Getting Real With Veronica Ibarra

This year we decided to have a home crafted Christmas. With all the art supplies I have squirreled away, and tons of imagination we are making due with what we have and seeing how far that takes us.

I have always been a crafty collector of stuff. If I saw that some scrap or other was perfectly usable if I could ever think of something to do with it, I hid it in a drawer or box with a bunch of other scraps and nick-knacks. However, I have always been strategic about what I saved and where I put it. Clutter is not something I enjoy, so organization has always been important.

One of the projects my daughter set her heart on was based on the Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Thanks to the holiday music coming out prior to Thanksgiving, she latched on to that song and has been singing it non-stop. She started asking questions about it. After sitting down with the lyrics and doing the math because we are obviously that crazy we figured that if you received every single gift in the song as it is sung you would receive 364 gifts, most of which would either be people or birds. This made us both laugh, but also sparked the idea that if we made all 364 gifts we could decorate the entire tree this year.

With all the construction paper, felt, craft foam, Popsicle sticks, fake jewels, scrapbook paper, scissors, tape, glue, markers, crayons, paints, and other things we have stuffed in various places throughout my library and crafting desk we have everything we could possibly need. So far we’ve used Bendaroos to make almost all 40 of our golden rings, though we did find a few plastic gold rings from some wedding scrapbook kit from long ago. We started on our 36 ladies dancing using Popsicle sticks, fake jewels, crafting foam, ribbons, and glue. We have 17 of those made so far. And we have 6 of our 30 French hens made using an old coloring book of farm animals, markers, and some random little plastic favor baskets I found in a box of Easter decorations. And the project continues with us doing a little each day.

We have also already made our Christmas count down chain using strips of green card stock that I had stashed away after some random project I can’t even remember. Not all of the links are in green. My daughter decided that her birthday should be a pink link, and of course we had to do that. We also have two other special links decorated for Yule and Christmas because we celebrate both.

All of our Christmas shopping is done except for the sundry goodies that Santa will be stuffing in stockings and whatever feasting ingredients we’ll be needing for our bountiful means. We’ll also be making all our cards this year because my son likes making hand prints. When you have this much crafting and art supplies just hanging around and kids that claim boredom at random it just makes sense to make the most of both for some holiday fun.