Holiday Gift Boxes

I stole this idea for a gift bag at Walmart – at first I was going to make a reindeer gift bag but decided that by making it a box you can avoid any other wrapping ( or tissue paper) at all. Pop treats in and your gifts are done!  My son made the Rudolph with me then during quiet time I played around and made the other two in about 5 minutes. So easy and you can use them year after year.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some 2 piece gift boxes, sticky back foam, crayons, scissors, painters tape and treats to fill the boxes with . We made fudge.
2. For Rudolf start by tracing your kids hands on the black or brown foam. My son decided to do this solo after I showed him , he was pretty successful!
3. Using painters tape make a v , you can skip this if your child will stay in the lines. Don’t press too hard, these boxes were cheap and as you can see later the tape ripped the finish off a little.
4. Color with brown crayons.
5. While they do that make eyes , cut out the hands and a red nose.
6. Peel tape off.
7. Add eyes,
8. Add antlers- don’t peel the backing all the way off, just on the part that will touch the box.
9. Add the nose
10. Add fudge
11. Go give it to someone special!

Christmas Books

Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo made me cry. It’s a simple story about children’s innocence and giving hearts. A little girl sees a homeless man, and that’s what she sees , a man in need, instead of the stranger her mother sees. When she leaves to go to her Christmas pageant she calls out to him to come, when he does the true meaning of her line in the pageant comes to life. Which is when I choked up. Beautiful illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline accompany this simple tale.

Albert’s Christmas by Leslie Tryon is awesome. I love this book and so did my son. It’s such an original story about a troop of animals who act as a pit crew for Santa and his sleigh. They give the sleigh a tune up just the same way race car pit crews do. If your child has seen the movie Cars , they are sure to make the link. The rhyming text is wonderful the pictures are adorable and the feeling of everyone pitching in made me smile. In a genre of similar stories.

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