I think I finally figured out the reason behind why I hated making crafts all those years. It was the hassle of buying all of those darn materials! Not to mention all of the silly amounts of who-knows-what that's leftover at the end. I've come up with the solution: only make crafts out of stuff I already have. This is a particularly good system for me because I've had too many experiences destroying a craft I just spent $15 buying all of the supplies for. HA.  Maybe someday I'll be confident enough in my craft-making that I can buy materials specifically for the purpose for making crafts - but for now I'm having fun trying to be creative with the materials I have at hand. 

With that being said: I present to you my first-ever completely-made-up-and-randomly-assembled Classroom Holiday Banner! 

These are the materials I used:

Cardstock (to cut out in the penant shape and then use as stencil)

red construction paper

white cardstock

thread from a piece of burlap

two pencils (one with a BRAND NEW eraser)

ink pad

little baby clothes pins (originally used for lunch-count but then too many broke. I got them at Wal-Mart by the way, aren't they ADORABLE???)

scissors

glue

The main thing that I thought was pretty exciting about this craft was the fact that I used a [brand new] pencil eraser as the stamp to make my polka dots. ((TELL ME I'VE CLEVER. ;))) Also, I feel it would be dishonest if I didn't mention the fact that I had the assistance of a Cricut to cut my 2" letters. BUT the "E" you see in the sample below was done freehand so I know it's possible!

The best part is that when I sent a picture of my cute-lil-sign to Stephen all he said was, "Cute. But you don't really want it to snow." HAHA. Truer words were never spoken. I let my class vote on what they wanted to the banner to say. My favorite option was "falalala" but sadly it only got three votes!

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han