Guest Post: Easy and Inspiring Sukkah Decorations

Wondering how you are going to decorate your sukkah*? Your worries are over! Please welcome Mara Strom of Kosher on a Budget for today’s guest post on Sukkah crafts. And be sure to check out her site.


Children paint walls of their Sukkah

I love Sukkot. Really, truly love it! I love watching my husband and sons build our sukkah, and hosting friends and family in our humble little home-away-from-home. But every year, the decorating of our sukkah stumps me.

I spent an hour today cutting and stapling hundreds of strips of construction paper for our sukkah’s paper chain. Such an easy craft to involve the kids in, right? Unfortunately, it ended up being Mommy’s craft, since my sons were too distracted to help and my daughter is too little to be trusted with a stapler!

children's handprint as sukkah decoration

Via Juggling Frogs

Today’s failed attempt at a simple paper chain again reminded me that when it comes to decorating, I need a little more inspiration and a lot more instruction to turn my crafty vision for our sukkah into a reality.

If you, too, need some last-minute sukkah-decorating inspiration, I’ve collected links from my favorite Jewish bloggers and their decorating genius. Their projects are feasible even for the paper chain-challenged among us!

  • An oldy, but goody from Juggling Frogs — I love everything she does here, and truly, just want to be invited for a meal in her sukkah! One of these days, I’d love to get around to making her Simcha Banner.
  • In an even older, but still timely post, Laurie Bellet from Torah Aura Productions lists a dozen water-proof sukkah craft suggestions. I especially like her idea to recycle old CDs, of which we have plenty around here.
  • The inimitable Sara Dahan, aka the Creative Jewish Mom, offers up a number of wonderful paper crafts. I don’t know Sara personally, but from enjoying her blog, I picture her as a cross between Soule Mama and my son’s favorite ganenet(teacher): earthy, inspiring and incredibly talented. I am definitely going to try Sara’s paper bunting. Maybe the kids will even agree to help me!

    Accordion folded starbursts and medallions for the Sukkah

    Via Creative Jewish Mom

  • Speaking of paper crafts, I like these sweet and simple paper circles from Chabad’s website. (Scroll down with the arrow on the right to see each step of the project.)

Finally, I wanted to share with you an idea from my own sukkah. After spending 11.5 months telling my children not to draw on the walls, I let them do just that. Using fabric paint, markers, glue, glitter – whatever moves them at the time – my kiddos get to create their very own masterpieces on our sukkah walls. From abstract blobs to equestrian stencils to baseball illustrations, these sukkah pictures are a wonderful way to appreciate my children’s growth as people — and artists — throughout the years.

I’m sure Hannah’s readers have lots more crafty inspiration up their sleeves, so tell me: How do you decorate your sukkah? What are your favorite Sukkot arts & crafts projects?

Mara Strom is a freelance writer, who blogs about living a rich but frugal Jewish life at her blog, Kosher on a Budget. She and her husband have two sons, born in Israel, and one daughter, born in Kansas.

*A sukkah is a temporary dwelling, roofed with vegetation, built for the week-long holiday of Sukkot (Tabernacles).

You may also enjoy:

Rosh Hashanah Cooking Tips and Recipes

Inexpensive Family Day Trips in Israel

Insects Keep Falling on My Head (On Sukkot, That Is)

Easy and Inspiring Chanukah Crafts

Comments

  1. Great ideas, thanks!

    Our favorite Sukkot craft can do double duty as both a tabletop decoration and a healthy snack – each year we make cute little edible sukkahs (click link for photos and instructions). The post I linked to is from a few years ago but the kids still look forward to doing this each year. In fact, I just bought the supplies for it this morning :).

    Chag sameach, and happy decorating.

    ———————————–
    My photography is available for purchase – visit Around the Island Photography and bring home something beautiful today!

    • @Robin – I love your version. Nice and healthy! I bet humus or almond butter would also work to “stick” it together, if there are any peanut allergies.

      • I’m sure almond butter would work. Hummus it might depend on how thick it is, but it would probably work reasonably well.

        The fruits are whatever the candy store happens to have in stock that year, anything from hard candy to marzipan to jelly beans, but they’re most often sour candies. That seems to be what’s most popular for fruit shapes around here. My kids find them too sour anyway so they don’t eat them, they’re just for decoration.

        ———————————–
        My photography is available for purchase – visit Around the Island Photography and bring home something beautiful today!

  2. Thanks for the inspiration. We have had a cloth Sukkah with bare white walls for a few years and I’ve been wondering what to do with them…. The 7 Minum, an Ushpizin collage…. but thanks to these ideas at least one panel will be a work over the years…. we’ll be using our handprints to make a scene of some sort. This year, we’re doing the sun.

    Bezrat Hashem over the years sons and daughters in law will be added and grandkids. I think it will be a wonderful legacy.

    • Devo, yes! That’s *exactly* how I envision the wall, too! I imagine, G-d willing, my kids’ kids looking at their parents pictures and then adding their own. (I might have to get bigger sukkah at some point.) Chag Sameach.

  3. Anyone have tips for cheap/free SUKKAHS? The cost seems like too much for us this year, which is a shame considering that we have the rooftop space for a sukkah…

    Wooden pallet sukkah anyone?

    • My father lends sukkah’s for free try next year!

    • My husband became frum in his early teens, well before he could afford to buy a commercial sukkah. Instead, he got instructions from a friend as to how to make one on his own. It’s not the prettiest of sukkahs, but I can’t imagine anything easier and cheaper.

      Take 8 cinderblocks. Place them in four stacks of two , laying down such that the central holes are going from ground to sky, rather than from side to side. Each stack goes in one corner of your sukkah site. Take 4 two-by-fours of equal length; this length will be the height of your sukkah, so get ones that are 8 feet long. Nail crossbars of equal length onto the top of all four sides, connecting them into a square. This creates a surface on which you will lay the schach. On three of the four sides, nail crossbars about halfway down the two-by-fours, which reinforces the walls. Insert the end of each two-by-four pole into the holes in each cinderblock stack. Take a tarp of sufficient size, and wrap it around the outside of the sukkah frame, leaving the side without a middle crossbar open, so you can get in and out. Secure the tarp in place with a staple gun. Lay a schach mat, bamboo poles, or any other appropriate schach material across the top crossbars. (Make sure you choose something that won’t shed leaves/needles into your food!) For illumination, I like the rope/tube style of white Christmas lights (like these: http://tinyurl.com/3azzdn9 ) – wrap them around your upper crossbar.

    • Maya, I’m sorry I didn’t give your question more attention. I think it’s just a matter of being creative, or finding creative people to help. I hope you managed to put something together. We have a paved roof, and two of the walls and a pergola pretty much take care of it.

  4. MiI!!! Please know that you have a permanent, unlimited invitation to our sukkah! We’d love to have you any time you’re in town….

    Thank you for the kind words, and for sharing all those great links.

    Moadim l’Simcha!

  5. What a great collection of links! I included this post in my round-up of Sukkot related links on my homeschool blog, Jewish Homeschooling

    I love reading your blog 🙂

  6. Writing this guest post has so inspired me — thanks again, Hannah! I’m even hosting a little virtual sukkah hop (if I can be so chutzpah as to plug it here?). I just put up the linky and I’d love to see all your sukkot! Click on my name to go straight to the link up.

  7. Thank you for posting such a comprehensive look at Sukkah decorations. You linked me to a wonderful blog that inspired these sukkah decorations: http://jewishhomeschoolnyc.blogspot.com/2012/09/sukkah-decorations.html
    Thanks again
    Ilana

Trackbacks

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