Kids Craft-a-Palooza

In December there was a fun activity one Saturday morning where a couple moms got together, each mom bearing a craft that could be done by lots of kids (I believe we had 18 kids at the activity). It was a fun, crafty few hours, thanks to the genius of this lovely lady, Rachel:

The beauty was that I have very limited patience with my own kids when doing a craft, plus a low tolerance for messes, and after one craft I am tapped out for the day. THIS way, I had LOTS of patience for other people's kids! My one craft's mess was pretty limited, AND the activity wasn't at my house so I didn't worry about it being dragged into other rooms. I only had to do one craft, but my kids came home with 5 or 6! There were adorable tea towels

 Glittery paper snow globes. There were white pom pons glued all over them by the end, they were hung with pride when we got back home!

 Beaded snowflakes. Ethan wasn't into really any of the crafts, but he DOES love stringing beads, so he spent the majority of his time at this table.

 These cool plates! The kids used oil-based permanent markers, then the plates dried for a few days, then baked for a couple hours to help the paint set. Eli and Caroline both worked very hard on their designs, first as sketches, then as final projects - I was impressed at their concentration! The less-impressive part was the project not holding up. It's a pinterest project, just markers on a plate, so it can't be THAT solid, but even with hand-washing they immediately started scratching off. BUT... I try to remind them that a large part of the joy of crafting is in creating, not in then keeping it around forever to collect dust. So they will collect cookies for a few years until the designs are totally gone, but we will enjoy them while they are here :)

 There were a couple other stations, such as candy can reindeer, candy cane mice, and pinecone owls, so I didn't get photos of everything, but trust me - everything was cute! And we moms agreed it was SO much fun, we'll definitely make it a tradition for next year!