june at noon

Over the years our Christmas has become more and more handmade, primarily because I so enjoy making and giving things made by my own hands. In the process, I’ve found that the simplicity of a Handmade Holiday can be quite rewarding. While we don’t do anything grandiose, I thought I’d share with you some of my favorite handmade parts of our holiday as we lead up to the big day.

Let’s start with a pair of little hands. My daughter, being a very crafty gal herself, has enjoyed participating in our Handmade Holiday right along with me.

She helped me make most of our Christmas wrapping paper. (On my flickr page you can see another similar photo with some wrapping paper printed by a small hand.)

I really prefer to use reusable gift bags for most gifts, because I hate the waste of all that torn up paper! But in this case, I felt like the paper was all right since it could be opened gently and treasured by grandparents and aunts and uncles as custom artwork.

I simply cut off some large sheets of heavy craft paper and set my girl loose with green and red paint, paintbrushes, and a couple of quickly carved Christmas tree stamps. She loved it, going from carefully laid brush strokes to stamps to fingers to entire hands.

In addition to the wrapping paper, she also made a gingerbread house with Grandma. (Blurry finished photo on flickr.)

She helped decorate the tree. She was fond of one particular area of the tree and made sure it was laden with as many ornaments as possible.

She painted Christmas cookies at my sister’s annual cookie-baking extravaganza. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures, so here’s a photo of cookie-decorating from last year:

And she created a lovely Christmas tree collage to hang in the kitchen.

I think she’s got this DIY festive bit down!