School is out until the fifth of January.  Combined with some serious wintry weather here in New England and, well one just hopes that the Christmas present do the trick and I won't have to work too hard to keep them busy.

The first craft was a nice winter-themed one, that they can keep in their rooms throughout the season.  It's seriously easy to make and fun for the kids.

We took empty Belle Fleur packaging and inserted a 3 1/2 inch square patterned piece from the Dude colletion inside that I'd printed on my printer.  Then I took an adhesive 'foamie' snowflake and removed the adhesive backing.  This we sprinkled glitter all over.  Yep, we be sparkling!  And finally adhered the foamie to the paper with a dab of Fabritac adhesive.  If you don't have empty packaging like this, you could use an empty CD case too!

Back to keeping busy, one of the most often seen things on my kitchen table are teeny cootie catchers.  My goodness – the kids go on a cootie catcher bender every know and then!  

While surfing around the internet, I found a website that actually used cootie catchers as menus / programs for a wedding reception.  I think that would be a valid use for these in our home one day.  But let's put that off for a decade or two, ok?

You can make a holiday card based on this great form factor!  Here is one that I just dressed up like the Dickens.  :)  Pardon my pun.

I took the Voila Victorian Ovals self-adhesive ribbon in Cream, and cut off two ovals.  These I cut in half and adhered towards the pointed ends of the flaps.  Then I decorated the flaps with flowers from the Christmas Bubbles floral assortment, and decorated these and the interior selection flaps with Build a Bauble gems.

The cootie catcher has grown up and gotten all sophisticated.  LOL!

But if you have already rocked around the Christmas Tree and need something quick to keep the short people at bay, here is an 8 1/2 x 11 printable cootie catcher template with a Santa theme.

Download the 8 1/2 x 11 (1) cootie catcher template

It is a .JPG file, that is full sized for printing out on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.  I typically use a nice patterned paper, that either has a very subtle color on the side I'm going to print on, or is blank on one side.

If you are lucky enough to have a 12" wide format printer, such as an Epson R1800 / R1900, you can make a 12" wide version.  In fact, during the summer I bought these really cool pieces from Prima that were designed with the cootie catcher in mind.  One side could be used for a BIG version, or the other side has four 6×6 versions waiting to be made!

Download the 12 x 12 (4) cootie catcher template

Whichever you choose, please print out on a piece of scrap paper first to make sure your printer likes what I did, and adjust as necessary.

Your starting piece has to be a square, so once you've printed it out, cut out the printed piece to square and let the folding begin!  If you don't remember how to fold one, never fear!  I found a great website with directions for folding these little cooties.

http://www.momsminivan.com/article-cootie-catcher.html

Have fun!  Stay warm.  Keep busy!