Fun Christmas Activities: Popcorn Strings, Dough Decorations and Hanging Christmas Cards

Every year at Christmas time our kids enjoy dressing up our Christmas tree. They like to say 'they' decorated it to everyone who comes to visit, even at their ages of sixteen and eighteen. Our tree has always had some form of homemade Christmas decorations on it and since they were a very young age there were three types of decorations that we made or put on our tree to help make it more festive.

Homemade popcorn strings

My son mentioned to me this year that we have yet to add one final touch to our tree: Our homemade popcorn strings. We pop fresh popcorn just about every year, color or decorate the popcorn and the kids wrap the freshly decorated strings all around our Christmas tree. Stringing the popcorn is a family job that we all take turns doing and seems to take hours to do but we all have fun sitting around in our living room spending that time together. To color it you can use finger paint from a local dollar store or some paint and glitter or whatever you can afford to decorate it with. We have been known to use food coloring in the oil used to pop the popcorn and shake it all about when it is done but fair warning when doing that: the food coloring has been known to leave color marks on our hands if the coloring is still wet or our hands get wet while stringing the popcorn and that includes sweating. Other than that, this is a fun and very cheap decoration that everyone can enjoy and take part of.

Homemade flour/dough decorations

Another type of decoration that our kids used to love making are those homemade flour/dough decorations. Following a very simple recipe you and your children can make your own decorations to put on your tree. For the dough you would use three cups of flour, one cup of salt and one cup of water. Mix it up till it is soft and pliable. Don't leave this mixture laying around for too long where the air can get to it. If for any reason you must leave it for any give amount of time, cover it with plastic and a towel to help keep the dough from drying out until you can get back to it.

Once your dough is mixed up then roll it out with a rolling pin or anything that rolls. I have used cooking spray, soda bottles or anything that would roll; including canned goods if that is all we had at the time. Start preheating your oven to two hundred seventy-five degrees. Once rolled out you can use cookie cutters to cut out shapes or even draw out shapes in the dough and help your children cut the dough shapes with a plastic butter knife or whatever you have to cut the shapes out with. Be creative. Allow your children to be creative designing their own snowmen, Santa Claus, reindeer or anything that they think would be a neat or pretty Christmas decoration. Now to make sure that you will be able to hang up your decorations, use a straw to poke holes in the top of your decorations and remove that dough (where the hole will be). Once you have cut out all of your dough, place your decorations on a cookie sheet or biscuit pan and cook your decorations for one hour.

After the decorations are done, let them cool until you can handle them safely and now some more fun begins. You can take the same paint or gel or glue and glitter you may have had to paint your popcorn strings and make your decorations a work of art! Anything goes when it comes to our children and their artwork.

When the paint or glue has dried and your decorations are ready to go onto your tree, you can take just about anything to hang your children's decorations, from thread to ribbon to even dental floss if that is all you have. Whatever it takes to put those beautiful works of art on the tree and show them off to the world for everyone to see!

Finally last but not least we have our third cheap but fun Christmas decoration.

Hanging received Christmas cards on the tree

To show respect and love to those who thought enough of us to send us a Christmas card, we put a small hole in the folded upper left side of the cards received. From there we put a string or ribbon on the card usually so it will hang approximately and inch or two inches; just enough string to hang them on but not too much so that they would hang too far or swing around instead of staying in place on the tree. This for us is a very important tradition during this time of year. To us it symbolizes showing the love received and showing love for those people for all to see who grace our residence this beautiful time of year!

So there you go. Three simple, cheap, fun ways to decorate your tree at Christmas time that everyone in the home, from very young to adults and beyond that can share in. What a wonderful way to spend family time, not only decorating the tree, but making the decorations to decorate the tree with. How much fun is that!!