Sunday Morning Christmas Crafts

We live next to the ocean, so it's only logical that our decorations and crafts should reflect our location, right? Or rather, let me wax poetic on the wonders of my hot glue gun...

My daughter is headed out to see the Nutcracker ballet today with friends - I'm dropping her off in her fancy dress and shiny shoes at noon - but she wanted to "do something Christmas-y" this morning as well. So we pulled out the ol' hot glue gun and played for a few hours.

I still have the hardened glue under my fingernails as I type this.

But we had fun. She only burned her fingers once. And she stuck with it for the two hours it took to puzzle all the shells together so that no Styrofoam showed through. At first we talked about who to give it to fro Christmas, but after the first hour we had pretty much decided to keep it.

For anyone inspired to make a similar decoration for their seaside home...

You will need:
About 2 hours of undivided attention
Styrofoam cone form
Circle of cardboard for base
Hot glue gun & a lot of glue sticks. A lot.
Newspaper to cover work space
assorted shells of various sizes: collected, soaked in bleach solution, dried thoroughly
sand dollar or starfish for the top of the tree

10 Easy Steps:
1. Sort the shells by size, type and shape (good job for small child)
2. Glue cone to cardboard base
3. Start at the base, going around the circle to fit shells together gluing on one by one.
4. Continue up the tree. Keep cursing to a minimum if working with small child.
5. Fill any gaps as you go or at the end, or both (as we did)
6. Let child help choose shells that fit from the size piles she/he has sorted.
7. Let child glue some shells, make sure there is cold water for when they get burned.
8. Let child glue star to the top of tree.
9. Argue about whether or not to paint the whole thing with gloppy glitter glue (I may still lose that argument)
10. Find a place to display new family heirloom!

Twelve More Days Until Christmas... !