Welcome to the first installment of Homespun Holidays!

Once a week for the next six weeks we’ll be offering up ways for you to build in family time, have some fun and personalize your holiday season with family-friendly crafts, eats and adventures.

Today, we start it all off with a craft favourite that I am personally quite sentimentally attached to – the bottle-cap Christmas Tree:

It’s odd what makes an impression on us as children.

For me, when it comes to the holidays, one piece of Christmas cheer is the first thing that comes to mind.

Maybe it’s because they still hang on my parents Christmas tree – 30 years old (see below for original one made be me somewhere around 1977), pulled out of the ornament box year after year. Maybe it’s because my Pop is even more sentimental about them than I am (virtually impossible). Mixed in there is most definitely the memories of making these with family and friends, drinking all of those root beers and Cokes to make it all happen.

Bottle Cap Christmas trees are fun, easy and a totally priceless addition to the Christmas boxes you’ll be sending out this year. Nearly everything needed for the craft can either be found in the recycle bin, thrift store or inexpensively picked up at the local craft shop (PJs Arts & Crafts on Cliffe is a great one).

Here’s what you need:

- cardboard (we used old baking mix and cereal boxes)
- glue (Elmers is easier than stick glue)
- scissors
- bottle caps (if you haven’t saved any, Grape Expectations off of Kilpatrick and 27th sells them in bulk or by the bag)
- small beads (we thrifted them. But, PJs has TONS of them)
- yarn (easily thrifted)
- a hole punch
- ribbon

So, what we did was make a template for the tree with our first box and then used it to (roughly) outline the rest of them. I cut all of the trees out (scissors and toddlers are not friends) and the tiny person immediately got on the job of gluing the bottle caps to the trees. Since I wanted to send some of these off for gifts, I decided to give her one tree and a bottle of glue to go to town with, which was an exceptionally messy success and her tree is by far the funkiest and cutest of the bunch.

After gluing all of the bottle caps down, we proceeded to fill up the caps with white glue, which was totally fun. After that, everyone can jump in to fill the caps with all kinds of cool beads. This also could be very cool with bird seed, rice, pebbles, you get the idea.

Spread the trees out on a flat surface and let them dry overnight.

The next day, if you want (they are totally cute without it), cut enough yarn to outline each tree and then glue it around the edge of the tree for an added accent.

Then, use the hole punch to make a hole in the top of the tree, string a lovely ribbon (or some leftover yarn, twine would be cool too) and voila – the bottle-cap Christmas tree is ready for display on whatever tree for which it is meant.

As a final touch, we are going to write up our personal tree story to send off with the ones that are going in gift boxes this year.

Sentimental? You betcha!