Gettin' Crafty Wit' It.

Well, we went and got all crafty again. I don't know what it is. I went my whole life without stepping foot in a Michael's or JoAnn's, and here I have gone twice in the last six months.

We felt like the kids are old enough to start giving gifts to each other for Christmas. Jonah still doesn't quite get it. Anytime I tried to ask him about getting a present for Noel he would just say, "Why don't you just go get a present for me, and you can get one for Noel too?" Hmmm...

A friend of mine takes her kids to the dollar store and gives them each a dollar and they can pick out whatever they want for each other. That seemed fun, but ultimately we would just end up with a lot of crap from the Dollar Store. Another friend of mine has her kids make presents for each other. That way the money spent is minimal and they get the satisfaction of doing the work. And while I don't know if we will ever reach her level of awesome homemadeness, we thought we would give it a go.
So we busted out the paints and markers and goodly eyes and new mini glue gun and set off. We didn't try to keep it a secret. And this was the result:
They each mad a couple of egg carton bugs for each other. Every time we would say to Noel "Noel, what a cute bug you made!" Jonah would say, "Excuse me, Don't you know that bug is my Christmas present?" So there will be no surprise on Christmas morning. But they seemed to have fun. And Jonah was thrilled to help wrap them and put the under the tree while Noel played computer games.

And I must say, that picture is misleading. It makes it look like I was doing the work. Amy actually did all of the bug construction and got paint and hot glue all over her hands and tried to keep the kids clean while I put my head down to make a wreath for the entryway:
So give credit where credit is due. Amy did all the work and all the photo taking.