Crafty Stuff: Button Ornaments

I've got my eye on January 4. It's a long time from now, but that's the day that Maren goes back to school after having been out of school for nearly six weeks. She is on a year-round schedule and her last day was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so she gets the three day Thanksgiving break, three weeks of standard off-track time and the two weeks for Christmas break all stacked together. I love my daughter and I enjoy spending time with her, but six straight weeks of zero Mommy-alone time during the day is enough to make me shed a few tears.

To keep us from going crazy, I'm going to try to have fun activities planned for us to do while Porter is napping. We have a new-to-us Christmas tree this year and it's a biggun'! I'll show it in another post when we get it all ready to go (it needs a new strand of lights) but one thing is for certain--I don't have nearly enough ornaments to fill all 8' of Tree-zilla. Let me be more specific: I don't have nearly enough unbreakable ornaments to fill my tree, so I thought Maren and I could get our craft on and make some fun things together. Ornaments for the tree + fun activities to keep Maren busy=killing two birds with one stone.

I looked through my files and found this cute Martha Stewart project that I'd saved from a while back.

Since I have no shortage of buttons

and plenty of pipe cleaners, I pulled them out while Porter was napping yesterday.

Basically, you fold a pipe cleaner in half and string the buttons on in increasing and decreasing sizes.They really were pretty easy, and Maren needed only minimal help. She loved digging through the bowls of buttons. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree on that count!

We made two Santas, a pair of cute snowmen, a red and white toadstool and a candy cane.

I have a lot of brown buttons so I'd love to make a reindeer but I don't have any brown or black pipe cleaners to use for antlers. I have plenty of white stems, so maybe I can think of a way to dye them. My favorites are definitely the snowmen!

I already have plans for more ornaments for us to make! I'm going to try to only use my existing supplies and not have to buy anything new. Since I could practically outfit a craft store with the contents of my closet and desk, I don't foresee that being too big of a challenge. Next up: sequins and styrofoam. Whee!