MOLLY MAID Green Christmas Ideas: 5 Homemade Decorations

If you’re dreaming of a green Christmas, why not plan a few craft days for your family and make your own holiday decorations.

Homemade decorations are perfect to use to decorate gifts, display around the house, or hang on the tree… and making them together is a wonderful way to celebrate the season and make the holiday a little greener.

Your little ones can help with these but always supervise children of all ages especially when hot glue guns and the oven(for baking edible cookie decorations) are involved. (The expert house cleaners at MOLLY MAID also recommend cleaning up the craft table when you’re finished to avoid spills and other problems.)

PAPER BAUBLE

What You Need for One

• 4 1 cm x 40 cm strips of gold paper or decorative paper
• brass fasteners
• gold string or wire
• hand-held hole puncher

How To Make It

1.     Punch a hole in the centre of each strip of paper.
2.       Punch a hole at both ends, 1cm from each edge.
3.     Position a brass fastener so that the prongs are facing upwards.
4.     Insert each of the 4 strips onto the fastener through the middle hole. Lay the strips evenly in a star shape.
5.     Close the fastener.
6.       Gather the ends toward the centre, overlapping them and repeating until all strips are gathered. Insert the brass fastener and close it. Tie either apiece of gold string or gold wire to the fastener.

LOLLY STAR

What You Need for One

• 3 lolly sticks
• craft glue
• red wool string or ribbon

How To Make It

1. Lay the lolly sticks out in the shape of a star overlapping them at the centre.
2. Glue the centre overlapping point together.
3. Tie the centre portion together with the string or ribbon

PINE CONE ORNAMENTS

What You Need

• pine cones (collecting pine cones is a wonderful, fun outing!)
• 2 12-inch red, gold and/or silver ribbons
• hot glue gun

How To Make It

Loop one 12-inch piece of ribbon into a loop and glue it to the pinecone’s base.

Tie another 12 inch long ribbon into a bow, and glue it over the ends of the first ribbon.

BUTTON TREES

What You Need for One

• 1 thin pipe cleaner
• small ‘thread-able’ bead or bell
• thread-able buttons (with at least two holes each) of different sizes

How To Make It

1. Sort buttons from smallest to largest size.
2. Fold the pipe cleaner in half to find the midway point.
3. Open up the pipe cleaner and thread the bead or bell on until it sits at the midway point.
4. Starting with the largest button, thread each end of the pipe cleaner through opposite holes on the button (this could be the trickiest part for young children). Push the button so that it sits on top of the bead.
5. Repeat with different sized buttons, working from the largest to smallest to create a miniature tree shape.
6. Once the pipe cleaner is filled, twist the remaining ends together and fashion into a hook shape to hang on a branch of your tree.

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS CHRISTMAS COOKIES

What You Need

• 350 g/12 oz plain flour
• 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tbsp salt (half)
• 100 g/4 oz butter
• 175 g/6 oz soft brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 4 tbsp golden syrup
• different coloured fruit flavoured boiled sweets
• narrow ribbon
• holiday cookie cutter shapes (such as stars, bells, reindeerand Christmas trees)

How to Make Cookies

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. In a bowl, mix together flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger andsalt.
3. Rub in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Stir in thesugar.
4. In a separate bowl, beat together the egg and golden syrup. Then, add to flour mixture and mix together to form smooth dough, kneading lightly with your hands.
5. On a flat surface, crush the sweets in their wrappers using a rolling pin. Remove wrappers.
6. Sprinkle flour on a clean work surface and roll out the dough until about 1/2cm (1/4in) thick.
7. Cut out different holiday shapes from the dough and transfer to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
8. Cut out shapes in the centre of each cookie, making sure you leave a good edge all around the biscuit. Completely fill that space in each biscuit with crushed boiled sweets.
9. Make a hole at the top of each biscuit using a drinking straw (so you will be able to thread a ribbon through it later).
10. Bake cookies for 11-12 minutes until golden (the crushed candy will melt and harden giving a transparent, stained-glass look).
11. Cool, thread a ribbon through each one to make a hanger, and hang on your tree.

Makes 25 cookies.

See Full Bio