Louisa.

 

 The whole crew. We are so blessed. And crazy.

One of my favorite things about Christmas-time is home-made ornaments from my kids. Lately, they've been humoring me a lot as I've found some great ideas and the snow (and newborn) has kept us indoors. Cabin fever sets in at times, but at least we'll have some very cute tree ornaments to show for it.

I found this idea for noodle ornaments on Pinterest HERE and put our own twist on it.

I had some bowtie and penne pasta on hand, although my penne was whole wheat which made this a slightly more expensive craft... I put out a paper plate with paint colors and we painted the noodles first. 

 I had three different colors of glitter which we put into some mason jars.

While the noodles were still wet, we dropped them into the jars and shook them around to cover them in glitter. This was the best part.

Then we let them dry for a bit.

While you're waiting, feel free to paint your entire hand red.

I didn't get any shots of the actual assembly of the noodles because I was too busy burning my fingers with hot glue. But I simple glued them together one at a time, letting the hot glue cool in between until I formed a star. We glued a bowtie onto the middle.

I involved the kids with this last part by letting them choose which noodle I glued on next. Then we attached a pipe cleaner for a hook with more hot glue and they were ready to hang!

Today we will be attempting to make a GIANT gingerbread man. Wish us luck:)

12 days 'til Christmas!