Turn Building Blocks Into Christmas Ornaments

Some people do crossword puzzles to keep their brain sharp. I constantly thinking of ways to repurpose items in our home. Totally the same, right? Hmm. The latest idea was to turn my kids’ natural wood building blocks into Christmas ornaments.

Why?? Let me explain…

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the artwork my kids bring home from school. I’ve saved some of it and every year when I open the holiday boxes and see something they made with their cute little toddler (now big kid) hands, I melt into a pile of mom goo.

This is one of my favorite pieces of ~~foot-made~~ handmade artwork.

If handmade items bring me so much holiday cheer, then it stands to reason our tree needed something handmade too.

Like I do with most of my projects, I shop my home for materials first. These wood building blocks “Santa” is playing with were just begging to be repurposed into ornaments.

The building blocks were made by Handy Husband for our son quite awhile ago. Here’s the info on how he made them. We have a huge basket full of them. These are similar, but with more shapes.

Now, I swear I didn’t rip the building blocks out of his little hands simply for my own crafty purposes.

This time. Ha!

Fact is, like so many toys, our son hasn’t played with the building blocks in over a year. At least.

Repurposing 12 of them for a Christmas ornament project didn’t seem like too much of a stretch.

I asked Handy Husband if he would cut the wood blocks in half and drill a hole in the top of each block. He said, ~~“You want how many?”~~ “Sure honey, anything for you.”

The BEST PART of this process was that our son wanted to help daddy.

The kiddo didn’t use the saw, but he helped with measuring, sanding and with supervision he helped drill the holes in the building blocks.

Handy Husband picked up a lot of his DIY skills by watching and helping his dad. Now I see it happening with the next generation and, yes, it’s another ‘melt into a puddle of mom goo’ moment.

After sanding off the rough bits, I added two coats of stain to the blocks using a rag.

For certain projects, especially small ones, I find using a rag to apply the stain is better in terms of ease-of-use and clean-up. I just throw the rag away when I’m done.

Also, I’d definitely recommend using gloves when working with stain. It’s just not fun to wash it off your hands.

In case you are wondering, I use old cutting boards as a work surface for all our small crafty projects that are done in the house. As you can see, they hold up to a lot of wear and tear!

Back to the project…

When the stain was dry I used a paint pen to add a holiday message to the wood block ornaments.