Celebrating Christmas comes once a year (although we should celebrate the birth of our Savior all year long), and I love to try to make it so absolutely special for my family. Because we make our gifts, it’s always fun to get my husband & kids involved, and work on projects together. Our favorite medium by far is WOOD for Handmade Holidays #3.
Last week I shared Natural Bath & Body Gifts with recipes.
Ready for some woody fun?
My gang loves to give each other gifts, and instead of buying things for them to give each other, we encourage them to make the gifts they give. This usually entails working with them to create the gift, and that’s perfect for us to get to spend some quality time together.
My oldest son amazed me at the gifts he made for his siblings:
A Peg Bead Counter
Just some dowel, beads, and a block of wood. Most all of the supplies can be found at your local craft store.
He gave this to his younger brother who was two at the time. However, all of us have fun not only stacking the beads, but making creative games with it too.
A Spool Stacker
Using a simple wooden box, dowel, balsa wood, and spools with matching scrapbook paper. Again, these can all be found at your local crafts supply.
This is my favorite that he made. It’s so stinking cute and educational. My four-year-old girl just loves it.
The only added piece was a routed pine block that we also drilled to hold the dowels while the game was in use. The top was drawn on with a brown sharpie marker after using a transfer method I discuss HERE.
Travel Tic Tac Toe & Tricky Triangle
Wooden wheel pegs and a block of wood all kept in a basic drawstring canvas bag.
Travel games are great for anyone in the family, and these will encourage brain stimulation more than any smartphone could do.
PRETEND PLAY
I had a blast making these clothespin dolls with canvas backgrounds mounted on dowels using yet another wood box and added wooden accessories.
A simple felt lining to keep the pieces from rattling around inside and create a customized look.
The dresses are bits of small fabric from my stash.
Need somewhere to store all good stuff after the present rush is over? You can build your own under-bed storage or use an unwanted drawer and just add casters.
These drawers are under my boys’ bed and we did them in a horizontal design, but under our 3 girls bed we flipped the layout to a vertical design to fit all 3.
Then, just add a drawer pull and embellish as you wish using paint or a wood-burning tool.
Thankfully, we were able to salvage a large stack of chipboard from my husband’s workplace dump pile to line the bottom and create dividers that can slide out if needed. I’m seriously making some extra storage for myself under our own bed. We never get the fun stuff. hmpf.
GO BIG
Now onto some bigger projects Handmade Holidays #3. A dreamy tree house with handmade bendy dolls, woodland creatures and accessories – using pine plywood, rocks and some imagination.
This water well is made by making a sawdust clay and then adding stones. I love it.
Isn’t that owl adorable? I cut all the animals with a jigsaw because we didn’t have our scroll saw at the time, then hand-painted with acrylics.
When I made this (all by myself – woot!) it was hard to stop from adding more and more. Can you tell I would have loved to have one as a kid? I live vicariously through my children. wink. wink.
This set is over 4 yrs. old and is treat for us all. It really is an easy project, even with making the dolls, furniture, and the forest creatures. Especially compared to the large-scale dollhouses we make for our daughters.
A must-have tool for this project is a Dremel – can I just say I LOVE MY DREMEL!!
COOKING
Although I could keep showing you some other projects we’ve worked on, none surpasses the kitchen in our wood category. We never really use patterns, and this project was no different. Just some basic supplies, hinges, dowel, wood knobs, a steel bowl and creativity.
We use a 3/4″ birch ply, and most everything else came from salvaged items. I use a broken closet rod dowel, leftover bead board, and wood scraps.
I’ll show you how to stock your kitchen next time will all sorts of glorious felt food. I find tins in the clearance aisle, so this is spending pennies in comparison to buying retail.
That’s it for now and I hope you’ve become inspired to give wooden gifts a try. They last forever and are so versatile. Likewise, many blessings to you and your family this holiday season!
Also, more fun like Handmade Holidays #3 for you!
Wow Larissa, I am so impressed by these projects. It takes me back to when I was a child and my parents would make our gifts. He made a kitchen similar to the one you did and the four of us girls just loved it! In fact, all the neighborhood girls did too! Love the tree house – so adorable. Well you got my jaw dropping this morning! Happy Thanksgiving.
Marie@InteriorFrugalista
Larissa, these are all amazing handmade gifts! The clothespin dolls are just adorable. I wanted to make a tree house like that SO bad when my girls were younger. There was one in the Magic Cabin catalog that we loved, but of course it was big $, and I knew we could make something similar. Alas, time slipped by and with our family changes it just never happened.
You are just so awesome, and I know these things will be treasured forever.