61) Pasta Snowflake Ornaments

Shortly after decorating our tree I undecorated the bottom 1/3, or to be more accurate The Bean undecorated the bottom 1/3. I am sure we are not the only family with a partially undecorated tree. It seems inevitable that any toddler would want to touch a shiny, pretty decoration on a cool tree right at their height in their house. Really, I wouldn't mind her touching the tree and decorations so much if they weren't glass and I wasn't so worried about them breaking and hurting someone. So to remedy our unbalanced tree situation, we decided to make some ornaments that were a little less fragile. The inspiration for these ornaments came via Pinterest, of course, from Katy Elliott: Home+Art+Food .

We actually made the ornaments last week with the help of our friend Debbie. She and I did most of the gluing, using pasta wheels and tacky glue. The Bee made a collage gluing pasta to paper and The Bean had a blast sorting dry pasta into an ice cube tray. Debbie and I enjoyed making a variety of snowflake patterns and Debbie even came up with an awesome tree pattern. Once the glue had dried, I took the pasta ornaments outside and gave them a coat of silver or red spray paint. Then came the real fun, the glitter! Glitter is not my favorite but I knew The Bee would love it. So we set up a glitter station, she first painted each ornament with modge podge and then dipped them into a plate of glitter. She had the best time and despite her best attempts made the biggest mess. There was glitter everywhere, but I figure sometimes a little mess is worth it. I was able to vacuum up most of the glitter and we all just looked a little more festive for the rest of the day. After the glitter and modge podge dried I just attached wire ornament hooks on the snowflakes and hung them on the tree. They look great, and I have no worries about them getting broken. They are surprisingly durable and we can always make more!