More Child-Friendly Christmas Ornaments

My son was about a year old when I wrote this article: Child Friendly Christmas Ornaments. The ornaments worked out great! He loved the Rice Krispie balls and would often snack on them whenever he felt the urge. Of course the dogs enjoyed snacking on them as well.

Last year, when my son was two, I still wanted to do the child-friendly ornaments but I wanted to create something with him rather than just for him. I had the perfect solution!

Christmas crackers and tiny presents as ornaments!

Every small box and toilet paper roll that came into my house was saved. I then purchased lots of bags of sugar free candies. You can always use regular candies but I thought the sugar free versions of Hershey's chocolate miniatures, Peppermint Patties, Life Savers and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups would be more considerate of the diabetics in the family as well as the parents of the children who would no doubt partake of the ornaments. When it was time to put up the Christmas tree, my son and I got to work. We gathered the boxes, rolls and candy, some glue sticks, scotch tape, colored tissue paper and curling ribbon.

I had my son put three (that's how many he was comfortable counting) pieces of candy in each box. Then I'd wrap each box in tissue paper and added a curling ribbon bow for hanging from the tree. My son would do the rest and hang the new ornament from the tree. It was a very good system!

Next, we made Christmas crackers from toilet paper rolls. I'd cut strips of tissue paper that were 91/2 inches wide by about 6-8 inches long. Once the strips were cut, I'd use a glue stick to draw a single line of glue from one end of the roll to the other and stick a piece of tissue to it, leaving 21/2 inches of tissue off each end of the roll. Then I'd roll the tissue onto the roll and seal the end with another line of glue. Then, gently, with a bit of curling ribbon, I'd tie off one end of the tissue covered tube. That's when my son would add three pieces of candy to the package and I'd finish it off with a ribbon at the open end. We had great looking Christmas crackers that cost practically nothing. My son also enjoyed placing each of those onto the tree as well.

Here is where I went wrong last year: M&M's candies bundles.

I wanted to add some more color and variety to the tree so I decided to use some holiday plastic wrap to wrap up ¼ cup bundles of M&M's candies to hang from the tree. Making the bundles was easy and they looked great on the tree. My problem was that my son would take a bundle down, taste each color M&M and then leave it on the floor. That candy shell, when wet, can stain a carpet. It wouldn't have been bad if he'd stopped at one bundle, but he must have been convinced that each bundle's colors would be flavored differently! Eventually they all had to go and I had to scrub the colored dots out of the carpet.

The gift and cracker ornaments were a huge hit! The great thing about them was that they were all gone by the day after Christmas! All I had to do was take down the pre-lit tree!

One word of warning if you go the sugar free candy route - too much sugar free chocolate can have a laxative effect. Some of the kids who came to my house for Christmas didn't know when to stop and I felt a bit like Willy Wonka when they all got their payback for eating too much candy!

Have you got any ideas for child friendly Christmas ornaments? I'd love to hear them!