Homemade Ornament Party

Last weekend Alaina and I held a little ornament making party. A few of her friends were invited, one of my good friends came to help so it was like a girls craft day with the addition of one little boy. Chase loves to paint - so painting ornaments with a group of girls didn't phase him one bit.

I set out silver trays filled with craft supplies for each ornament, jars of paint brushes, a muffin tin filled with small tubs of paint and buckets of glitter and glue. I put down lots of newspaper to cover the table incase of spilled paint (which happened more than once) oh but what fun we had and what an incredible mess we created!

{Alaina's ornaments - the kids got a tiny bit carried away with the puff paint and glitter!}

We made my cinnamon cutout ornaments decorated with white puff paint and glitter, mini frosted cupcakes and large frosted/glittered cupcakes, Clay lollipop ornaments (the idea came from Creature Comforts blog - I altered the ornaments a little by using a glue gun and thinner clay) and beaded candy canes.

I could really see this becoming a yearly tradition for us. What's amazing is that the kids stay entertained for over 6 hours creating their own ornaments. Needless to say, I was wiped out but the homemade ornament party was a huge hit!

be-gifted

The little elves around here have been busy wrapping up gifts this week! I always choose a color combination to wrap my gifts and for this grouping it was red-pink-yellow-silver and kraft. It's an interesting combination but I kind of like it!

I still need to wrap the kids' gifts, it's going to be a very gift-wrapping week!

twinkly lights

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." ~Norman Vincent Peale

I found this quote last night and thought it matched the photo pretty well. I was taking some photos the other day when, without warning, my camera started getting fussy with me. It didn't want to focus on anything in particular and instead blurred some of my photos. Somehow, I think it's even lovelier this way!

Holiday Snowflakes- photo tutorial

In my house everything has the possibility to be transformed into something else! I'm pretty confident that given enough time, I can find a second use for just about anything. Neck ties are sewn into necklaces, t-shirts make really cute scrapbook flowers and coffee filters are perfect for holiday snowflakes!

Alaina and I love to use coffee filters, they're already round and super light weight so when we created a garland with them, they almost appeared to floating in the window-sill!

I photographed the steps for making one last week!

Hope you are doing something fun this weekend! I have a little crafty get-together with friends planned for tomorrow but first I think a wee bit of scrapbooking may be in order for today! happy Saturday!

a Very Merry Giftwrap Giveaway!

Hello to you all and happy Saturday morning! A few crafty friends and I have teamed up this weekend to do little blog-hop party! Each of us decided to put our own spin on the traditional stocking concept. I first thought of a hanging doile but then I thought what could be sweeter than to fill than a doile envelope! and so, an idea was formed and brought to life.

I did create a tutorial for my doile envelope and I'll post it this coming week but first the fun stuff! I'm giving away this envelope and it's filled with all sorts of fun little trinkets, perfect for helping to add that extra special touch to packages as you wrap your gifts this month!

there are snips of vintage seam binding and lace, 2 handmade garlands, stitched gift tags, a spool of my favorite pink bakers-twine, mini clothes pins, 2 handmade flowers, typewriter tags, a vintage Santa pick, a pink button tag, and tinsel star, glittered leaves and a few paper doiles all tucked away into a pretty vintage doile envelop.

To enter the very-merry giftwrap giveaway please leave a comment at the end of this post!

I'll choose a winner on Wed. 14th. Goodluck!

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and feel free to check out what my crafty friends are up to! Click on these links to visit their blogs and giveaways today!

Jessica from Scrumdillydilly.



Megan from Radmegan.



Jennifer with The Felt Mouse.

have a lovely weekend!!

the Dessert Tree

Here in our house, we do themed trees for Christmas! At one point, we only had 1 tree and it was a hodge-podge of Christmas decor... things that I had and stuff that Peter had but eh, nothing too terribly exciting. Then I inherited some old handmade Disney ornaments, starting collecting vintage glass balls and became the proud owner of my Grandma's Hallmark ornament collection and before I knew it - I had enough stuff to be able to do different themed trees throughout the house! The hardest part for us is compromising on one theme! (Not that we have to compromise too much, we did put up 3 trees this year :))

So one Saturday afternoon, while Chase slept soundly, Alaina and I crept out to the garage and decided that this year we would create a Dessert tree. We sorted through my boxes of kitchen themed ornaments and pulled anything that had to do with dessert or baking. Cupcakes, gingerbread men, ice-cream cones, slices of cake, lolly-pops, candy and sheets of cookies, some wire whisks and spatulas and a few vintage glass bulbs. If it was cute, sweet and or pink, we were going to use them!

The only new ornament I had to purchase for this tree was the knitted D!

(I really need a larger tree for all of the ornaments! I looked everywhere for a 6ft. flocked Christmas tree to no avail. I was too late! major bummer)

*Alaina picked out this ornament because according to a 7 year olds philosophy of dessert, bacon is a perfectly acceptable dessert choice. :) - in case you were wondering how the 3 little pigs found their way onto our tree.*

and because you can't have a dessert tree without a glass, or jar, of milk!

I have a special blog-hop party and a pretty giveaway to do tomorrow! Don't forget to pop back by this weekend!

a new month,

means a new color challenge for the Crate Paper blog! This really is my favorite challenge and I absolutely love coming up with a new combination of colors each month. This month, inspired by our unusually wintery weather, I chose colors that were cooler and more muted. (and they couldn't be further from the typical red-white-green colors that are so expected this time of year!)

I decided to create 5 pages for my December Journal. Each page is 6x6 inches and I used a combination of 4 collections by Crate Paper (Neighborhood, Peppermint, Random Farmhouse). I wish I had pulled out the Portrait collection out to play with, of course I remembered after I had finished up!

So, here are my pages:

Silver & Gold

our Wreathe

ttv Santa

vintage ornaments

home for the holidays

~ all wrapped up!

and did I mention that I get to give away a Crate Paper collection each month! How sweet is that?! I'll be choosing a winner next Friday, if you feel like participating in the challenge this month. The details are in my post on Crate's blog. :) I'll be back tomorrow to post another page for my December Journal, I'm a guest designer this month for a journaling based blog!

December is here!

Remember this photo of my box of vintage Christmas ornaments I posted last year?

Well, I collected a few more this year! and this is only some of them, I used a bunch and then remembered to take a photo. What luck I have! :)

Are you ready for December? I just finished putting our trees up today and I think the house is mostly finished being decorated. The Christmas dishes are being washed and I have a whole list of projects and crafts to do this holiday season! So exciting! But first, I will be watching The Santa Clause tonight and continuing to wash dishes. :) What's your opinion on Christmas dishes? yay or nay?

Oh! and I added my holiday playlist to the side bar here ----> It's some of my favorite Christmas music - enjoy!

Presents & Sugar cookies

Just when I think I'm doing a good job at checking things off of my massive to-do list, I just find some more things to add to it..... Oh-well, Tis' the Season to be rushed! I did however find time to make a new scrapbook page last night. (Even I'm impressed with that small feat!) I'll save that page for next weeks post. :)



This morning I set aside some of my cleaning time to wrap a few more gifts. There's a job that seems never ending. (I'm not sure where I keep finding more gifts to wrap. They just show up every morning!) I totally cheated and used store purchased wrapping paper. I couldn't resist the cute colors for little kids. - To be a kid again at Christmas would be divine.-



I had a good friend come over this afternoon to make sweet treats for Santa and some for us of course! Rice Krispie Treats were made and Sugar Cookies were baked and decorated. I still love decorating cookies.... and eating the frosting. Something that I've, no doubt, passed onto Alaina. :)) She wanted me to post a photo of her cookies that she decorated. She was sooo proud of them!!



here's a few of mine...



Tomorrow one of my very favorite people in the entire world is coming over for a visit. I can't wait to see Danielle! I love the holidays because of the people that it brings through our doors!