Target Bag Ornaments

I know it's a little early for Christmas but I've got a big dilemma with my Christmas decorating this year. While I never had any problems decorating the tree when my oldest two kids were little, my youngest guy, aka Destructo Boy, is in a league of his own. He will be 18 months old when we put the tree up and I am about 99% certain that at some point he will manage to knock the thing down. So I don't want to use anything breakable or anything that he could tear up on the tree. That rules out nearly all of the thousands of ornaments that we already have. I have no desire to buy MORE ornaments that we will only use for one year so I've been trying to come up with a creative, inexpensive, toddler resistant way to decorate the tree. And I think I've found it - Target bag ornaments!

Ok, so this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, and it may turn out to be the ugliest tree I've ever put up, but it should be fun and definitely unique. I first thought I might try and sew felt ornaments, in particular a bunch of stars. But as I got to brainstorming Target bags popped into my head and I decided to see if I could make some stars out of them. My first prototypes turned out pretty good. I very quickly freehand sewed some stars on bags that were folded multiple times. Then I cut around the sewn design, popped in an eyelet and finally added a little ribbon hanger. Very simple and surprisingly fun to make! This is the very first sewing project I have actually enjoyed. I quickly grew bored of stars and decided to see what I could make from some of the scraps from the stars. I didn't pre-plan most of shapes - they just sort of evolved. I'm sure someone more creative and with some sewing skills could come up with some much better designs. My favorite ornament so far is the one made with the "reuse" section of the bag. Very fitting I think. The angel also turned out fun. She started out to be a tree. So now I need to collect a whole lot more Target bags so I can make more ornaments. I need to get my friends to save them for me and I've already instructed my husband to stop using them for doggy doo. I've got about two months before the tree goes up so we'll see how many I can whip out by then. And of course I'll post a picture of my tree when it is decorated. Should be good for a laugh!