Homemade ornaments

 

Homemade Ornaments 

We give our girls ornaments each year to represent something they did from that year.  In the past we've just bought them.  I've wanted to make them, but always ran out of time.  This year, I was talking about them with some friends and we joked about the different things I could tie in from our crazy 2020 year.  Two big things that I wanted to incorporate was toilet paper and perler beads.  Toilet paper for obvious reasons, and perler beads because we did A LOT or perler beads during quarantine and afterwards. 

If you are interested in the how-to on making toilet paper roll flowers.  You can follow the steps on an earlier post of mine here.  

I made mine into a flower shape this time. 

Then, I made my perler bead designs.  I made each perler bead design individual to each girl.  Arya played soccer for the first time this summer, plus she really enjoys her sports. Jensen, started Kindergarten, and Sadie can't get enough ice cream...one time she even ended up with an adult cone by accident.  Plus, we did a lot of DQ drive-thru and had ice cream in the van during quarantine.  

Sadie with her adult sized ice cream

Once they were melted, I just hot glued the perler bead design to the toilet paper flower.  

Finally I punched a hole through the top of the flower and thread some yarn through.  

That's it! It was really easy and a great way to tie in what we did this year. 

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10 ways to reuse that egg carton

There are SO many ways out there to re-use that egg carton.  Maybe you're familiar with all the ways you can re-use it, or maybe it's totally a new thing for you.  Well I wanted to share with you 10 of our favorite ways to re-use our egg cartons. 

1. Jewelry holder

    It's perfect to hold all those small rings.  Plus, putting bracelets in them is pretty easy for little girls and it helps keep them from getting tangled. 

2. Christmas bulb holder

    We use this every year for our Christmas bulbs.  We've had these egg cartons for our Christmas bulbs for years and they hold up so well.  Plus, if they do break apart you can easily get another one.  

3. Card holder for little hands

    Ok have you seen this before?  I was so amazed when this one was told to me.  Have kids who have trouble holding all those cards during a game?  Take an egg carton turn it upside down and there you go an easy way for them to place their cards in.  

4. Paint holder

 https://www.momdot.com/mess-free-painting-egg-carton/

How cool is this, it even has a way to hold the paint brushes! I think this is one of my favorite ways to re-use the egg carton.  We just recently tried this and it works great!  

5. Easter gift: 

Add some eggs and use as an Easter gift.  We were given some egg cartons with fake eggs in them for Easter one year.  This is something you can easily reciprocate by just cutting up your egg carton in half.  

6.  Seed starters

    What a great way to start seeds. Egg cartons (cardboard ones) are compostable. They are a great way to start a seed and transfer it to a garden or bigger garden. 

7. Color sorting 

    Use your paints or some color circles to place in the bottom of each space. Then using some beads or small pom poms, have your preschooler sort the colors into each space. 

8. Counting 

    Write a 1-12 in the spaces. Then practice counting with your preschooler.  Also, if can use your beads or small pom poms again and count how many for each number.  I.e. 7 beads in the 7 space. 

9. Make a craft with it! 

There are so many crafts you can make out of egg cartons.  Here is just one site that has some fun egg carton crafts! 

 The Spruce Crafts, has over 20 different crafts for littles to make with egg cartons.  

10. Finally, re-use it for eggs

A while back I did an IG post on buying our eggs in bulk.  You can check out the post here. Our local Walmart carries them in huge box of about 6 dozen.  I save our egg cartons and use them to redistribute all those eggs from the box and it helps save room in my fridge.  Not to mention, the money it saves on eggs too.   Or, if you are lucky and have someone you know who has fresh eggs, you can always use those cartons then too.