Homemade Christmas Tree Decorations: Walnut Babies & Dried Orange Slices

Our Advent activity calendar yesterday instructed us to make some Christmas tree decorations and I have been wanting to have a go at making walnut babies ever since I first saw them on Red Ted Art.

I split a walnut into two halves by carefully inserting a knife into a weak point and wiggling it around a bit until it opened. We took a half each, and it was a lovely activity for us to do together side by side (as usual we do these kind of crafts while Little is sleeping, poor Little always missing out!). Poppet said she was making a cot for baby Jesus.

We cut some little bits of green ribbon and glued them into the shells, then left them to dry a little bit while we worked on making our babies. We didn't have any wooden beads to use as heads like the instructions specified but instead used cotton wool tightly packed into sheer beige material (leftover from Grandma's wedding outfit!) and tied with thread (we found out how to do that here). We secured a pipe cleaner in the head as well, that would form the body.

I trimmed the pipe cleaner and then wound them round Poppet's finger to curl them into a body shape.

Our babies

We cut tiny scraps of fabric and used one piece to make a little 'pillow' and one to make a little blanket. We glued the pillow into the walnut shell, then glued the baby in and finally covered the blanket in glue and tucked it around. It was quite fiddly so Poppet needed assistance but she was fascinated by it all.

With our babies all tucked up in their walnut cots all that was left was to draw a face on which Poppet was very keen to do. I did mine first while she watched eagerly then passed her the permanent marker.

She did a great job but always wanting to go one better, she decided to give her baby 'eyebrows' as well!

She is so proud of her little walnut baby hanging in the tree! They look so cute.

We also made some very quick and easy orange slice tree decorations. I had already dried some slices of orange, so all we had to do was push a skewer through to make a hole then thread a piece of ribbon through it to tie it up with. 

I love how they look in the tree. Obviously so did Little because she would make a beeline for the orange slices, pull them off the tree and take them away to chew on them. Poppet would retrieve them and hand it back to me complaining that her sister had "wet it". So we have hung them high up now out of Little's reach.

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 2mos