Stress Free Christmas

Category: Tree

Twelve Crafts Of Christmas

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Find Christmas Crafts you can do with the kids here. We have searched out some of the best sites for Christmas crafts so you don’t have to.

Santa Hand Print Craft

Makes a unique Christmas card, or decoration. This uses card, glue, cotton wool balls, paint and felt. Of course, you can use other items if you don’t have some of these.

Paper Plate Santa

Make Santa’s face with a paper plate, cotton wool, paint, glue and a pom pom.

Christmas Wreath

This is a more advanced craft, using a wreath form, hot glue, various ornaments, greenery and wire (you will need snippers).

Bead And Paint Tree Card

Create a card with a tree and decorations. This uses seed beads and a needle and thread, so suitable only for older children or adults. You will need card, glue and paint also.

Bake Peppermint Topped Cupcakes

This uses your favorite cupcake mix. Use snowflake baking cups and make icing and top with peppermint crunch.

Snow Globe Cookie Jar

A craft for giving. Adds snowball cookies to a jar that you decorate with snow flakes or white dots. Add some plastic Christmas themed trinkets and tie the jar with a ribbon, for a great gift.

Sparkling Christmas Star

For older children or adults. Uses tooth picks stuck into a foam sphere then spray painted silver and a hanging string hot-glued on

Beaded Christmas Tree

Make your own Christmas tree for small spaces to hang on the wall, using beads, twine and dowel rod. For adults and older children.

Hanging Advent Calendar

Hang little boxes and shapes at different heights from a willow branch hung on your wall, for a cute wall decoration as well as an advent calendar.

Mud Cloth Ornaments

Little ornaments in black, written or painted on in white. Can be used as Christmas Tree Ornaments or gift labels.

Tinsel Star Wreath

Can’t get much easier than this. A star frame, a length of tinsel and some mini pegs to hang photos or make some ornaments or Christmas shapes to hang on it.

Surprise Christmas Ball Ornaments

Another advent calendar idea or easy to make presents to give away. All you need are fillable Christmas balls, crepe paper to wrap and some decorations to make cute faces. This post gives templates for those.

What Christmas Theme to Choose For Your Home or Office Party

Do you want to go all out when decorating your home or office for the Christmas holiday? With thousands of different ways for you to decorate, coming up with the perfect theme to select for the home or office could be a bit difficult. If you do not know what Christmas theme to choose because you are feeling uncertain and slightly indecisive, there are a few different themes worth choosing that will quickly turn your home or office into the perfect winter wonderland for everyone to enjoy.

Of course, while it’s fun to pick your perfect color combination, not all colors will be available in all types of Christmas decoration, especially perhaps the larger items, such as trees. If you want to go for a more unusual color theme, you could make one of the colors a more traditional one, such as silver, gold or green, as it will be easier to find larger items in these colors. Alternatively, you could go for a three-way color scheme, with the third color being the neutral silver or white, allowing your dominant themes to form the accents.

Assorted Color Themes

When trying to figure out what Christmas theme to choose, you will need to decide if you would like to stick with a specific color theme. There are a few different colors that are commonly used in the winter, especially around Chrismas.

Red, White, and Green

The red, white, and green theme is commonly used by people who are decorating their homes and offices for the Christmas holiday because these colors are commonly associated with the holiday. Red represents the color of Santa’s clothes, white represents the color of the snow that is normally on the ground during these colder months, and green represents the color of the Christmas tree. It is just one of many color themes for you to consider.

Green, Silver, and Gold

Some people prefer using a combination of green, silver, and gold. While green is a color that represent pine trees that are often decorated and situated inside of homes and offices during the holiday season, the silver and gold colors represent the decorations that are often hung from the tree. Both silver and gold are festive colors that look stunning.

Red and White

If you want to eliminate the green, you can always choose a red and white color theme. A combination of red and white decorations will remind people of candy canes, which are often placed on trees and consumed by both children and adults during the holiday season. You may even be able to find red and white striped table covers, napkins, and other assorted decorations to go along with this color theme.

Red and Gold

These are the two “richest” colors that can be used in decorating for Christmas and you will be able to find many items available to create a happy, vibrant and colorful theme for your whole Christmas or for a party.

Blue, White, and Silver

Not everyone likes using shades of red or green when decorating for Christmas. If you want something a bit more elegant, try using shades of blue, white, and silver. These colors tend to match perfectly with one another and will remind people of a beautiful wintry night.

Less Common Color Themes

Lilac / Purple Themes

You may wish to go for a lilac or lavender or purple main color teamed with silver or gold. For something totally different, you might want to team this with pink.

Black and White

While unusual, this color theme may suit some decor schemes and is certainly unusual and will form a talking point.

Character Themes

Snowflake Theme

Aside from the color theme, you could always choose a snowflake theme. There are a lot of snowflake decorations that may be used by you to decorate the home or office, including hanging sparkling glitter snowflakes, snowflake string decorations to place in the front of the doors throughout the building, and even centerpieces that are designed to look just like snowflakes.

Snowman Theme

Another great theme for you to consider is the snowman theme. There are snowman decorations available that you would be able to hang on the walls, on the ceilings, and even tape to the windows of your home or office when sticking with this specific theme.

If you do not know what Christmas theme to choose when you are trying to decorate your home or office for a Christmas party, you should consider some of these different options. If you are interested in sticking with a color theme, there are quite a few different colors that are commonly used during the holiday season, including shades of red, white, blue, silver, gold, and green. If you would prefer some other type of theme, the snowflake theme or snowman theme are two of the other options worth considering.

January 2017 – Christmas Storage and Clear Up

January Tasks

Start of January

Take down the Christmas cards you were sent and displayed. You DID get them up?

Advanced Tip

If you do not have a list of people you send Christmas cards to, then you could start to build it up now, by recording the names and addresses of those who sent you Christmas cards this year. Even better, record them on a spreadsheet because that will let you print out address labels next November or December, making sending cards even easier!

Just Get It Done Tip

If you find that making a card list or recording it on a spreadsheet is holding you back from clearing away the cards, then forget that and just get them gathered up, ready to recycle or dump.

Store Any unused Cards For Next Year

If you had any Christmas cards and stamps left over, you can save them for next year. I use an old boot box or shoe box and store it at the side of my wardrobe. If you need to have something tidier, AND your finances can stand it, you can get special boxes for storing all kinds of cards. If money is tight, an old shoe box or any other kind of available box will do fine. You can even use it for storing birthday cards, so you always have one available for emergencies during the year!

Take Down The Tree

Of course, this depends on the type of tree you had. A “real” Christmas tree will now need to be disposed of somehow and removed from the house without dropping dry prickly pine needles all over the floor. This is always a harder job than dragging in the fresh tree at the start of December. Some people keep their fresh Christmas tree in a tub and bring that in each year, rolling it outside again in January. That gives you the joy of a fresh tree without the needle drop, however, the tub can get dirty during the year, you may need a trolley to move it in and out and the tree will keep growing, eventually getting too big.

An artificial Christmas tree can of course be dismantled and stored in the box it came in. What? You didn’t keep the box? No problem, you can get a Christmas tree bag, to take the place of the one you threw out when Christmas was going to last forever. It is also possible to get a bag that covers the tree without dismantling it which saves having to take it apart, with the possibility of losing or breaking a vital part. If you get one of those, you are probably best to be able to keep the tree on the same level of your house as it may be heavy or awkward to move.

Take Down The Decorations

And unless you are storing the tree vertically, with unbreakable ornaments, you will need to take any lights, tinsel and decorations off and store those safely. Lights can be wound around a reel to keep them tangle free. Many decorations are fragile and may need to be stored in a soft storage box with good protection around it.

Mid January

Record it

This really should be done as soon as Christmas is over but unless it is done in the time between Christmas and New Year, it will probably get left until there is a bit of time left over from putting the wreckage away! This is the bit about recording what went well and what could have been improved over Christmas. You may enjoy creating a Christmas journal for this, to last from year to year. If you haven’t the time or the money to develop a journal at the minute, get an old school exercise book, or anything you can write in and keep, to record what you need to remember.

I have included the turkey roasting times and oven temperature, the weights of vegetables I used (roughly) a reminder to get large foil and check my roasting tin is still ok. A list of fruit and veg I buy to last over the 4 days, boiling times for Christmas pudding, a reminder to get cream, the recipe for the favorite Turkey curry and turkey soup, etc. Anything that you only do at Christmas and might forget about by next Christmas. While you might enjoy coloring in a journal and recording all this in different styles of penmanship, the important thing is to write it down or record it for next year, so you don’t make the same mistakes as this year (if you did). I also write down the number of cards I posted out, so I can buy enough for next year and the correct number of stamps.

Stocking Up

IF you have the money available and the available space, and only if, then see whether any of the shops have sales on for Christmas cards, wrapping paper, money envelopes, colored sticky tape, labels, or anything that you USE for Christmas and don’t still have enough of for next year. You could also look out for any craft sales or children’s books that would be suitable for any children you buy for (remember they will be a year older). If your finances are not in a good way of going, forget about this point, it’s more important to get the money side sorted.

Finance

Now is the time to take a good hard look at your finances. Christmas can be a very big drain on the purse or wallet if you let it. And the credit card bills will be coming in to roost shortly. If you have several cards to pay and are worried about how to pay them, get advice on debt EARLY. If your debt is worrying but not at crisis point, then pay the minimum off on all cards and pay extra off on the card with the highest rate of interest to bring it down as fast as possible. If the interest rate is the same on all the cards, then pay the extra off on the card with the least debt on it, then move onto the next. The reason for that is that you will be able to pay it off fastest and then you can spread any available money between fewer cards. If you do not know WHY you got into debt and are not sure how to get out of it, then I suggest you buy and read the GOOD book – the Get Out Of Debt book by Pam Young – ignore any other books of the same name. Pam Young is the real thing. She was in massive debt and found a way to get out of debt and cut up her credit card. You can do it too. This book is also SERIOUSLY FUNNY!

If you really want to see the credit card funeral, you can watch this here.

It is also extremely funny and shows a judge performing a funeral service for credit cards at a convention where people decided to become debt free, despite having large debts owing.

Late January

Check that you have taken down all your Christmas cards, your tree, decorations, lights, tinsel etc and that they are now stored safely where you won’t trip over them but you can access them easily next December.

Get your Christmas card list started, completed or updated for next year.

Check your finances and make plan to improve them if necessary.

Record any necessary information in your Christmas journal, so you have your recipes, times, oven temperatures and other plans ready to remind you at the critical moment.

If your finances are sorted, you could consider whether there are any small items you could buy ahead for next year. Alternatively, start saving money towards the cost of next Christmas but only if your credit cards are sorted. If you owe any money, get it paid off as soon as possible.