So despite the stores already clearing up their Christmas displays and neighbors kicking their Christmas Tree to the curb, we celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas beginning with Christmas Day and continuing until January 5th/the Feast of Epiphany. It can be hard to keep the Christmas spirit alive, if you’ve seen all the Christmas movies throughout Advent, leading up to the big day!
If there are any Christmas movies left, by all means…watch them now!
We’re going to try and offer a couple other ideas to continue the Christmas crafts and family time in the days to come!
1. Our first recommendation: Get yourself this awesome book!
Christmas Around the Fire*, edited by Ryan N.S.Topping
I didn’t fully appreciate this book until I gave it to my eldest daughter this Christmas. Emily is currently focusing on Victorian Literature in her post-grad studies and so she was quite enthused by the collection of Stories, Essays and Poems for the Season of Christ’s Birth.
She recognized many of the short stories and insisted on reading her favorites to the family.
The author list is quite impressive and we’re happy to start this new tradition of reading Christmas stories out loud, gathered around our Christmas Tree. It’s so wonderful to have all of our kids home under one roof and this is a great way to extend the Christmas spirit throughout the 12 Days!
*Amazon Affiliate Link: I receive literally dozens of cents when you purchase through my link. It doesn’t inflate the price you pay, but it helps me purchase new Catholic books and products that I can review for you! Thanks for your support!
2. Christmas Crafts
The Easy Graham Cracker Nativity is a craft we made before Christmas. You can fill the Nativity with a Christmas Card cutout, painted saints, Nativity foam stickers…or mini gingerbread men and a little Teddy Graham as Baby Jesus, as we did during our Nativity-Building Bee.
3. Christmas Cookies
Saints Cookies with Catholic Curio Cookie Cutters
With just a few cookie cutters (Bishop, Nun, Mary, St Joseph), you can make the whole Communion of Saints, just by adding special details to each!
Nativity Cookies with Salem Studio Cookie Cutters
We love these Nativity Cookie Cutters…check out the whole collection we used to make Christmas Ornaments (below).
4. Christmas Ornaments
This is one of my favorite ornaments. I think Emily made it in about grade three!
We call it our Pasta Angel, because it is made primarily with (uncooked) pasta! She carefully glued 2 macaroni arms to a rigatoni body with farfalle wings. I think she used a wooden bead for the head and glued tiny pasta (acini di pepe?) as hair. They glued a little light bulb (from the small Christmas lights) at the ends of the macaroni. A glue gun would be the fastest, most secure way to attach all the pieces, but be careful not to burn yourself, especially when the pieces are so small! Once securely glued, the pasta angel was spray painted gold, adding string to hang the angel on the tree.
This year, we made some salt dough and used our whole collection of Salem Studio Cookie Cutters to create our newest Christmas Ornaments.
We used acrylic paint and then coated each entire ornament (front and back) with mod podge to keep them shiny and durable. Sometime, I would like to use glossy acrylic paint, recommended by my friend Carla for the next level of glossy!
These are some other ornaments we have made over the years. The Saints Ornaments were made by decoupaging the watercolor images from our Kelly Saints Blessing Cards kit! Check the Christmas Clearance section of your favorite Craft Store. There are lots of options with ready-to-customize Christmas ornaments. Mod podge almost always works to adhere your favorite holy images, artwork or family pics!
It’s kind of fun to add some NEW ornaments to look forward to…for next year! We add the NEW Ornaments to our collection of Christmas Decorations, along with discounted lights and decorations we purchase after Christmas.
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