Theme Your Christmas

Creative people add themes to everything. And I'm talking EVERYTHING. Even Christmas. Since Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them came out, our love of Harry Potter surfaced again, inspiring our theme this year. Here's my video about how I infused our Christmas season with everything Harry Potter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4yRxfMf4Zw

I've placed links to all of the printable items from this video in the description section on YouTube. The Snitch ornaments and the tree skirt instructions are below:

SNITCH ORNAMENT

I bought 4 containers of 5 plastic bird ornaments (for the wings of the Snitch). Basically I walked into the store looking for anything that had wings, or something that could resemble the wings of a snitch. 4 packages was enough to make 10 snitches. I also bought a package of plastic, gold ornaments about the size of a golf ball. These came in packages of 12, so I had 2 left over that I just threw away. 

Using scissors, I cut off the part of the wing that I wanted to use for the snitch. Leave a little nub of plastic on the end so you can use this to glue into the ball.

Heat a flat-head screwdriver over the flame of a candle then press it into the plastic ball. It will melt through and leave a little hole where you can stick the end of the wing. 

Stick the nub of the wing into the hole and superglue it. Hot glue might work too, but I used an industrial strength superglue which worked perfectly. 

MARAUDERS MAP TREE SKIRT

I bought a cheap felt tree skirt from Walmart. The color doesn't matter because it will be covered.  You'll also need an old beige or light tan sheet. 

My tree skirt had scalloped edges, so I cut it off to a smooth circle. 

Using the felt tree skirt as a patter, cut out a circle from your sheet, leaving it about two inches bigger, so you can fold the edges over. Use a spray adhesive to stick the sheet to the felt tree skirt. Remember to fold the edges over and glue them too. 

I hit the edge of my tree skirt with a light brown spray paint just to give it that old Marauder's map look. Use any printout of the Marauder's Map for inspiration and go to town with a black marker. I used a tracer and projected the image onto my tree skirt so I could trace it, but  that was kind of tedious.  I ended up free handing the rest of it. I made things up as I went, and the words I put on it are completely gibberish, but no one will know. The best part was adding the footprints and labeling them with the kid's names. They got to pick where they wanted to be on the map. 

 

I hope this inspires you to go out and add a theme into your holidays.