The holidays are a perfect time to fill your house with homemade decorations. Projects are a terrific way to spend time with the kids and you’ll enjoy creating a masterpiece together!
Pinecone Suet Cakes
Here’s a great way to draw birds to the yard during the winter season. They’ll appreciate the extra nutrition, too.
Ingredients:
1 cup peanut butter
1 pound lard
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup oats
1 cup wild birdseed mix
1 cup unsalted/non-roasted sunflower seeds (from the pet section of our store)
In a large pan, melt the lard and peanut butter together, and then stir in the remaining ingredients. Let the mixture cool overnight. Tie a string around the top of an open pinecone, then spread the suet mix over the cone with a butter knife or spoon, working it into the recesses. Hang on a tree branch or on the eave of your house, preferably within sight of a window so that you can bird watch. Happy birds will be flocking around your house in no time!
Paper snowflakes make great decorations for a bulletin board or fridge. This is the best way we’ve found to make sure they turn out just perfect.
- Start with a square piece of paper. (If you’re starting with an 8 1/2" by 11" piece, pull the upper right corner of the sheet down and to the left until the top edge of the sheet aligns with the left side. Make a fold, and cut off the remaining rectangle.)
- Leave the square folded diagonally down the middle.
- Bring the two pointiest corners together and crease.
- Now, turn the least pointy corner so it faces away from you. Bring the left and right sides towards the middle, and fold in thirds. You’ll end up with an arrowhead shape with a shallow upside down V at the bottom.
- Cut across the bottom to make it flat.
- Cut designs into your folded paper, but be sure not to cut all the paper off along the folded sides – it is holding your snowflake together!
- Carefully unfold, and display with pride.
Pom Pom Decorations
These fun, fast and easy pom pom decorations are a cinch to make and a colorful way to brighten up any room or Christmas tree.
- Cut two six-inch lengths of yarn and one twelve-inch length.
- Cut a three-inch by five-inch rectangle from a stiff piece of cardboard.
- Make a small slit in one of the three-inch sides.
- Slide one end of a ball of yarn into the slit to hold it.
- Wrap the yarn around the cardboard the long way, about 25 or 30 times.
- On each side, slide a six-inch length of yarn between the windings and the cardboard, halfway between the ends of the cardboard, and tie them tightly.
- Unhook the yarn from the slit, and gently slide the windings of yarn off of the cardboard.
- Bring the two tied pieces together, and tie them together with the 12-inch piece of yarn.
- Cut through the loops at each end with scissors.
- Tie the ends of the 12-inch piece of yarn together to hang your pom pom.
