Pine Cone Ornaments - Guest Post from There's Just One Mommy

We have a treat today!  OneMommy, from There's Just One Mommy is here to share a great activity for making ornaments out of pine cones.  OneMommy is a mom of 2 who has a teaching background and does some fabulous projects with her kids.  She just comes up with so many creative ideas that you have to check out her blog when you get a chance.

Hey, everyone! I'm OneMommy, from There's Just One Mommy. I'm honored to be guest posting here today at Mess for Less. Today I'd like to share one of the many Christmas crafts the kids and I have done recently.

A couple weeks before Thanksgiving the kids and I took a walk and collected pine cones. I had hopes of making turkeys out of them, but it never happened.

What else could we do with them, now that Christmas was fast approaching? Make ornaments!

I assembled the materials: paint (I used a washable acrylic), brushes, ribbons, glitter, and of course the pine cones. It turned out to be the perfect craft for my preschool daughter and I to do while the boys had
time together.

I squirted a few colors on a paper plate for her (her own inexpensive paint palette) and let her get creative.

 

She enjoyed painting red and blue stripes on her first pine cone. The next she mixed the colors together and was thrilled to have purple to paint with!

We also had collected several "prickly balls" that I let her paint.

After painting each object, she sprinkled them with glitter. (This was her first experience with glitter, and she LOVED it... I'm thinking glitter will become a staple in our crafting if she has her way!)

Then we sat all our masterpieces aside to dry for a few hours.

Notice the sparkles...

Once they were dry, she picked ribbons to tie to the pine cones. They made a lovely addition to our tree. (She kept a couple aside for gifts for the grandparents.)

I couldn't figure out how to hang the little "prickly balls," but I did have another plan...

I had her stick them into a clear, plastic jar. (Glass would probably look better, but with her 2 year old brother in the house, I went with plastic.) Then she picked out a pretty ribbon and we hot glued it onto
the jar. Voila`! A beautiful decoration for any table!

 

My little preschooler was super-proud of her Christmas ornaments and couldn't wait to show them off for Daddy! And I enjoyed getting to spend some one on one time just us girls.

Thanks again to Mess for Less for having me over today! Happy crafting, everyone!

Thank you to OneMommy for this great kids activity!  Makes you want to go out and collect some pine cones right?   Here are some of my favorite posts from There's Just One Mommy:
Christmas Tree Craft
We're Going on a Hunt
Toilet Paper Tube Snakes