Today's Special: homemade Christmas decorations

Every year when I lived at home with my parents, I loved putting up Christmas decorations with my mom.  There were two things in particular that I loved putting up, the mistletoe and all of her nativity sets.  I love the tree and the other things like wreathes and garlands, but for some reason those two were my favorite.  I guess it is no surprise to me that for some of our decorations, this is what I found myself making this year:    

Anyone on a tight budget for the holidays could have fun making decorations like this for their house/apartment.  As you can see below, all of the supplies are things that you could almost just find around your house, or pick up for just cents... :)

Supplies needed:

Nativity: (I made this my freshman year at BYU...and I still have it)

marshmallows

pipe-cleaners

Holly berries/Mistletoe :

green and red construction paper

green paint

scissors

hershy's kiss rappers (provided with love by our neighbors' Christmas present)

ribbon (also from the present)

Star:

yellow construction paper

Anyway, the point of all of this for me wasn't really to give a tutorial, I just wanted to share a little of what I have been up to lately.  I am so happy with the way the mistletoe turned out especially, it reminds me a little of one of my favorite children's book illustrators, Eric Carle.  He uses the same technique of painting paper different colors and then cuts it up to make images.