Catching Up - Ornaments

It seems crazy that it is the middle of December and we haven't done anything for Christmas yet.  No shopping, no baking, no gingerbread houses, nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Between end of semester stuff for the girls and graduating for me, things have just been crazy.  Last week I went to Michael's for some reason, and as I was walking by the Christmas crafts I noticed some Make-It Bake-It ornaments just like the ones we made when I was a kid for $1.00 each.  I picked out a few, and took them home, where they proceeded to languish on the counter, lonely and forgotten.  Well, not forgotten, just not at the top of the priority list. 

So, I finally decided we NEEDED to do something Christmasy, and (in our one spare hour) I pulled these out.  We each picked two - Maggie chose the angel and the candy cane, Gracie chose the drum and the wreath, and I had the tree and the Santa.  Each one came with three colors of beads, but we shared so we could be more colorful than average.  The girls thought it was neat that this was something that Aunt Amy and I had done as kids too, although I thought that my girls must be much more coordinated that we were, because they didn't get the crystals all mixed up like we did.  Of course, I think we used spoons, or maybe our fingers, while my girls had tweezers and the best invention ever - soda straws cut on a diagonal!  Oh the precision!!!  Our only mishap was when Maggie was working on her angel and accidentally picked up the metal frame rather than the crystal she was aiming for - oops!  We quickly got back on track though.  

We got the little buggers in the oven, where the crystals were supposed to melt in 15 to 20 minutes.  Only they didn't.  Because we had somewhere to be in 30 minutes.  And they weren't nearly done.  Aargh!  So I quickly ran into the office and dug out the instruction manual for the oven and figured out how to set it to turn off in a certain number of minutes, and we went out the door - ornaments baking away.  When we got back and removed them from the oven, they looked like this: 

The girls were so impressed!  The colors are so much more vivid that the suncatchers you just paint.  They even said they would like to do it again.  (And Santa heard - and got them each one that matched their room decor in their stockings for Christmas!)

You know what was funny - later, on Christmas Eve, the girls found the ornaments that Amy and I made on mom's Christmas tree - including the exact same candy cane and wreath.  Only ours were a bit muddled (spoons, remember?)  I love getting to relive my childhood through my kids.  It might even be better the second time around.