Christmas is a special time of year. Christmas is a time to show the people in your life how much you love them and it’s a great way to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and to celebrate with loved ones. Christmas decorations are one thing that makes the Christmas season so amazing. From watching your children’s faces light up when they see the Christmas tree go up to hanging the stockings, Christmas decorations truly make this a wonderful time of year.
Outdoor Christmas decorations are important to the holiday season. Christmas lights are wonderful whether strewn around your home or on trees, or both, to celebrate this wonderful time of year. This year, make some homemade Christmas decorations with your kids. Here are a few fun suggestions:
Plastic Snowmen
Have you been wondering what to do with all of those old shopping bags? Now you have something to do with them, you can create snowmen with them. You will need several shopping bags as you need to create three different-sized balls with them. You also need some extra shopping bags to stuff inside the snowmen. You can buy some wiggly eyes, red and black cotton balls and an orange nose for the snowman at your local craft store. Don’t forget to get a miniature top hat for the snowman along with some metal string so you can hang it. Create several snowmen and hang them from a string of white or colored outdoor lights. This is a simple outdoor Christmas decoration that you can create with the kids during an ‘indoor’ day.
Wooden Candy Canes
While you are at the craft store, purchase some wooden candy canes that you can decorate with paint and lights. You can get small or large candy canes. Some candy canes are about 3 feet tall; they are great for the entryway to your home.
Santa Claus and His Reindeer
Creating Santa Claus and his reindeer with craft wire is another simple outdoor Christmas decoration. You’ll need wire and white and colored Christmas lights. You will need a string of green, red, yellow and multi-colored lights. Shape the wire into a sleigh with a long straight line where you will glue the wire reindeer to it. Now, wrap a string of green lights around the straight line, this will be the reins that hold the reindeer together. Use red to line the sleigh. Once you have the sleigh and reins, attach the reindeer and Santa Claus; use white lights for Santa’s head and beard and red for his body. You can use multi-colored lights for the reindeer. This outdoor decoration does take awhile to create, especially if you want it to be large enough to fit across a couple windows.
Candles
You can make candles out of some red and yellow lights, some wire and your trees. If you have 3-4 trees in a row, you can easily create candles and it will look spectacular. Wrap some red lights around the stump of the tree. Once you are about 3 feet high on the tree. Attach some wire in the shape of a flame. Wrap some yellow lights around the wire section and place it over the top of the red lights. This will appear to look like candles burning on the trees. If you want to make the flames look like they are burning, get some twinkle lights and set the timers to go off at different speeds. This will definitely give your candle trees a cool effect.
There are hundreds of craft projects you can do with some Christmas lights and little creativity. Include your kids in the decorating process as this is a magical time of year for them.