Back in the BC days (before children), my sister and I would get together on a Saturday and make gingerbread houses.

Our houses were elaborate.  Gobby.  They had tons of icing and tons of candy.  In fact, there wasn’t one itsy bitsy spot of brown gingerbread showing anywhere.  It was all frosting and candy.

And it took ALL day  — baking the gingerbread, cutting out the house, putting it together, and decorating it.

When it was finally finished, I was exceptionally weary — and satiated with sugar.

When I had children, I modified what I did.  Less icing.  Less candy.  Less time.  And let the kids do the decorating.

Now, it’s time to make gingerbread houses with grandchildren.  That’s on the agenda for Christmas Eve when they come over.  I’ll use graham crackers instead making the gingerbread.  And have them do very simple decorations.  I anticipate making a whole flock of them because they will be so easy and quick.

But, what if you don’t even want to do the graham cracker thing?

I have a solution for you!  All you need is a brown paper grocery bag, bits of wrapping paper or old Christmas cards, a bead, and some yarn.

If you go to Susan Gaylord’s site, you can watch her video on how she makes the grocery bag gingerbread house.  And the delightful thing is that when you open up the house, you have gingerbread men that come out.  (It would be fun for grandchildren to make a gingerbread man to represent each member in their family.)

This grocery bag gingerbread house is cheap-o to make, quick and easy, and is a lot healthier (unless you gnaw on the brown bag…).

So head over to this clever lady’s site, watch her eleven minute video, and then make an easy gingerbread house with your grandchildren.

Be sure to have Christmas music playing in the background so you can sing along. And since you won’t have candy to snitch as you’re making your house, be sure to have a small, healthy treat.  Family Fun has some cute snacks:

• Crunchy the Snowman
• Toasty the Snowman
• Frosty the Bagel

Happy gingerbread house making with your grandchildren!

Are you the kind of person that puts up her Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving?

I’m not. I’m usually trying to recuperate from all of the standing-on-my-feet-fixing-the-Thanksgiving-meal instead of decorating for Christmas.

Well, regardless of whether or not you have your tree up, you can still have an activity with your grandchildren and make tree ornaments out of homemade play dough.  (If you need the recipe, you can find it here.)

To make your tree ornament, simply roll out your Christmas colored play dough and cut out shapes using Christmas shaped cookie cutters.  Use a straw to punch a hole at the top.  Decorate your ornaments by sprinkling glitter on them or pressing small beads or rhinestones or sequins in the dough before baking.

Bake the ornaments in the oven for an hour at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. When cool, thread a ribbon through the hole and voila! You have an ornament that your grandchild can hang on your tree or take home and hang on his tree.

Christmas Crayon Crafts for Grandchildren. (Say that really fast five times — quite a tongue twister, eh?)

So on Thanksgiving, I had the crayons out for a little art activity for the grandchildren.  It was highly complex.  Took lots of skill.  Patience, too.

Ahem.

Actually, it was just drawing around the grandkids hand and then turning the hand print into a turkey.  (That’s about as sophisticated that I get with art crafts with two-year old grandchildren.)

But that got me thinking.  Isn’t there some craft using crayons that could be made by grandchildren that could be given as a Christmas present. Indeedy there is.

But first, I must do a word-of-the-day with you.  Every heard of the word encaustic?  Nope?  Me neither.  And I’m a logophile, a word-lover extraordinaire.

Encaustic is an adjective that means painted with wax colors fixed with heat, or with any process in which colors are burned in.  Got that?  Good. Because the first idea that I found is a crayon encaustic art project.  Basically, the project consists of holding a crayon over a candle and letting the crayon drip onto a paper.  Grandchildren can do this and pop it in a frame to give to their mother or father or cousin or friend. It would be a fun project to do with grandchildren that are six years old or older.

You can make an elegant picture by melting gold or silver crayons.  Or make a Christmas-y one by melting red and green crayons. Of course your grandchild could make a lovely picture by using her favorite colored crayons. Or make a monochromatic picture with various shades of one color.  So, be sure to check out the encaustic art project.

You have no idea how much I love that idea! Which got me thinking.  Maybe you could spell out the word ‘JOY’ or ‘SANTA’ or ‘Christmas’ if you had a big enough piece of cardstock. (Or maybe you could use poster board . . .) You could vary this idea and make a Christmas tree shape or candy cane or gingerbread man or house.  Let your grandchildren’s imagination go wild with this.  They could come up with something really creative!

Have you done fun crafts using chunks of crayons??

The other day I saw an idea for making a 3-D Christmas ornament out of two pictures.  I thought, “Huh! I can simplify it a wee bit and it would be an activity that would be fun to do with grandchildren.”

So I set about making a simplified version.  When I stopped (please note I didn’t say I had finished the project . . . I just stopped . . .), it reinforced just how un-crafty I am. Sigh.

Here’s the simplified idea:

1. Get photos of your grandchildren.
2. Cut them into star shapes. (Or circles, boxes, triangles, amoeba shapes — what ever shape floats your boat.) Here’s a pattern for star shape ornaments for 3 x 5 inch and 4 x 6 inch pictures.
3. Cut a short piece of curling ribbon.
4. Loop ribbon and glue to the back of one picture.
5. Glue the backsides of the pictures together.
6. Voila!  You have a star-shaped ornament from photos of your grandchild.

Here’s what I learned from the process.

1. Before printing up pictures, determine which cut-out shape you will use.  You will want to make sure that you can fit the desired area of your picture into the cut-out shape.
2. Place shape template on the front of the picture to get it centered how you want it.  This helps to keep the picture centered appropriately so you don’t accidentally cut the chin off your granddaughter.  Ahem . . .
3. Cut one shape out first.  Use it as a pattern to cut out the second picture. That way, they will be the same size and you won’t have to trim the shapes when they are glued together.
4. Hot glue burns when you get it on your fingers.  It hurts.  Bad.  As evidenced by the 2nd degree burn on my thumb.  (It almost matches the 2nd degree burn on the index finger on my other hand that I got when I made caramels at Thanksgiving time. Are we seeing a pattern here???)
5. Elmer’s Glue doesn’t burn fingers.  It just makes a gooey mess on my fingers and on the pictures and is slow to dry.
6. The lighting in my kitchen/dining room isn’t good for picture taking.
7. My picture taking skills are heinous.

When doing this with your grandchildren, I think that they will love making an ornament from their picture.  If you keep in mind that the purpose of the activity is to do something fun with your grandchildren (with fingers relatively unscathed — and not be worried about making perfect ornaments that will win a beauty contest), this can be great fun.