Toilet Paper Roll Reindeer Craft for Little Kids (and Big Kids Too!)

After three and a half years of her being on this earth, my niece had her first sleepover at my house over the weekend.

Earlier in the week we discussed what she wanted to do:
1. Make reindeer.

2. Have Pizza.

3. Watch a movie.

As soon as she got here, we started making pizza dough in my bread machine.

Best pizza dough recipe I've tried, so far.
(Probably cuz there's beer in it.
I like beer. 

A lot.)

Here's the recipe if you're interested:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bread-Machine-Pizza-Dough/Detail.aspx?prop31=1

Anyhoo... Back to the craft.  While the dough was.... like... becoming dough, we had about an hour and a half to kill.

We killed the time by making reindeer.

 

 Here's what you'll need:

                      1. Empty toilet paper or paper towel rolls (cut into size of TP rolls).
                      2. Wobbly Eyes
                      3. Red and black felt, paper, pipe cleaners,
                            (or any material suitable for a reindeer nose).
                      4. Brown craft paint
                      5. Paintbrushes
                      6. Craft glue
                      7. Glue gun
                      8. Small hole punch.
                      9. Christmas picks

First, you'll start painting your toilet paper rolls.

 

While my niece was painting, I went through my box of Christmas picks and found some branchy-lookin ones that could pass as antlers. 
(My niece really liked the sparkly ones the best. I did too!).

 

I cut off pieces of the branches and paired them with branches of similar shape and sizing.

While she finished painting the rolls, I punched holes in the toilet paper rolls, covered the ends of the sparkly branches with hot glue and inserted them in the holes.  

(This was tricky cuz the glue was on high heat and would sometimes start making the plastic branches very malleable. Just had to be patient and hold them in place when needed.
If there were pictures of this step to see... you'd certainly recognize the
"I'm burning my fingers on hot glue" grimace on my face.)

After I got done(burning my fingers on hot glue) putting the antlers on, it was time for the wobbly eyes.

My niece was able to do this part by herself for the most part, but still asked me to do some with her.

She found a battery operated candle and decided to have a reindeer campfire before adding their noses. 

(I don't care who you are.  This is cute!)

Once their noses were added, I started adding smiles and even eyelashes on some. 

The niece wanted to make a girl reindeer, too.

(Can you guess which one she worked on?)

All in all this was a very simple project, and the niece had a little seasonally relevant
memento of the evening with Auntie Chelle.

Oh! The movie we watched was Emmit Otter's Jug-Band Christmas.

I'm pretty sure I liked it more than she did,
but! She had a great time.

That's really all that mattered!