our autumn mantel

Our mantel has hand-crafted decorations this year, mostly because everything has to be toddler-friendly – in fact, my boys, ages 3 and almost 2, helped make all of the decorations, except the wreath, which required a hot glue gun – so it turned out be a great way to include them in the holidays.

Of course, we didn’t make the candleholders. :P

The wreath is just a bag of dollar store leaves hot glued onto a cardboard circle – it’s not very 3-D, but it was inexpensive and fun for the boys. My three year old likes the red ones the best.

The paper pumpkins were part of a craft during our letter of the week a few weeks back. The banner was the biggest project out of everything. My inspiration was this cute apple burlap banner I found via Pinterest, but I made a couple modifications. My boys are learning shapes, so they picked triangles. After sewing casings on each triangle, I slipped them onto a long chain of earth toned ombre yarn. Pretty easy, and I think you can imagine how much a three year old and a 23 month old enjoyed painting apples…mostly the paint : )

I confess, I’m going to start Christmas decorations this weekend. I know it’s before Thanksgiving, but with three children ages 3 & under, I won’t get anything done if I wait! We may even get our Christmas tree early this year. Normally we have an artificial tree, but it’s falling apart. Last year I had to tie the pieces together and anchor it to the walls & ceiling with fishing line. Quite a sight. This year we want to get a real tree from a tree farm, so the boys will enjoy picking out a tree and cutting it down. Lots of fun, and they may even get to meet Santa!

Thanks for stopping by :)

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