Christmas crafting - day 2

Today, I had in mind to make salt dough ornaments, like I remember doing as a child. However, upon investigation this morning I discovered we didn’t have nearly enough salt for the recipe.

Instead I was thinking these sweet little bird ornaments. I was envisioning cutting out the shapes, letting the kids color them, and stringing them up with ribbon.

That is not, however, what happened.

I decided to remain flexible.

Instead what did we make?

Glad you asked.

Dragons. That is right. Christmas dragons. You know, like Rudolph the Red-nosed Dragon, Frosty the Snowdragon? Of course. Silly me.

As soon as we woke up little man started coloring. Markers were out before I was out of my bathrobe.

dragons created by the dragon master, little man.
oh, and the scribbles in the center are by little miss
"my good job" as she called it...

Dragons. All about the dragons. He made several and then I suggest the Christmas bird ornaments.

He says, NO MOM. WHAT ABOUT CHRISTMAS DRAGONS? AND THEN INSTEAD OF HANGING IT ON THE TREE YOU CAN LET ME PLAY WITH IT.

Umm. Okay?

So I google dragon images (CAUTION: many many questionable images come up when googling dragons) and I sketch one out and then cut it out on cardboard and he tells me what I am doing wrong.

NO MOM. HE NEEDS LEGS.

Of course he does, what was I thinking.

And then markers don’t cut it. (YOU CAN STILL SEE THE CHEERIOS ON THE CARBOARD MOM) So I laboriously cut out green paper to cover the dragon.

BOTH SIDES MOM.

Okay. Both sides.

We then insert the flapping wings.

TAPE IT SO IT DOESN’T COME OUT MOM.

And little man colors in eyes and scales and fire in the mouth.

I make exactly one and a half Christmas birds and abandon the idea. That shit ain’t going on my tree.

yes, we are wearing steelers jerseys today...

While we produced exactly NOTHING worth posting about or hanging on the tree I would call it success. I didn’t lose my cool. He didn’t run away yelling at me.

Apparently one CAN craft with children, as long as one is prepared to spend 30 minutes making exactly one Christmas dragon and trashing one’s living room in the process. It would appear the key to crafting with children then is … to let the children do the crafting.

Still gonna try for the salt dough ornaments though, maybe tomorrow.

Stay tuned...

Ack. Is it Friday yet?