Pine Cone Christmas Trees

There was something similar to this in an Oriental Trading Company catalogue. It seemed easy enough to do so we created our own version. I found scented pine cones at Bed Bath and Beyond. I probably could have just gone down the street and harvested some from the park but lets face it, it's really cold outside and I try to ignore winter weather as much as possible. I had some gingerbread play-dough left over from a few weeks ago so I took it and formed little balls to use as bases for the trees. We turned the pine cones upside down so that the flat side was on the bottom and squished them into the play-dough. By wiggling it gently back and forth everything stayed in one place but it went deep enough into the play-dough to stand on its own and be pretty stable. Once we did that the kids painted the whole things green. We let it dry for a few hours and then glued red sequins and buttons on the undersides of the pine cone that was now facing up. Ryan insisted that it just wasn't a Christmas tree without a star on top so we finished the whole thing off with a yellow foam star. The kids had so much fun with this and they had the freedom to decorate their "trees" however they wanted.