Homemade Garland, Painted Wooden Trees & Nutcrackers

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, including amazon affiliate links. For more information on this, please see my Disclaimer and Privacy Policy.

You already know I love mixing crafts with holiday décor! This Christmas, I had a few ideas in mind to add some holiday cheer to our house, while also keeping the kiddos busy indoors and making memories that we can put out year after year!

Supplies for these projects came from Amazon, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and Target, and are all great things to have around if you have supplies left over! Hobby Lobby had sets of 3 paints for $1.99 in Red, White, and Green, as well as a pack of 6 Wooden Nutcrackers. Wooden Trees & Stars are from Amazon, as well as the white wooden beads. The colored wooden beads are from Target and are something we already had, I just took out the colors we were using. And the red&white Christmas twine you can see all over everything this year because I bought a bunch of rolls at Michaels. 😉

We painted the stars for the Garland and the Christmas trees first, and then started stringing beads while they were drying. It took a few sittings to finish, lol… I strung the garland across the living room and slip-tied the twine so that I can slide the beaded pieces up and down the garland depending on where it is hanging! (The Nutcrackers were delivered by our Elves, so we painted those a separate day.) We all know painting with kids can be stressful! Painting on wood requires slightly less-than-washable paint — *CRINGE* — so my head was on a swivel trying to make sure nobody’s hands touched anything! I grabbed a drop cloth off Amazon and used it as a tablecloth so the table was one less thing to worry about! If you’ve read some of my past crafting posts – you also know I use paper plates, plastic cups for water, and always have both wet and dry paper towels on hand so that when you are done… everything can be cleaned up and disposed of quickly before idle hands start messing with it!

Once everything dries… time to decorate! I mixed the trees in with our Christmas Village in between the houses, and on top of the play kitchen, along with a couple of the Nutcrackers. The kids each wanted one of their Nutcrackers in their bedrooms… but Logan swore me to secrecy on who’s is whose. 😉 I ended up hanging the garland around our Christmas Card holder, although it spent a little time in Taylor’s room! The best part is, every year you can decorate with them differently but they will bring back memories of making them together! Make sure you write a name or initial and the year on the bottom of everything… you’ll thank me for it five years from now. 😉

Happy Crafting, and Happy Holidays!

Love, The Quicks!