Now that Halloween has passed, it's time for (you guessed it!) Christmas crafts. I love these new houses from Alpha Stamps; they are so easy to put together, and really fun to decorate. Using 8x8 papers from Authentique, I made a couple of jolly Christmas houses. In this post, I'll show you three fun ways to use them during the holidays. First up: a little Christmas scene. Add a few bottle brush trees and a tiny Santa, and ho, ho, ho- let's visit Jingle Lane! Here's number 24. Green and red striped candy canes flank the front entrance, and Christmas lights adorn the roof. The doors and windows have tissue paper behind them, so the houses look lovely with a small battery operated tea light inside. Number 25 Jingle Lane has a beaded swag outlining their roof and a cookie cutter star for decoration. Candy pieces look like flowers under the windows. Another fun thing about this house is that the roof opens up. I decorated a 2" cube box (perfect for holding jewelry, sweets, or other tiny gift items). It fits perfectly in the house. Two gifts in one! The ribbon is tied under the flap of the gift box, so it doesn't need to be untied to open the box. This is great for people like me, who love to reuse pretty boxes. Here's a third option for displaying the houses: tie a long ribbon to the clip, and hang them. They're so pretty with the lights inside. I'll talk a bit about the doors and windows and how that glow is achieved below. Festive! Here are a few tips on assembling and altering these sweet houses. Below you can see the walls of the house are covered with scrapbook paper, and the roofs have not been covered. Before I covered them, I folded down the overhang part of the roof and glued it with white glue. Clip it closed while drying. If you are looking at the outside of your house (below), you would put your glue on the other side of the overhang to make the flap. The houses have windows cut into the front and back already, but I wanted to use some Mini House Doors and Windows because they're so fun. Some of these have different sized openings than the windows that are already cut into the house, so here's how to make those work: cover all the sides of the house with paper, then place the door and windows where you want them. Don't glue them down yet! First, lightly trace around the opening inside the windows on the new windows or door, then using an x-acto knife, cut a little outside the pencil lines. In the photo below, I have just peeled off the paper, so you can see the where precut window is. I then cut through and removed the cardboard before finally gluing down the door. Once the new windows are cut out, take some tissue paper and glue it around the opening, so the candle light will diffuse. This is the inside of the house, so no need to be too neat with the paper. In the photo below, the new windows and door have already been glued on the outside, so you do see the mullions in the windows. Assemble the house, glue it up, and you've got some jolly Christmas houses to help celebrate the season. Enjoy! For a complete list of supplies, click here!