A Christmas activity with a Christmas message

I love doing Christmas crafts and I've finally figured out why after much thought (or at least a couple minutes of thinking).  At Christmas time we have a reason to give all the stuff away.  Crafting is wonderful fun, and it's such a great thing to do with the kids, but then we end up with all this stuff and it breaks each little heart not to keep all the stuff and I'm SO not a stuff-keeper. 

So this is my season!  We make lots of cute things and GIVE THEM AWAY so all the stuff is somebody else's to enjoy (and somebody else's to figure out where to put it).

This year a friend of mine sent me a picture of this awesome craft - only it was made out of large chunks of wood which I didn't have access too.  Her husband owns Prairie Barnwood http://prairiebarnwood.blogspot.com/  and perhaps we'll see this nativity scene made out of 4x4 inch chunks of rustic barnwood someday. 

But for Madison and I we did a mini version.

A wonderful friend's husband cut out all these "body" pieces, and we ordered all the little balls from Canadian Lumber.  We had around 75 full 3-piece sets in total, and first did the craft with the Gems & Knights club at church.  We had around 15 sets left, and Madison and I worked on the rest one morning...

I absolutely LOVE using a glue gun, and usually don't have much reason to pull one out.  This was my time to shine.  I love the complete lack of mess, and I love the instant results.  Quick and clean.   

After we had painted all the Mary's and Joseph's, I glued the bodies together while Madison carefully attached the heads.

I'm so glad my girl is who she is. She's basically up for anything I ask her to do with me... from trying our first fresh lobster on PEI ("we" screamed and had the lady come back and take it away until she'd taken off the legs... well, I screamed and Madison giggled, and then I gagged and Madison giggled.  See, we LOVED the meat, but the legs just look so... but I digress...) to road trips, musicals, crafting and movies, she always shrugs her shoulders and says, "Sure," to most anything I suggest.

Then we had this wire from Dollarama that we cut into 18" lengths and wrapped it around Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, with the back part swinging up over their heads.

We sanded Mary and Joseph so the painting didn't look quite so juvenile...  I call it rustic now...

And then we attached a cardstock star covered in glitter. 

Add a little raffia and...  

Voila!

And here's the best part - we have this beautiful reminder of the real meaning of Christmas.  So many kids' crafts are all about the tree or the snow or Santa or presents, and that's great too.  But I love it when I get a chance to go counter-cultural! 

Nativity scenes are my favorite Christmas decoration, and I now have 3.  A little 3-piece Bengali wooden set from Ten Thousand Villages, a ceramic scene from a local crafter, and  now this cute wooden craft. 

The nativity scene has been badly abused... light-up plastic figurines on the front yard?  plastic sets where the camel legs are bent and they keep falling over?  Please.  This little craft sends a much truer message.  Simple, beautiful, anyone can take part in this.  That's the message of Christmas.

I love fall best of all

I love fall best of all.  I love the colors, the smells and the weather.  I love the breezes and the sense of reaping or harvesting.  I love the start of new things like school and music lessons and drama and church clubs.  But fall seems the shortest season of all where we live. 

 I will always remember the gorgeous colors of the trees along the Saskatchewan river as I rattled over the Hawrelak Bridge on my way to university on the public transit for 4 years (fighting motion sickness and reciting Bible verses to calm myself at the speed our driver went around those corners). 

Somehow amidst the germs and the diesel smell of the bus, I would escape reality to focus on beauty for a little while.  The rich colors only lasted about 2 weeks, and that's part of what made it so special.

My kids' favorite part is carving pumpkins.  I hate that part of fall.  

 I sometimes catch myself thinking, "maybe the kids will forget to ask to carve pumpkins this year."
They never forget.

They beg every year to wield the razor-sharp Henckel knives and I hate the possible blood and trauma.  I insist on doing all the cutting myself.  Each one gets to draw / design their own little pumpkin character, and clean out his innards, but the knives stay in adult hands. 

I hate the goo and the slime and the way the raw pumpkins smell. 

But I love watching their faces as they create and design and scrape and shape this yearly work of art.

Once we get the seeds out we rinse and season them and bake a bunch for snacking and cracking.  That part I like.

My favorite piece of this whole yearly tradition is how much my kids love it.  What is it about turning a large orange vegetable into a face of sorts that makes the kids so excited?  I'm not sure, but the creators of VeggieTales sure knew what they were doing.  

  

And after each little pumpkin head is finished, and we are crunching away on pumpkin seeds and every little face is grinning at their pumpkin friend, I'm always glad I pretended to be excited right along with my little people.  I'm glad I stifled my gag reflex and stuck my hand down inside the stringy, semi-sticky guts of yet another pumpkin, and pulled out the slippery seeds and risked my digits to cut a pair of buck teeth into another pumpkin face. 

And now, even though we've had a beautiful and long-lasting fall, pumpkin season is over, and Christmas is around the corner...

Next... the store-bought gingerbread house with icing that tastes like glue...