Christmas Fun

Whole lotta Christmas going on over here.

In the midst of trying to meet my personal deadline of mailing family packages by the 10th and Christmas cards by the 15th, I decided to go ahead and begin our annual ornament craft making.

We make an ornament for the grammas and aunties every year. If you are a gramma or an auntie. Please cease and desist with the reading of this post.

In the past week we have put up the tree, been to the Christmas pageant practice, had our photos done, made Christmas Cheer, decorated the house, finished shopping….

Did I say ‘WE’?

Mr. Right’s contribution to the flurrious (made that word up) December activities schedule was to spray shellac on the ice cream cones for the craft.

He would like me to tell you that I bought the wrong kind of shellac. It should have been a semi-gloss and not a matte.

Like I really know my shellac.

You will need some of these styrofoam balls like my great Auntie Ceal used to use for her ornament crafting.

She was super talented, that Auntie Ceal.  Here is some of her work.

This blue one has been my absolute favorite since I was about 5 years old. I always hung it up on the top because of it’s unparalleled beauty.

It still hangs at the very top and I am the only one allowed to place it on the tree.

I wonder where she found blue tinfoil back in the 70’s? For that matter, I wonder where she got her huge assortment of crafting supplies, because it is not like Michael’s or Hobby Lobby had been born yet.

Montgomery Wards?

She also used to make these awesome vases with those big sparkly gaudy pieces of jewelry. She would use, I don’t know, maybe cement or some kind of mortar type material and slather it on the vase and then make a mosaic out of the jewelry. Kind of like this:

Of course my mom never saved any of Auntie Ceal’s work. Saved every old cool whip container since 1976, but none of the cool cement jewelry vase things.

 

Ok.

Over it.

You are also going to need a glue gun (surprise! I own one) and also some of these little tiny seed bead thingies.

Some of these pom pom thingies, although the brown ones are far too super small, will burn my fingers off with them. You might be able to get away with cotton balls or mini marshmallows for the white ones.

You also need 3-4 able bodied helpers, which can include, but not be limited to:

An 8 year old

A 5 year old

And a 2 year old

Oh.

And a puppy.

You will need him to chew on the extension cord, steal the pom poms, run around like crazy, terrorize the kids feet and pee on the floor while you are crafting.

Don’t forget the puppy.

Also, make sure that the 5 year old constantly asks to eat the shellac covered ice cream cones and be certain that the 8 year old bosses everyone around.

It helps if the 2 year old is crabby for the entire process.

Makes it go much more smoothly.

Rim the edge of the cone with glue.

Similar to rimming a margarita glass with salt or sugar.

Place the styrofoam ball on top.

Pretty sure you can guess where this is going.

Glue the little pom things all the way around.

It is going to take forever.

Sorry.

I suggest buying the bigger pom thingies if possible.

If you have a crafty foam type paint brush you can use it to brush the Elmers glue over the top of your cone. If you aren’t that prepared, you will just have to smear it on with your fingers.

Then add your ‘sprinkles’. Experience taught us to really glop on the glue. This cone was kind of light on sprinkles, but the subsequent ones (Oh Yes–we made 5 and have 7 more to go) had a lot more.

Top it with a ‘cherry’ and you are done.

Voila

Looks good enough to eat.

I was perplexed as to how I would go about attaching some sort of hanging apparatus so that it could go on the tree. In the end I just glued a big loop of ribbon to the back and kind of wedged it among the pine boughs.

Oh Tannenbaum, Oh Tannenbaum,

How lovely are your branches……..