Deck the Halls, Witchlet Style!

Tags

garland, kids crafts, salt dough, tree decorating, winter solstice, yule

In our home, Yule preparations traditionally start the day after Thanksgiving (though this year, we started late since Daddy Man was out of town working) and continue until the week before Yule.  Its partially a hold over from my childhood family Christmases, but also because we “make” about 90% of our decorations.

Except the tree…we rent that.

Okay, we really don’t rent it.  But since we live in an apartment (and I can’t do live trees in the house because of the allergens it brings in), without much storage space, the past few years, we’ve gotten tree from the thrift store and then we’ve re-donated it afterwards.  The money goes to a good cause (YAY, Children’s Hospital!) and we don’t have to figure out where to put the tree box…or the boxes upon boxes of decorations.  We have one large shoe box (from a pair of The Hubby’s boots) that have a few keepsake ornaments, a three sets of mini-LED lights for the windows, and some sleigh bells.  Other than that, (as I wrote about last year) we DIY.

Some of those DIY projects are perfect for witchlet magic lessons…

Chickadee’s Favorite: Blessing Chains

Chickadee had made an absolutely adorable video tutorial, that I had planned to post…but somehow, I deleted it instead.  It is no longer in the computer OR on the SD card.  Which is fine…because garland is wonderful all year long, and can be made to match the seasons.  We’ll just do the video at a later date, and stick to the written instructions for now!

The first thing you need to make a “Blessing Chains” as the Chickadee calls them, are blessings!  Next, you need some sturdy cotton thread and a needle.  Last, you need stuff to string.  We’ve used marshmallows, popcorn, cranberries, citrus slices, apple pieces, rosebuds, pretzels, animal crackers, macaroni, shells, glass beads, wooden beads, buttons, cereal, and more.  The only “rule” is to 1) pick stuff you like, and 2) pick stuff that can go back into to nature.

The Technique (as related by Chickadee):  Take a piece of stuff to string and then close your eyes and take a big breath in VAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARY slowly.  Imagine being filled with a warm light all the way down to your toes.  For blessings, my light is pink and smells like peppermint ice cream with sprinkles.  When you think your lungs will explode, stop and let the blessing grow in your brain until you are filled with it.  Then blow the blessing out of your body into the cranberry or popcorn or bead.  Open your eyes and string it…if you don’t open your eyes, you will poke your finger with the needle and that hurts.

Mom tip: Instead of individually blessing every piece, try blessing a bowl of each type of item with something different.  Or bless every fifth or whatever item, or take turns stringing items between a group.

When you have a foot or two or five, tie it off and hang it on the tree, or in the bushes, etc!

Sharkbait’s Favorite: Salt-Dough Tree Talismans

Talismans?  Really?  I actually had to check the dictionary on that one…lol!

Anyhoo…

Sharkbait is more of a hands-dirty type of kid, so these are a favorite of his!  We start with salt-dough–about 1 part salt to 2 parts flour, add just enough water until its the consistency of a thick play-doh like dough, and then a couple of drops of food color.  Pick your cookie cutters, then roll the dough flat and cut them out.  Make sure you poke a hole in them before you bake them.  Bake at ~200-250 degrees F, checking on them every 15-20 min.  They should take around 30-50 minutes to harden nicely. String them and hang.

Now, there are tons of things you can do to incorporate magic here–color and shape correspondences (pigs for prosperity!), adding herbs, decorating with stones, etc.  If you were making these as gifts, you could “add the magic” (say, a general blessing for health and wellness, or a home protection) while you were mixing the dough up.  If you are making them at home, with different shapes and colors for different things and people, you might wait until you are mixing the individual color (if you are focusing on color correspondences) or cutting them out (if you are focusing on the shape correspondences), etc.  We make most of these with a general sort of blessing, and then everyone makes one especially for them–some to represent ourselves and something we wish to emulate better in ourselves, and we tie it to the tree with a ribbon that has had a blessing written on it just for us.  After Yule, these special ornaments are put on the family altar.

Trimming the Tree

Tags

Christmas, crafts, garland, ornaments, salt dough, winter solstice, yule

Growing up, the Christmas tree went up the day after Thanksgiving (no Black Friday shopping for us!) and usually came down the weekend after the New Years–both were all day affairs.  Our tree was huge and fake (mom had allergies), and a complicated puzzle of color coded branches that all had to be unboxed, fluffed just-so and maneuvered into place.  There are pros and cons to the type of tree one chooses, but due to allergies (mine and Sharkbait’s) and apartment-living (some apartments ban real trees), we too use the artificial tree (I did find that “six year lifespan” of an artificial tree mentioned in the above link to be a bit suspect–I’m pretty sure my mom still uses the tree from my childhood, which she got when my parents divorced, and is probably older than I am).  Every set of branches had its own set of lights, and boxes of ornaments, each with their own story, came up from the basement until the tree was laden with ribbons and lights and bits of this and that, and underneath went the hand-painted nativity scene made by my grandfather.  And in the background, music–from contemporary to classical played while (usually) a fire crackled in the fireplace.

Unlike my childhood, we celebrate the Solstice rather than the Nativity and we don’t have those boxes of carefully wrapped, passed down ornaments (though we have a few), mostly due to our semi-nomadic, apartment dwelling lifestyle.  Having been in the military and making two cross country moves  has been quite helpful for minimizing attachment to *stuff*, which has lead us to look for creative and cheaper DIY alternatives…which happen to be fun and unique as well.

DIY Ornament Ideas:

• Dried Fruit Ornaments–Citrus and apple slices (sprinkle with a bit of lemon juice to prevent browining) oven/air/dehydrator dried make great ornaments, and you can add in all spice or cinnamon sticks.
• Nature Stuff Ornaments–Pine cones, holly sprigs, sea shells, fall leaves, dried flowers (late summer/early fall rose petals, strung and dried on thread makes wonderful garland), etc.
• Garlands–This year we made paper chains (Chickadee made ours, from a grand total of 4 pieces of paper) and popcorn and cranberry garland (both kids helped make the mess, and ate the left overs).  Though, for future reference, I’ve spotted some awesome crochet garlands (there are several popcorn and cranberry garland patterns out there that I’m planning to try for next year), felted garlands and fleece garland, which seem like a great use of our fabric scraps..
• Salt Dough Ornaments–Adding extra flour, ground spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, etc), we made bake-able play dough and cut it out with cookie cutters, air dried and baked them.
• Shopping-bag Snowballs–Accordion fold  several shopping bags and wrap them around your hand in a loop.  Tie off as tightly as possible on one end of the circle and then cut on the other end, ruffle out the folds and trim into a fluffy ball-shape.  Recycle at the end of the holiday (a few of these put together with some duct tape make awesome dress-up pom poms for the kids).
• Origami Ornaments–A friend of ours that happens to be handy at origami has been kind enough to volunteer his serviced, using paper the kids have colored on cut square he’s been making us dinosaurs to hang on the tree.  I stink at following anything but the most simple origami directions, but I know from printing them out for him to follow, they are readily Googled in just about any shape you can think of.
• Rag Bag Ornaments–Using cloth scraps, I made two different types of ornaments, mini-quilted “bags” stuffed with cloth scraps and herbs and birds out of layered and frayed cloth (the bird in the pic hasn’t been frayed yet)…but pretty much anything you can think of you can make!
• Yarn Ornaments–We have two types of yarn ornaments, pom poms and yarn doll fairies (a mini yarn doll with wings), though there are plenty of crochet and knit ornament patterns available online for free as well.