What budget friendly activities or homemade projects do you and your kids do to celebrate the Holidays?

Question:

What budget friendly activities or homemade projects do you and your kids do to celebrate the Holidays?

December is a month full of special moments. Share with us anything your family does together for festive fun.

Best answers:

Answer 1:

We bake cookies and make decorations for the tree. Like old fashioned popcorn strings and construction paper chains. We also make plates of baked goods for the neighbors and my son is the delivery person.

This year I'm also making:

photo coasters with a kits I got at a local discount store for $2.99 each.

travel mugs I found at the same store for $3.99 and filling them with hot chocolate packets.

In addition to the regular cookies I make I'm going to make GIANT cookies with some tins I found at the same discount store. I just have to beg some pizza boxes from the local restaurant.

Answer 2:

We always put together photo ornaments and have a laminator so that paper projects last. It's not expensive to get a gingerbread house kit and we like making cookies together. We use the computer alot and there are lots of educational games and fun activities to do. We like to take the kids out at night once a year to drive around and look at everyone's Christmas lights. Afterall, we can't afford a generous extra donation to the electric company but every year our neighbors can! The electric company must have quite a windfall every December!

Answer 3:

We bake cookies (or a gingerbread house), you can make snowflakes (if your child can use scissors), we take the kids to get their pic with Santa (you can get one 5 x 7 and make copies so it's pretty cheap) Put up the tree (we have special ornaments that are for each of the kids so they can put them where they want to) Try teh Parenting websites they have alot of crafts that are kid-friendly.

Answer 4:

When my kids were little, we would take them to the town tree lighting ceremony, then visit Santa who was set up near by. The public library would have kiddie crafts workshops, such as making cookie houses out of graham cracker panels, also free holiday story hours or movies. There were holiday concerts at the schools and a "living nativity" with real sheep and a donkey, as well as human participants, put on by a local church.

We made pomander balls out of oranges and lemons by pricking the rind with a pin all over, then inserting whole cloves into the holes and tying with a pretty ribbon for gifts. We poured candles from melted ends that we had collected, using waxed paper cups as molds, then decorated them when they were cool. We coated clean tin cans with glue and wrapped them around completely with yarn or twine, to be pencil holders.

We decorated gift tags with markers and stamps for the local Christmas charity. We also made Christmas cards with ink pads and stamps cut from white potatoes (cut potato in half, then remove excess around a holly leaf, star or evergreen tree shape. Use a new pencil end eraser for the holly berry stamp). We also stamped card stock for bookmark gift sets.

We went sledding and ice skating (you can rent skates at the rink). We made hot chocolate and popcorn from scratch, not from a mix or microwave pouch. We made some of the popcorn into caramel corn for gift giving as well.

We made necklaces out of quarter inch red and green ribbon with one extra large jingle bell as a pendant. We made "candy cane" Christmas tree ornaments by twisting together two different colored chenille pipe cleaners and bending one end into a hook. We made origami cranes and little boxes also to hang on the tree.

We rolled pine cones in peanut butter and bird seed, to hang outside as a treat for the wild birds. We strung orange and apple pieces for the birds as well.

We made table favors, napkin rings and place cards for Christmas dinner. You can make a napkin ring by slicing a cardboard tube into rings and wrapping with yarn or metallic cord.

We made small felt Christmas stockings and mittens as ornaments and made tiny wreaths out of many things.

We ground up cranberries, oranges, apples and walnuts and mixed with sugar or honey for holiday fresh cranberry relish. This also makes a wonderful cranberry/orange holiday muffin when added to a plain muffin recipe (1 cup of relish per batch, cut out 1/4 cup of the milk to accommodate the extra moisture). This also makes a good gift in small jars, give with directions to keep refrigerated until used.