Hello! My name is Sarah, Ben’s wife and the main decorator for our Theastmas parties. I’m going to be adding in a few posts of my own with some craft and food ideas!

Last year we added two new decorations: a large wooden Theastmas snowman for the front yard and a Theastmas turkey made from paper lanterns.

The snowman was really easy. We picked it up at a yard sale and touched up the paint. I bought a few pieces of thin wood which I trimmed to make a talk bubble, Easter basket and eggs, and a cornucopia. I found some of the wood pieces like the apples and pumpkin at my local craft stores. I painted and glued the new pieces onto the snowman. For the larger pieces, like the basket, I also used a staple gun. It was amazing in the front yard because we didn’t have a lot of outside decorations.

For the snowman’s cornucopia, I bought a package of pumpkin shapes, although I only ended up only using one. The rest were put at the craft table with the coloring sheets for the kids.

The paper lantern turkey was a little more time consuming. It was also last minute, so hopefully the next time I try to make one, I can figure out how to keep everything attached and still be able to collapse for easy storage.

I bought two gold paper lanterns (brown probably would have been better). I believe the sizes were 10″ and 8″. My other supplies included: hot glue gun and hot glue, large googly eyes, large foam sheets, sharp scissors, and a wire cutter. I used hot glue to attach everything. Watch your fingers! I burned myself a few times.

I assembled the paper lanterns and snipped off the hooks. I then glued the two lanterns together to form a snowman type of body. Next, I cut out different sized and colored feathers, a wattle, and beak from the foam sheets. The beak was a large diamond shape, which I perforated in the middle so it would fold into the beak shape. I attached the wattle and beak in the center of the top lantern. I glued the feathers on the bottom lantern in layers to create a fuller effect. Finally, I glued on the eyes. I liked how it turned out, although it is back heavy, so I had to put a weight on the inside bottom to keep it from tipping over.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have fun creating your own Theastmas decorations!