Holiday DIYs!

Get ready for some serious crafting...

Here's what we got:

1. my December door decoration!
2. the parents' gifts (from the kiddos)
3. the kiddos' gifts (from me!)

     First off, I feel like I should share my door decoration with everyone because it's one I am proud of! Cute and simple and full of Christmas cheer.

"Jolly Holiday Helpers"

     Secondly, it's the "gift-is" that we made the last full week before our Winter break! 

It's like Christmas exploded in there.

     Made with crayon shavings from a wide pencil sharpener, clear plastic ornaments, and a hair dryer. They picked from red/green/yellow/white/silver shavings and I put the shavings inside the ornament, and rotated/shook the ornament as it was heating up from the hair dryer (holding it by the silver top hook thing. When all the pieces were stuck to the plastic (but before they got too melty and swirly) I took the off the heat and put them aside to cool. When cool, I write their names and the year on the bottom and tied a small jingle bell on the top with a white ribbon (instead of a ugly metal hook).

     It was easy! The most time consuming part was definitely the crayon shavings, only because with 12 ornaments, the sheer quantity of shavings was more than I was expecting when I started. I'd say it probably took about 1-2 tablespoons of shavings to fully cover the inside of one ornament and make it look nice and speckled.

Lastly is the gift from me to my kids! 

     When I give gifts as a teacher, I try to stay functional. This time I went with the reindeer candy canes, but also added Holiday pencils behind! Made with candy canes, pencils, paper hole protectors, red buttons, brown pipe cleaners, and hot glue. I made sure each reindeer had a different combination of pencils and different buttons, just to make sure there weren't any issues of matching or being upset about not matching.  These were also fairly painless to assemble and pretty quick from start to finish.

So those were my main examples of craftiness for December, can't wait to see what's in store for 2015!!

Be safe and sweet, y'all! (And Merry Christmas!!)