Christmas Inspiration from Pinterest

The Christmas holidays are full of shopping, baking, decorating, and sometimes it leaves time for craft projects for you and the kids. I happen to love the holidays, not particularly the shopping, but all the family fun activities that take place during this time. There are so many ideas floating around on the internet that you could spend countless hours looking for. I am so glad I found Pinterest, a social media site that helps you to find information on just about anything you can think of.

I enjoy seeing what various Christmas traditions people around the world do with their families. Everyone needs Christmas traditions in their family. It makes for wonderful memories for our children and gives them a sense of security and strength in family when we follow traditions. I was pinning last night and saw a cute idea on Pinterest where a small cabinet with tiny drawers was used as an advent calendar, counting the days until Christmas. Each day the children anticipated the opening of the drawer for that day and finding out what the day’s fun activity was going to be. This particular advent calendar held scriptures of the day as well. Sometimes it was something simple, like wrapping dad up in green streamers and decorating him like a Christmas tree! Other days they got to go somewhere like Chuck E Cheese or a Christmas pageant. You get the idea.

Traditions at my house include opening one gift of your choice on Christmas Eve. I have read about others who do the same but the gift always includes Christmas pajamas, slippers, and Christmas books. We celebrate our extended family Christmas on Christmas Eve as well which initially began when in-laws wanted their celebration on Christmas day so we made the compromise. Now we all love it since it gives the kids a little more time on Christmas morning to enjoy their new toys. Another tradition we have is to decorate sugar cookies. We cut out our sugar cookies as Santa, Christmas trees, ornaments, angels, etc. and then mix up different colors of icing and ice our cookies. My children love doing this each year, we give a lot away as gifts and end up eating as many as we give away.

I love baking cookies at Christmas and have been looking for some new Christmas cookie recipes lately and there is a wealth of recipes on Pinterest. Many sites are for Christmas cookie exchange recipes and they offer more than one kind of cookie, one “pin” equals many recipes! I don’t know about you but I love baking cookies during the holidays. There is nothing better than the smell of freshly baked cookies wafting through the house during the holidays to set the mood and when you add some Christmas music I can’t think of a more wonderful setting. I have found some delicious cookie recipes and some that are great fun to make with the kids and are just adorable. There are so many creative people in this world. This is great for those of us with not so much creativity but lots of desire to create and have fun. I will share a few of these recipes with you that I am going to try this Christmas.

1. Holiday 7-Layer Bars (http://www.bhg.com/recipe/holiday-7-layer-bars/) – I know not everyone shares the same taste buds but these sounded really good to me. The combination of flavors ranging from graham cracker crumb crust, orange peel, coconut, cranberries or dried cherries, and walnuts just reached out and grabbed my taste buds. They look festive and if the imagination of my taste buds is correct they will be scrumptious!

2. Chocolaty Melting Snowmen (http://www.bhg.com/recipe/chocolaty-melting-snowmen/) – These are so cute and would be fun to make with the kids. The cookie itself looks like a chocolate peanut butter cookie. As I was looking at the comments on this recipe it seems there is some confusion about his hat and the use of vanilla flavored candy coating. There are several opinions on the hat but as for me it looks like a miniature peanut butter cup that they have cut into pieces to form the hat. As far as the vanilla flavored candy coating I would think you could use the almond bark or the white chocolate candy cubes you find on the baking isle of your local grocery. I know I would like to give these cuties a try.

3. Chocolate Crinkles (http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/chocolate-crinkles/) – These are simple cookies but have a overall Christmassy look to them because of the powdered sugar they are rolled in before baking. They come out with a crinkly look, thus the name. This recipe says you can use demerara sugar or turbinado sugar which I am not familiar with but I have made these cookies before and have used powdered sugar. I believe the two types of sugar they mention are forms of more natural and healthier sugars.

I am also getting so many ideas for Christmas decorations you can do for practically nothing which is so helpful in our economy today. There are so many cute ideas for decorating your home with things you have on hand and also ways you can include your children in decorating. You know all those Christmas books you have, like the Christmas story, the Grinch, or A Christmas Carol? You can set up a display of those books in your living room or family room to set the mood. I have also seen displays using teddy bears dressed for the cold with scarves, hats, and mittens holding packages. Another idea is a child’s wagon or an old wooden sleigh with packages in/on and around it. If you have access to pine trees then you have a wealth of decorating opportunities. The smell of pine in your home at Christmas (unless you are allergic to it) is another wonderful smell. You can use the pine branches to make your own wreaths or garland for the mantle, just add a few lights or bows and voila! Filling vases or bowls with pine cones either plain or scented, or perhaps sprayed with canned snow or gold paint to make them even more decorative is a nice touch. Something else I thought was really a neat idea was to replace a piece of framed artwork with a piece of cardboard the same size that has been wrapped in a pretty Christmas wrap and put it back in the frame and hang it on the wall. A cute idea for the bathroom was to wrap a Christmas towel set or a solid green, red, or white set with ribbon like a Christmas package and display it.

There are so many ways you can make your home festive without spending a lot of money. I love getting new ideas from Pinterest, you can go in and type just about any search criteria you want and something will come up in that genre. It is a great way to find really neat ideas especially when they are popular pins because you can generally count on that site having really good content. In addition to recipes and decorating ideas there are tons of Christmas crafts for adults and children alike. My favorites lately have been the button crafts that I have seen. My mother has tons of old buttons that she has had since the dawn of time (almost). There are some really cute ideas using Popsicle sticks or craft sticks for kids to put together and use as ornaments for the tree. Just cross three sticks over each other and glue in the middle to make a star. Glue buttons on the sticks or decorate with pom-poms, sequins, or spray with canned snow and you have a really cute ornament to hang from the tree. Another Popsicle stick decoration I like is use one stick for the trunk and four sticks for the limbs starting at the bottom with a long stick, cutting the others shorter going up ending with a cute Christmas tree! And yet one more was using florist wire to string buttons on in the shape of a small wreath (you can use just green or add different colored buttons) and hang it from the tree with a satin ribbon. I think it is just precious. There are many social media sites to choose from, but my favorite is Pinterest. It doesn’t really matter which site you use but to me it is so much easier and a lot more fun to see what others are doing and then look into it yourself for new and creative ideas! Happy holidays to you and yours.

Author Bio: Paul and his wife Julie both spend quite a bit of time coming up with ideas, blogging, and researching all things related to childcare. They take care of all the necessary information related to “babysittingjobs.com/”. He personally thinks his blog will help with finding information on all things related to a babysitter.