For those who have a hard time buying all those fancy Christmas tree ornaments available on the market, creating your tree on a budget can be cost effective and rewarding. You, too, can have a nice-looking, ornamental Christmas tree without looking cheap and commercial. Beside being easy on the budget, these Christmas tree decorations for students are a joy to make. The instructions can serve well for the budget-conscious individual.
COOKIE TREE:
Make a nice-looking and yummy cookie tree. Be imaginative by baking cookies in a myriad of shapes and sizes. Brighten it up by adding color to the cookies with unique rainbow or colored sprinkles to give the cookies an extra color boost. To put the cookies up on the tree, roll a piece of thick paper - the size of a dime - and insert it in the surface of the cookie before putting it in the oven. Doing this will allow the holes to remain open during baking. After baking, thread ribbons into the holes of the cookies and trim the tree with your cookies.
On the top of the tree, place a large gingerbread cookie with a small Christmas light in its center. Before putting this gingerbread cookie in the oven, follow the same trick by inserting a rolled piece of thick paper in the center of the cookie. You can dress up the gingerbread cookie using colored icing with Christmas color themes.
Furnish a cute tree skirt by using an apron that has nice images of fruits, or even cookies. Now you have your very own Christmas cookie tree.
SNOWY TREE:
There is another cheap way to build and decorate a beautiful tree with a snowy Christmas tree. Gather cotton balls and stick them on the tips of the branches. Have white glitter ready and sprinkle it over the cotton balls to give it a sparkling effect. Or you can cut silver garland into little tiny strips to achieve the same effects.
Need something to put on top of the tree? Build a snowman. Just by using your favorite pastry dough, shape the dough into the form of a snowman. Cover the entire snowman with white sugar frosting. Use chocolate chips for his eyes, and carve a nose using a knife for a small carrot. Make a smile on his face is easy by using chocolate from a pastry bag.
To make the tree skirt, a large piece of cardboard will do. Form the cardboard into an arc shape design. Add water to a couple cups of flour. Paste the flour onto the cardboard to make it appear like fresh, fallen snow. Also sprinkle white glitter to heighten the effect.
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© Kerry Beck, 2007
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.
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Kerry Beck desires to give you a free Advent Countdown to use in your Christmas & Advent celebration this year. Her package also includes Christmas holiday gift ideas to make.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Thanksgiving Books
Read some Thanksgiving books to give your children a proper perspective. A few years ago I shared the following with some of my friends.
Each year I look for a new book about the Pilgrims & Mayflower to read aloud this year. Last year we read Landing of the Pilgrims, a Landmark book. This year my friend, Gwen Hattaway, told me about a great book - Mourt's Relations (a journal of the Mayflower Company).
When I looked through our bookshelf I found an updated version of Mourt's Relations, Homes in the Wilderness, edited by Margaret Wise Brown. We know Brown from our favorite bedtime story - Goodnight Moon. Although this is a modern translation of the journal kept by Governor William Bradford and others of the Mayflower company, it still retains much of the sentence structure and writing styles of the authors.
Homes in the Wilderness describes the landing of the Pilgrims on Cape Cod, their search for a homesite, the first meetings with Indians, and the final building of the settlement at Plymouth.
A few of our favorites when our children were young (& they still enjoy reading them as a teen) are below.
Sarah Morton's Day
Samuel Eaton's Day
Tapenaum????
Our family has enjoyed these 2 books for the past 10 years. Ever since our oldest was in Kindergarten, we have read them each year. The photographs remind us of what life was really like in those first few years of the Plymouth colony.
You might enjoy reading a review of these 2 books right here:
My kids (4 and 6) love this book, and want it read to them again and again. It follows a day in the life of young Sarah Morton, a historical character who was a child in early Plymouth Colony. It shows how the people lived then and how their world view differed from ours, yet it entertains at the same time. It can serve as a springboard for discussions on many different topics -- history, responsibility, religion, family, grief, hard work, and no doubt others.
Save yourself some money and you can find these books at your local library.
Each year I look for a new book about the Pilgrims & Mayflower to read aloud this year. Last year we read Landing of the Pilgrims, a Landmark book. This year my friend, Gwen Hattaway, told me about a great book - Mourt's Relations (a journal of the Mayflower Company).
When I looked through our bookshelf I found an updated version of Mourt's Relations, Homes in the Wilderness, edited by Margaret Wise Brown. We know Brown from our favorite bedtime story - Goodnight Moon. Although this is a modern translation of the journal kept by Governor William Bradford and others of the Mayflower company, it still retains much of the sentence structure and writing styles of the authors.
Homes in the Wilderness describes the landing of the Pilgrims on Cape Cod, their search for a homesite, the first meetings with Indians, and the final building of the settlement at Plymouth.
A few of our favorites when our children were young (& they still enjoy reading them as a teen) are below.
Sarah Morton's Day
Samuel Eaton's Day
Tapenaum????
Our family has enjoyed these 2 books for the past 10 years. Ever since our oldest was in Kindergarten, we have read them each year. The photographs remind us of what life was really like in those first few years of the Plymouth colony.
You might enjoy reading a review of these 2 books right here:
My kids (4 and 6) love this book, and want it read to them again and again. It follows a day in the life of young Sarah Morton, a historical character who was a child in early Plymouth Colony. It shows how the people lived then and how their world view differed from ours, yet it entertains at the same time. It can serve as a springboard for discussions on many different topics -- history, responsibility, religion, family, grief, hard work, and no doubt others.
Save yourself some money and you can find these books at your local library.
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