Simple tree ornaments

This isn't a fancy decoration, but it's one even my 11-month-old could help make, with materials found in most households. If you want to dress it up, it looks cooler with glitter, but I didn't want my son putting glitter in his mouth (and it's more work to clean up than pieces of colored paper).

MATERIALS:

• Cereal box
• scissors
• colored paper
• glue
• hole puncher
• string or ribbon
• crayons (optional)

STEPS:

1. Cut shapes out of cereal boxes. I drew some shapes freehand, and traced cookie cutters for others.
2. Cut colored paper into small pieces. If you want, you can let your child color with crayons on the shapes you cut out of the cereal box while you cut up the pieces of colored paper.
3. For a very small child, put glue on the cereal box shapes and then give them the colored paper to add. Most 2- and 3-year-olds can put the glue on themselves.
4. Punch holes in tops of ornaments, add string or ribbon, and hang on tree.

I let my kids do this at our coffee table, which made the craft WAY messier than it would have been if they had been confined to our dining room table...

The ornaments look much nicer on the tree than on the coffee table, but I can't figure out how to take good pictures of a Christmas tree. All of my pictures are either washed out or too dark - any tips?