Homemade Christmas Ornaments: Thumbprint Snowmen

Homemade Christmas Ornaments have become a tradition in our house, and these Thumbprint Snowman Ornaments are some of our favorites! Affordable and easy, they are perfect for non-crafty moms and little kids alike!

Each year, I like to think of a few gift ideas that the boys can help me make. Not only is it a fun way to spend time together, but it teaches the children that there just might be more to the holidays than receiving gifts (i.e. GIVING!).

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These homemade gifts are never fancy, never time consuming, and never expensive. Instead, I work hard to come up with ideas that are appropriate for their ages and abilities, that will be fun for them, and that we can finish in one afternoon. After all, preschoolers have short attention spans!

In the end, the boys are always proud of their work and they are SO excited to have something special to wrap up and give to their grandparents and friends!

Shall we get started? You're going to love the short supply list here:

Round ball ornaments (I bought a box of 12 at the dollar store for $2)
White acrylic paint
Sharpie permanent markers in Black, Orange, Red, and Brown

That's it!

The rest is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll show you what we did...

I put a little bit of the white acrylic paint in small bowls for each boy. Then I just explained what we were going to do and we jumped right in! I was trying to get each boy to make three thumbprints on each ornaments (to form the three parts of the snowman). Gibbs quickly got the hang of it and his snowman actually had three distinct body parts!

Casey, on the other hand, kind of just smeared his thumb around and made a general oval shape on each ornament. And you know what? He loved the activity, and I think his little men turned out pretty darn cute! We're not going for "perfect" here...

We set the ornaments aside to dry for a couple of hours, and then I came back later with the Sharpies and drew on the rest of the details -- eyes, carrot noses, smiles, scarves, buttons, and stick arms!