And yes, that's worthy of the exclamation points in the title because I am not a very crafty person. I always have visions in my head of things to make that will be fun to do and look lovely, and then I attempt them, and they look horrid. This fall, I took the girls on a walk and we gathered pretty leaves and nuts and then we attempted to make an autumn wreath for the door. Let me just tell you, "lovely" was not a word that you could put to our finished product (though I hung it on the door anyway, because the girls actually did like it). Oh, what a sad little wreath it was.

But this time, for once, the girls and I made a craft and it actually turned out pretty! And so I have to share.



Now, I realize that these are just paper snowflakes. If you've ever been in elementary school, you've made paper snowflakes. These are not a big deal. But what makes these so fun is the subtle blue and gray patterns on the paper, that make them look extra-pretty, in my opinion.

And where, you might wonder, can one find extra-pretty paper with subtle blue and gray geometric patterns on it? In the recycle bin, that's where! Yes, those pretty designs come from the trash. They are the insides of security envelopes. You know, those envelopes that come with your bills, or that you buy so people can't see through the envelope? Turns out that those patterns printed on the inside are actually very neat looking when you stop to admire them.




Now, before you go admiring me for my cleverness and success at green living--making Christmas decorations out of trash; it doesn't get much more eco-friendly than that!--I must admit that this idea was not mine at all, not even a little bit. I was thinking, as we were decorating the house the other day, that some type of snowflake garland might be a nice touch, and I googled "snowflake garland template," and ran across this wonderful crafty blog called "The Craft Revival" which had a whole tutorial on how to make lovely snowflakes out of old envelopes. Her snowflakes are much more intricate and gorgeous than mine, and she gives precise instructions in case you went to the one elementary school in the world that did not make paper snowflakes and you need some instructions. So go check it out.

The final instructions called for sewing the snowflakes together on a sewing machine with plain white thread. At first I was going to ignore that because hauling the sewing machine out of the closet seemed like too much work, and just glue them to some other string or some ribbon. But gluing each individual snowflake to ribbon and waiting for the whole conglomeration to dry sounded like too much work too, so I went with the sewing machine. And I ended up really liking the look of the slender, delicate thread to hang the whole thing together. And, once I had that sewing machine out, I went ahead and made some curtains for the living room! I've had the fabric for about six months now but just have not gotten around to it, but now I'm very glad I did.

Beth and Lucy and I did this together in the afternoon while Evie was napping. It was great because this was easy enough for us to all do together.  Beth was quite skilfull at it, once she got the hang of it--I can't tell which ones were hers and which ones were mine, to be honest.





Lucy enjoyed using the hole puncher more than she did the scissors, and some of hers may not be perfectly symmetrical, but when they're all strung together the effect is still nice.


 It was everything a craft project should be--fun, simple enough for various ages to do but hard enough to keep their interest, requires no special materials, or in this case actually re-uses materials that would have been thrown out--and the result actually looks like something that I want people to see in my house.

If you're a non-crafty mama looking for a little winter project to do with your kiddos, I highly recommend it.