Holiday Crafting with Martha Stewart {Naptime Holiday}

I am popping in today with a quick holiday hello and some crafting ideas to kick off the holiday season. Before I begin I need to offer full disclosure and tell you I am not a heavy duty crafter. I like to decorate things here and there, but I’ve never once made anything truly worth displaying. That said, when I was invited to craft with the Martha Stewart Family Room Blog team I jumped at the chance since I knew it would be a chance for me to finally learn how to set-up some great holiday crafts I could do with my daughter. I view crafting together as the same bonding activity as us cooking together, and the more I know about it the more fun it will be for both of us.

For our afternoon of crafting I met Darcy Miller and Jenn Andrlik at a cool crafty shop called Pins & Needles, owned by  Rachel Low, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. They had set up really cute little stations for kids and adults to make ornaments, barrets, bags and a whole bunch of other fun holiday-themed crafts. Naturally, the first thing I gravitated toward making were these Gingerbread Men ornaments, aren’t they cute:

Then I moved in to make these awesome felt ornaments using chalkboard fabric. Isn’t it so cool?! You can write on it with chalk and erase it with your hand! I even bought a half yard for $6 to bring home so I can make these with my daughter after Thanksgiving.

After an hour of chatting, cutting and gluing I had several cutie crafts in my hands to take home. Of course, I am not craft savvy enough yet to memorize all of the steps for making these so the Martha Stewart team directed to the directions for all of these projects in the Martha Stewart Holiday 2011 Special Issue, Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts book and the Pins & Needles archive. They are like recipes, now I have to go home and follow the directions to reproduce everything again and again. Wish me luck for a fun, crafty Christmas season!

Photos by Mike Krautter. Courtesy of Martha Stewart’s “Living in the Family Room” Blog