Vintage Christmas

I thought I'd finally give you a little peek at my Christmas decorations. I stopped dragging out my old hodge podge that I didn't like, and came up with some inexpensive new ideas. 

I used some of my vintage bottle collection, and added some white glittered pine cone ornaments from Hobby Lobby. I put these in my crate shelf that hangs in the dining room.

I had to throw away my old tree skirt last year because it got ruined. Instead of buying a new one, I originally wanted my husband to make me a metal tree collar. Instead, I happened to see that the bark was coming off of the giant logs in our backyard. I pulled one off and sprayed it outside with bug spray just in case. Then I just wrapped it around our tree stand! Easy!

A little chalkboard update for winter!

My little wooden fox got in the Christmas spirit with a mini wreath. 

Originally I was going to make a pom pom garland for the tree, but I got tired of making pom poms. I made a garland for my mirror by the front door, and a smaller one for our deer antlers. 

I screwed one of my husband's deer antlers on to a wood slice. They still have the velvet on them! The pom pom flowers are from Steph Loves Ben, on Etsy. You can order whatever colors you like, and they come on sticks! My pom poms are no where near how perfect hers are. 

Those three little trees I picked up at Salvation Army. They were fall colors, so I painted the tops with green paint I had on hand, and added some green Martha Stewart glitter to make them shine. The chalkboard printable was free from The Shabby Creek Cottage. 

Lastly, we have our Christmas countdown, which I blogged about here. 

And the gold glittered deer garland. 

Vintage Fabric Heat/Ice Pack

I have collected a massive amount of beautiful vintage sheets and pillow cases. A couple of years ago I made these "rice ice" packs, as our family calls them. I have a new friend that I wanted to make one for, but take it up a notch by using perfect vintage fabric! These don't get any easier. I am a VERY basic seamstress, and these are a breeze even for me. We keep ours in the freezer at all times so that we have "ice" ready at all times. 

Simply cut two identical pieces of fabric in the size that you want. Pin or hold them, right sides together and sew along three sides. Turn inside out and fill 3/4 of the way full of plain, dried rice. This is great to buy in the bulk section! Turn the open ends in, pin along the edge, and stitch! Ta da!

I found a poem on a message board to go along with the gift, and printed it up on a cute blue mason jar using my Silhouette software. I also made mini versions as tiny hand warmers! I'm going to make some hand warmers for my girls before our Christmas parade on Monday! 

Advent Calendar- Christmas Countdown

I spent today slaving away decorating for Christmas, and thought I'd share a peek of it! I have a LOT more to do, and the rest of my house is a mess because I was crafting and running errands all day. I made a super cute advent calendar, or Christmas countdown, that I'm going to share with you. 

 Hobby Lobby carries these boxes of wooden bingo numbers, at least that's what I call them! I wanted different bags, but couldn't find what I was looking for so I settled on the red and white chevron. Mainly because I am cheap and they had 24 in a bag for only a couple bucks. It is also where I bought the mini clothespins. I used a scalloped punch and white mini cupcake liners that I already had.

I flipped a cupcake liner inside out, so that it would lay a bit flatter when I glued down the gold scallop. Simply glue about a quarter size area on the cupcake liner, and right away, glue the scallop on top and push it down. Then just glue down your numbers.

I don't know what people normally do with dates and advent, because this is my first time, but I just did 1-24. We will start on December 1st. To hang it, I used this gold ball of ribbon that I found in the yarn section at JoAnns. I did three rows of 8 bags and just laid them out on the floor, one at a time, clipping them. I hung the ribbon with pushpins.

What you put in your bags is up to you. I decided on putting a little chocolate candy for each child in the bag, as well as our bible reading for that day, and a fun Christmas activity. That part was actually the hardest of all. I sat down with my calendar, and that helped take off some of the pressure. On days that we already have stuff planned, that's what I wrote on the little paper that I put in the bag. 

Some examples: 

Our charter school has an annual gingerbread making family event at school. I put that in that day's bag. We will be out of town for a few days, so those I skipped. On the day we meet with our teacher before Christmas break, it says "take gift to Mrs. Fischer". We are planning on going to a Christmas play, so that went on that day's card. My girlfriends and I have a big Christmas dinner every year, so on that night I wrote "daddy-daughters date night! Daddy takes you to dinner and to shop for mom". You get the idea. Use your calendar to help you. 

After that, think of your family's favorite activities. I did some like: Drive around and look at lights (x2). Drink hot chocolate. Watch a Christmas movie. Bake cookies. Etc.

You'll notice that the last day is a different bag. You might think that's because it's Christmas Eve, but really my package was just short a bag, so I improvised. Hopefully my kids will love counting down the days!

Glittered Deer Garland

Hello! I'm finally getting back into crafting for myself, and I'm loving it! I wanted to create a simple, clean garland for Christmas. This could not possibly be any easier.

What you'll need: 

White cardstock

Deer punch (I bought mine with a coupon so it was cheaper) OR cut with a Silhouette or Cricut

Gold glittered cardstock

craft glue

baker's twine

I first punched out my deer heads from the glittered gold cardstock. After measuring the deer, I decided what size I wanted my ovals to be. I cut ovals out of white cardstock (size will depend on your deer head).
Fold the ovals in half. Then you just assemble it! Spread glue on one half of the inside of the oval, and put the twine in the fold. Seal it shut, then glue the deer head on the front. Seriously, it doesn't get any easier than that! Enjoy!

Mini Photo Tree

I saw this idea on pinterest {where else?!} and loved it. My mother in law never gets a tree anymore because she's not home very much so it's not worth the trouble. At thanksgiving, my niece Breanna took our family photos and I got them today! www.breannacarin.blogspot.com I ordered some wallet size prints from Costco and LOVE the way they turned out! I used my glittered clothespins I made a few weeks ago to pin them to the branches. The metal pail is from Lowes. I think she'll love her table top tree, I can't wait to give it to her tomorrow!

Frosted Glass Ornaments

I was given a couple of boxes of clear glass ornaments and I debated on several different ways to decorate them. I remembered that I still had frosted glass vinyl that came with my Silhouette bundle last year. I also had leftover fake snow from another project. You can also use Epsom Salt, and just use a funnel to pour it in.
 It doesn't get any easier than cut and stick! I used tweezers to place the letters since I used a small, fancy font.

North Pole Breakfast

I saw on Pinterest, that a blogger had surprised her children with a Elf on the Shelf breakfast the morning after Thanksgiving. It looked like a fun morning! Here's a little look at ours...

Winter Shelf

You'll have to forgive my ugly flash picture, our house has the worst possible lighting in this spot. I am LOVING this shelf. All I did was spend a couple bucks at a thrift store to gather some various white containers. A few of them I already had. I then cut floral foam to fit inside them, and used clippings from our trees and shrub to fill them in. I realize I will probably need to re-cut new pieces in a couple weeks, but I'm ok with that... They were FREE, and they're real! The two mercury glass votives are from Target. They were $3.00. I LOVE the neutral look I've somehow managed to accomplish! I made the burlap stocking out of scraps I already had, and added quickly whipped up a white ruffle for the top. I used one of my glittered clothespins I've prepared for packaging, to pin it to a jute string. I have two more stockings cut, but laziness set in before I sewed them. I may or may not get around to adding them to the other two panes. Right now, I love it!!

FUN Christmas Game

Tonight we celebrated a mini-family Christmas because part of our family is going to Colorado this week. My sister in law recently learned a new game and said we HAD to play it. We wrapped two gifts, each one in about 5 layers of wrapping, and each layer wrapped with painters tape. You roll a dice- we picked the # 1 as the number we were rolling for. You stand around a table and pass the dice around. When you get the number, you hurry and put on a scarf, hat, goggles (or glasses) and snow gloves. You try to rip open the gift until the next person rolls that number and then they take your gear from you and try to open it. The person who finally opens it gets to keep it. It's HILARIOUS! Many times we didn't even get our gear on before the next person would roll a #1 and we had to give them our stuff.

Seriously, if you have a weak bladder, pee before playing this game! Have fun!!

Elf gifts!

I came across this post that was included in a HowDoesShe article about things to use jars with. I loved the idea and thought I'd make them for "elf gifts". I've always heard and read of people leaving something on the doorstep, with a note saying, "you got elfed!" and running away.These are so easy to make too! The recipe is on the link above, as well as the printable tags.

They included the baking directions too, so all you need is to print out the sheet, cut them up and then use some double sided tape and ribbon to attach them to the jars.

I ran out of room in my jars for the pecans. I packed each ingredient down firmly, but I still had NO room for the nuts. Just an fyi, so you don't feel like you have to buy the nuts. They also make cute neighbor gifts. =)

Chocolate Mint Cookies {WAY better than Girl Scouts!}

Growing up, my family would join with our "best friend family" and spend an entire day making cookies. One year, when they planned to start baking on a school day (they expected us to wait until after school to help! ha!) I stayed home sick from school. When my mom's friend arrived, she had- you guessed it- MY best friend with her who also stayed home sick that day! Imagine that, we didn't even plan it! I think it really must have given us a stomach ache to think of them baking without us! Our siblings had all gone to school, we were the only two who just couldn't fathom being at school. I have the fondest memories of five kids at our (or theirs, depending on the year) dining room table, rolling Russian Teacakes in powdered sugar, or putting sprinkles on sheets of Spritz cookies, or putting the chocolate disk and nut on top of the Santa's Thumbprint cookies when they came out of the oven. Anyway! Back to the matter at hand! One of the many cookies our families made every year were these! They blow the pants off of Girl Scout Thin Mints! Trust me!The most important thing in making these cookies are buying the right ingredients! This chocolate, Mercken's, will completely harden on it's own {no refrigerating required} , and it will look glossy and smooth. The other thing you will need is peppermint oil, NOT extract or flavoring. This is the way it's been done for all of my 28 years and I'm not gonna mess with a good thing! =) The only other ingredient you'll need is a box of Original Ritz crackers, again, no generics here. If you live in Visalia, you can find Mercken's at Sweets N Things or Pacific Treasures.Lay out rows of wax paper on your counter top. Use the double boiler method to melt your chocolate. I used 2 of the one pound bags in this bowl. If you don't know how to do a double boiler, you simply put about an inch or so of water in a pan and nestle in a heat safe bowl, and stir the chocolate while the water boils. Make sure the water isn't so high that it would actually touch the bowl.

After your chocolate is totally smooth and melted, remove from the heat, but keep over the pan of steam. Add about 6 small drops of peppermint oil to this amount of chocolate and stir. You are ready to dip! Drop four Ritz, face down in the chocolate. Don't use broken crackers, you want your chocolate smooth, not full of crumbs. Using two forks, you will use your right hand to flip it once, and the fork in the left hand you will gently press the tines into the top of the cracker so that you can shake off any excess chocolate.

I didn't have an extra set of hands in the house to take a picture of me doing that step, since I need both hands to do it.

Drop on your wax paper and allow to completely dry. Store in an airtight container.

Gingerbread houses

Last week was gingerbread house decorating at Charter Home School Academy. My hubby was hoping to come with us, but got sent out of town to work that morning. The girls and I headed down to the school with our gingerbread kit. I had put together the house the day before so that it would be solid enough to decorate.

While these kits are very helpful, they just don't cut it for me. Growing up my mom made her own gingerbread and cut her own pattern. I still have the fondest memories of our annual trip to Mr. Bulky, a bulk candy store, and getting to plan our candy decorations.

One year, I HAVE to do it myself, but it was not this year. Maybe I'm waiting for them to be a little bit older so that they would be more help, and maybe appreciate it more. I have special place in my heart for my pastel necco wafer roof that I made as a child.

When they were done the girls got to decorate a cookie and eat it. I'm happy to report the gingerbread house made it home in one piece! Amazingly!

Christmas Cookie Kit

Check out this super cute Christmas Cookie Kit that I got today from my supercalicraftilicious friend Sheri! Is it not the cutest thing ever?! It comes with star and tree cookies, a can of frosting, and two types of sprinkles.

Check out the cute wooden basket packaging! Thanks Sheri! I had to share it with everyone!