Author: Carrie Spritzer

This time of year the internet is bursting with inexpensive, creative holiday decorating and craft ideas. Here are some projects that I find especially fun and inspiring and am looking forward to trying (if not this year than next!):

Felted Poinsettia Wreath (pattern available here): knit poinsettia flowers, felt them, then piece them together. Alternatively you could cut out felt poinsettia leaves and glue them to make a more simplistic, no sew wreath (more my style!).

Peppermint Package: stuff packages and cushion your presents with individually wrapped mints or candies (from The Farm Chicks Christmas) – so much better than the boring and environmentally-destructive Styrofoam peanuts. You can even buy more-natural candies at the Natural Candy Store (no high fructose corn syrup for sale there!).

Family Photographs Wreath: hot glue photographs to a wreath form for a simple reinvention of the family tree.

Holiday Card Wreath: decorate clothespins, then glue them to a wooden embroidery hoop (I picked one up at a local craft resale shop for $0.35 to make this project!) to display holiday cards or ornaments. (I am SO excited about this project!) It reminds me of this similar and much more expensive hooped card holder from Vivaterra (that doesn’t appear to be available online) that I clipped from their catalog:

What holiday decorating projects are you doing this year?

In the eight years that David and I have been together, we’ve never had our own full-grown Christmas tree. Now that our daughter is almost three, we decided that this would be the year. We want to start laying the foundation for more Spritzer Leyba family holiday traditions, starting with this one.

I have this idea in my head that all of the ornaments on our tree will be handmade. It seemed like such an innocent idea: a handmade holiday focusing on the process and tradition rather than the commercialization of the holidays.

Then I did a mental calculation as to how many ornaments we’d need and, while I may in fact be over my head, I am completely positive and excited about this project. Giddy, even. We’re having such fun working on our ornaments.

Some of the ornaments will be quite easy: dried orange slices (shown here on our mini tree last year), paper chains, and popcorn garlands.

Other decorations are more labor intensive.

We’ve been hard at work cutting, sewing, gluing, painting, coloring, sequent and glittering ornaments.

Several are done and many, many more are on the way!

With Hannukah and Christmas fast approaching, we’ve been busy printing out and cutting holiday gift tags. (A perfect task for an almost three year old who loves practicing with her scissors!)

Here are some of the holiday tags that we’re using this year that you can download for free, print and use too!

– Free Printable Wintry Holiday Gift Tags
– Paper Crave Printable Holiday Gift Tags
– Tagged and Ready for Giving
– Holiday Bird Tags (other designs here)

Not only do they make excellent gift tags, but Miss Leyba enjoyed incorporating them into collages too!