Christmas Wreath

Little Girl:  "Maybe Nanny will open the owl propellet with me. Since you  never want to."

(She means pellet.  I think she is confused with propeller, which she may have heard her Papaw say since he has airplanes.)

That's right.  This is the girl who would rather dissect the bones from owl regurgitation than play with Barbies.  Kinda makes it hard on Santa.

Now that I look at the picture of the wreath I made, it looks a little wonky.  May  need some adjustment.  I actually made the wreath last year, but it just got an update and I must say I like it MUCH better.  No before pic, sorry.  Instead of a colorful ornament in the center, it had a white snowflake.  Sorta blah.  And not as coordinated with my Christmas color scheme.  Now it is perfect.  And the best part about the upgrade?  The enormous ornament (which is covered in a metallic foil stuff which did not photograph well) was only $1!!!  It was half off and I had a coupon.  Awe-some!

These are suprisingly easy to make.  Go to Dollar Tree and get the wire wreath for $1.  Get some of that mesh stuff.  I think they sell it at Hobby Lobby now.  I got mine and the purple tubular stuff at a local store called Ellis Pottery, but you could use ribbon or something similar.  Attach it to the wreath using wire.  Attach the ornament in the middle.  Done.  And I have seen people charge up to $70 for these! I would love to see yours!

Santa Photo

I really cannot believe my child made this far in life without ever having taken a picture with Good Ole Saint Nick.  I know, I know.  Bad Mom.  I really am not much into waiting in long lines with cranky children.  



To give the long awaited Santa photo the respect it deserves, I used the frame from Goodwill that I had spraypainted for my sister's baby shower.  I even left the same chartreuse fabric covered cardboard on it.  (You can see that here.)  It just happened to work out perfectly for a Christmas color scheme as well as it did for the Circus themed shower.

I love how it makes this picture important, rather than blending in on the fridge with the Christmas cards.  

Elf Update

Sparky decided he needed a midnight snack.

We found him in the dollhouse drinking the milk that was in the Advent calendar yesterday with cookies.

 

 

What was your Elf on the Shelf up to last night?

Elf in a Bird Cage

Sparky was a bad boy last night.  Look where we found him.

He climbed on top of the armoire, into the birdcage and was trying to catch the bird.  Or strangle the bird ornament. 

What was your Elf on the Shelf up to last night?

Twelve Days of Christmas Tags

Christmas.  The season of giving.  I saw an advent calendar at www.janethopkins.com that inspired me to make tags for the twelve days of Christmas to attach to gifts for my little girl's teacher.

Every day until we get off of school for the holidays, she will receive a small gift and a handmade tag.  I found gifts for under $5 each like a can of Altoids or poinsettia mini kleenex.

I love how they look all together on my crib spring.  (Should've made myself a set.  But that is a lot of glittering, folks. I highly recommend doing all of the glittering at one time.  But I never think of these things ahead of time.  No, I cut out all but two of the figures with my Slice machine.  Then, glittered those.  Then, made those tags.  THEN decided to cut the rest and glitter and now my studio is officially full of bling.)

I think the number 11 tag is my favorite. I used old dictionary paper glued to the tag and ripped off the edges after it dried.  I like how it worked out that the church is in the background.  The edges of most tags were distressed with Tim Holtz green or tea inks. This one was spritzed with olive glimmer mist. For those of you that can't read blurry stamping, the red says "Pipers Piping".  I think I am definitely going to invest in a better red stamp pad.  This one was not dark enough and blurred on the paper.  Not cool.

paperissues.com

Elf On the Shelf

If your kid is like mine, she LOVES pillow pets.  Can't get enough.  Personally, I don't see the fascination.  Last year, the gift that she was most excited about was a lady bug pillow pet.  In fact, she was more excited about that than any gift she has ever gotten.  So at Target last night, she coerced me into buying this miniature keychain pillow pet to match the bigger one. 

 

Now, normally I am not persuaded to buy toys right before Christmas.  But she was very persuasive.  So it came home with us.  And look where we found it this morning.  Our mischievous little elf likes pillow pets, too.  And this one is the perfect size for him.  Little Girl was tickled to find Sparky resting on her lady bug under the tree. 

What was your Elf on the Shelf up to last night?

 

Fallish Mini Album

Got envelopes?  Make a mini scrapbook album. 



See that tab?  (above)  It opens the envelope and forms a pocket.  I love that, because I like to keep tickets and receipts, but they are often ugly, and I don't want them on the page.  But, I think in thirty years it might be fun to see what things cost.

Document all of your Thanksgiving traditions with one.  Put favorite recipes in the pockets.  I think this would be a cute format for your December Daily album.  Or a smash book.  Go make one!

Vintage Circus Shower

                        The vintage circus shower for my sister was inspired by an Anthropologie catalog.

This was one of my favorite parties ever.  I love this theme.

Jordan and my dad made the sandwich board sign.  She and I both painted the letters.  (That was a lot of painting, but I love how it turned out.)

An easy decoration for any party is to display the invitation. Especially if the invitation is handmade and really, really cute. I found this frame at Goodwill with the intention of painting the dark bronzish colored frame and purple flower "painting."  I forgot a before pic, but you can imagine.  I spraypainted it red and covered a piece of cardboard with fabric to frame the invitation.  The invitations were a collaboration by all the sisters and my mom.  The tiny banner said "It's a Boy!" (It better be.)

Aunt Mandy made the cake.  Awesome!  (And it tasted good, too.  It really did.  Like I ate four pieces good.  And they were three layers each.)

Jordan found these buckets at the dollar store.  Wish I had a before pic.  She painted them to look like the thingy the seal stands on at the circus.  So cute!

Jordan cut the circus tent shape with the good ole Cricut machine.  (That thing came in handy for this party, especially, because we found a circus-themed cartridge.)  We made scratch-off tickets according to a recipe using paint and liquid dish soap that we found on Pinterest.  We made one mistake, though.  If you try it, make sure you write on the ticket BEFORE you laminate it.  Then paint.  I laminated first and the permanent marker scratched right off with the paint.  Which meant we did not know who won the prize.  Not good.

We did manage to give away some prizes with the Bebe bingo game.  All the gifts were given a number sticker.  As the expectant mom opened gifts, the number was called out for guests to mark on their cards.

Aunt Sandy made these cards for guests to record wishes for the baby.  These are made with thick cardstock scrapbook paper which can be made into a mini album later.

Can't have a circus without candied apples, right?  Jordan cut the leaves out with the Cricut and stamped "Thank You" on them.  How cute is that?  These would be precious teacher gifts.  My mom and sis-in-law said they were not hard to make using the box of mix from the grocery store.  You will need a candy thermometer, though.  The apples tasted really good, too.  They were a huge hit. (I didn't even get one cause they were all gone.Still mad about that.)

Jena made the diaper "cake".  Yep, there's diapers in there.  Jordan made the "Congrats" banner with the Cricut and she made the tissue balls.

My sister's friend, Heather, made the cake pops.  German Chocolate and Red Velvet.  Can you believe this was her first time ever to make cake pops??  She got the idea from www.bakerella.com. I love how they were displayed in the porcelain popcorn bucket.

I made the tiny banner and added it to this thing I thought looked like a popcorn cart.  I think maybe it is made to hold potted plants.  My mom found these tiny popcorn cartons that we filled with caramel popcorn for guests to take.

OK, so maybe we shouldn't have called attention to the ugly ceiling of the building where we hosted the shower, but the pennant banner sure was festive.  Everyone had their hands on this one, because there was so darn much of it. We all helped make it.

Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!

One Last Boo-Rah!

This is my mantel these days.

I know it is kinda plain, but I haven't been much into Halloween decorations until this year.  Still haven't actually bought any, though.

I actually made this banner for the lounge at work.  Someone took the time to completely redecorate this year in a vintage style. 

I thought this sign went with the look pretty well.  It was inspired by the burlap banners by Miss Mustard Seed, only this is not burlap.  It is a light taupe colored cardstock printed with a LARGE ornamental font that I downloaded for free on www.houseoflime.com.  I just distressed the edges slightly with Tim Holtz distress ink (which was half off at Hobby Lobby.)

Linked up at lollyjane.com.

Cat Pumpkin

(Scene:  Pumpkin Decorating)

Me:  What are we going to use for whiskers?

Her:  Maybe we could use some of those long fuzzy things we used last year for the antennas on the Lil' Pet Shop Pumpkin.  What are they called?  Toilet plungers?

Me:  (Thinking.)  You mean pipe cleaners.

Her:  Oh yeah.  Let's use those.

Pumpkin Light Night is fast approaching and we needed to decorate a pumpkin or two quickly. 

This year, the theme was book characters.  We chose the book by Laura Numeroff, "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake."  We had to have some sort of sign or poster to display as well, so we made ours look like the book cover (complete with real sprinkles.)  We already had red letters from a Christmas scrapbook kit (thanks Aunt Sandy!)

The pumpkin we chose for the cupcake was a little too big, but I thought tiny pom-poms (thanks Mom!) were cute as sprinkles.

Note to self:  Next year, buy black foam sheets MUCH earlier than the week before Halloween, cause they run out in stores and buying a huge multi-colored pack when you only need two small ears is not my idea of cost effective, plus now I will have to store it probably for years, cause I cannot throw something out that I MIGHT use.

(We never found anything to use as whiskers.  No black wire.  No clear fishing line.  Just not gonna use toilet plungers.)