Seasons > American Independence Day > Home Decorations > Kitchen

These wooden decorations were purchased at a hundred yen store. However, there are a number of ways they could be made at home, and would be a great project to involve your children. Often craft stores sell unfinished wooden shapes that could be purchased, and your children could paint, decorate, and assemble them. Another way would be to purchase stands with clips that are made for holding photos. But instead of displaying photos, clip in flag, star, and heart shapes that your children have decorated from paper or foam. Or use an air drying modeling compound such as Hearty (Karui Kaminendo) to form the bases and poke bamboo skewers into the bases and let them dry. Then make the top shapes, let them dry, then poke them onto the top end of the skewers. Add raffia or ribbon bows to complete the look.

Flowers in red, white, and blue colors can be grouped together with other objects to make a Fourth of July decoration. Here a flag on a toothpick was poked between the paw and leg to look like the bear is waving a flag. A rustic wooden star is hung nearby. A home made version could be made out of paper, cardboard or foam.

A shelf allows you to group several small decorations together to form a larger decoration. The flag was poked into a spool of thread for a stand. Two pins become decorations by displaying them on stands made of wooden blocks (a dismantled 100 yen store puzzle) and  short lengths of dowel poked into the holes. The liberty bell and paper weight were purchased at the Smithsonian, but you can make your own liberty bell out of a Pringle’s potato chip can.

These magnets adorning the refrigerator were purchased at a dollar store. But if you give your kids a modeling compound such as Sculpy or Hearty, along with some ideas to spark their imaginations, they could come up with all kinds of patriotic magnets. Star cookie cutters in different sizes could be a helpful tool for making these--just make sure they understand it’s not cookie dough!

This wreath had been hanging on my wall for sometime before I realized that it could be used as a Fourth of July decoration. I was looking for a place to display the wooden flag, and hit on the idea of putting it on the wreath. I just stuffed it between to flowers, and it didn’t fall off until I took it off when I was putting away all the seasonal decorations.