DIY Christmas Crate Train

Home and Family is kicking off its 6th season and I am so beyond excited to share with you that I am officially a family member! You will be seeing me on the show a few times a week with DIYs and recipes. I am so honored and grateful for the opportunity to bring more creativity into your life. I live and breathe for all this kind of stuff, and I am so excited to be on a show that promotes positive, uplifting content.

With that said, my first DIY of the season is this adorable DIY Christmas Crate Train (video coming soon). The actual process to this is very simple! It is just a bunch of crates lined up to create the look of a train with a bunch of fun details. Right now Michael's Arts and Crafts has a bunch of Christmas items coming in stock, so you should be able to find these items now if you are planning ahead of time.

If you plan on placing this inside, you can use any craft paint you like. If you plan on placing this outdoors, use outdoor paint. As you can see in the picture, I placed the crates up so that you can put items like toys in them, but if you are putting this outside, I would flip all of them over so that they don't collect snow, leaves, etc.

Supplies:

Crates; at least 4 large and 1 small; you can make the train as long as you like!

Paint; if planning on doing this outdoors, make sure to use outdoor paint

Wood rounds for the wheels; the ones I used are open and I simply placed a store-bought snowflake on all of them to make them look pretty

Chip container for the smoke stack; if you are doing this outside, you will want to use something else that can withstand the weather

Fake snow for the "smoke"; it's similar to cotton, which could probably work as well

More Christmas decorations as desired

Hot glue gun

note: you may need nails, tacks, etc to attach Christmas decorations

Directions:

Paint all of your crates on all sides; allow to dry

Place them where you would like them to be; around a tree, outdoors, in a foyer, etc.

Paint the wood rounds for the wheels, and attach details as desired

Once your crates are placed, use a glue gun to attach the wheels to the crates

For the front of the train, place the smaller crate on top of the larger crate that is flipped over

For the "smoke stack" I spray painted it red, and then covered the top and bottom with ribbon to make it look pretty, then added the "smoke" using a glue gun; then I glued the canister onto the top of the crate

I added a small wreath that I made from wreath details to the top of the train and a pretty star to the front of the crate using a tack (you can also use a nail)

As for the other details, I used a staple gun (because we have one on set) to attach the garland to the crates to look like train cars; if you do not have a staple gun, you can attach the garland in any way you want, like hammer and nails, tacks, glue, etc. I used a garland that had lights already attached to it, because I thought it would be really pretty if it lit up! Then I added some details to the garland like gold leaves and holly, both can be found in the wreath making section at Michaels (aka craft supply stores)

Then fill with Christmas presents and toys!