Monday, November 24, 2008

Homemade Handmade Holiday Carnival!

Antique Mommy is having a Homemade Handmade Holiday Carnival. (Such a clever idea. I wish I had thought of it.) And despite the fact that she gave us ample warning, I'm not ready. : (

So I am digging into the archives and offering up how we wrapped most of our gifts last year. It's cheap, cute, and the kids can help out. And it will remind me to think up a new design for this year!

The grown-ups in our family don't get Christmas presents as such. We make goodie bags for everyone. They might have baked goods or little trinkets in them. Just a little something so everyone feels loved and festive. The kids and I started making bags a couple of years ago to hold all of this merriment. It's simple, fun, and looks really cute.

We start with plain shopping type bags. You can usually get them in groups of 10 at Target or Wal-Mart or a craft store. We cut out some construction paper in the colors of our choice and we get some kind of foamy stickers.


Of course, you will need your handy dandy glue sticks.

This year we went with brown bags, pink, blue, and white construction paper, and pink, blue, and white stickers. Last year we did white bags, red and green paper, and gingerbread men. The possibilities are endless!



Then you must enlist the aid of some cute little hands to start putting on the paper.


We do this assembly line fashion. It doesn't take more than a few minutes to do it.


Add a few stickers, and this is what you end up with. What this bag needs is a tag.


Either use index cards (no lines, please) or cut out some smaller pieces of paper, add and sticker and a name and - voila! Instant cute.


Now fill your bag, add some tissue, and you have a darling gift bag that says and Merry Christmas! OK, it doesn't really say Merry Christmas. Bags don't talk. But you can say it and they will still be impressed.

Merry Christmas!!

If you want to see how we made cards last year, look here.

And go check out the other cute ideas over at Antique Mommy.

5 comments:

Antique Mommy said...

Looks like fun and my 5YO would love it!

Dana~Are We There Yet? said...

My older kids would make a great assembly line, and they'd get a kick out of making the bags and taking them to the grandparents. Thanks for the great idea!

YD, sometimes with ♥June and ♥Angel Samantha said...

That's a very clever idea!

I think I see my name on one of those tags... ;-)

Anonymous said...

very clever...very cute!

ohAmanda said...

This is a great idea! My daughter would love this!! She loves to wrap presents.

I just posted about gift wrap, too--making bows out of gift wrap. But this is waaaay easier!

a