A Little Christmas Village

I have never had a Christmas village and always wanted one. Given that we have limited storage in our current home, that's probably a good thing. But that doesn't mean we can't make a little village for this year!

I found the idea for this Christmas village in Parents magazine (December 2012). Then I simplified the plan to make it more preschool friendly.

I thought Maddie would get the most fun out of using sparkly paper for the details, so i made the foundation the night before. I gathered some boxes (sample cereal boxes and larger cereal boxes that I cut down.) I cut off the tops and bottoms before gluing white paper around the outside edges. Lastly I cut eves into the top edges of my houses.


The next day, Maddie got to glue on windows and doors (turns out she's a bit Spartan in her design style!) and glue on sparkly roofs. These pieces I had precut and put in her advent calendar envelope.



We put each house on a bed of white felt, and decorated it with cotton balls for snow, our pinecones Christmas trees, and a few snowmen for the fun of it.




What village would be complete without a train?


And a village Christmas tree! This tree was a gift from my friend Libby that she brought back from Germany. It's a music box that plays "O Christmas Tree."

As a child, I used to love decorating for Christmas. My mom let us put up a strand of Christmas lights (that had to be turned off before we fell asleep!) and an old "Charlie Brown" fake tree. I still remember laying in the dark looking at those lights and how exciting it was.

This village was my way of giving Maddie something of the same wonderous feeling. Lets just hope she doesn't ask me to take it away tonight, like she did with the Christmas decorations last year!