…away in a manger…

It’s an annual occurance. The tree comes out, the kids go nuts getting it up and decorated, the lights twinkle away, and it’s my turn – the Annual Barefoot Museum of Christmas Crafts gets installed. With that done, I do a walk through to determine how many bare walls and corners remain, and start adding ideas to our Advent activity calendar to fill those bare spaces.

In a five bedroom house, of course, it was easy to display a decade worth of kid crafts and add more. Now we live in a cozy little cabin, the majority of our previous works stay packed away. It also means I need to be a little judicious about what we add to the collection while we craft our way through the silly season. Small and simple is the name of the game!

The first addition, was a cute paper cut nativity scene. I found this one on Pinterest, and while the template is part of a paid membership** club, there were enough goodies in the December pack for me to feel it was worthwhile to splurge on a month’s membership and download All The Things.

We also had a minor problem last year, in that while we could find the handmade decorations, we couldn’t find the actual baubles and main decorations box. It was …somewhere…in a safe place…in storage. And of course we couldn’t buy the same colour decorations again, could we? Our colour scheme completely changed in an afternoon, and so I figured – time to buy some craft supplies. I ended up running out of time to use the felt balls I ordered in our new colour scheme, but that just meant we were ready to go straight away this year!

How cute are these felt ball wreaths? A doll making needle, a bit of twine, and let the kids go nuts. They turned out so well, for something so simple.

The final addition to our tree this year, is one I found on Instagram. I sent it to the crafty partner in crime, suggesting we make one as part of our crazy advent craftapalooza. She looked at me like I was mad, and didn’t I think our list was optimistic enough? She was right, of course, but I couldn’t resist, and with a spare 20 minutes to hand, I got to work.

Isn’t it adorable? I probably had more productive things I could have done with that time, but we have a caravan as a bit of spare space in this crazy large family tiny house life, and I couldn’t get the ornament out of my mind, so decided to make it anyway. It will serve as a reminder, when we are in our new house, of the adventures we had while we waited in this in-between, making-do, time in the cabin

It’s fun, finding ways to bring our crafty touches to a tiny space. Next year, hopefully, we will have space to spread out and go nuts. Living rooms! School rooms! Decks! Bedrooms! So many walls and corners to decorate. In the meantime, we make for the now, to celebrate this stage in our lives.

** I found the membership such good value while I subscribed that I am now an affiliate, which means if you click this link and make a purchase, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only ever affiliate link to products and places I genuinely use and love. Thank you for supporting my blog!