DIY Christms Card Holder

On one of my many Pinterest viewing sessions I saw this on Pinterest, but of course did not pin it and can't find it again! But here is my DIY Christmas Card Holder. It was so easy to make.

I used several clear Command Adhesive Strips and some shinny green gift wrap ribbon. Create a tree shape and wrap the ribbon until you have a shape you like! SO Easy!!! I then used little clothes pins to attach my cards to the tree! I think it could use a star on top and maybe some fancier clothes pins.... we will see if I have time.... :)

DIY Hand Scrubs

I was in charge of Craft Club for November and I decided we would make some fun hand scrubs that we could use as Holiday gifts! We made a Candy Cane Sugar Scrub, Gingerbread Sugar Scrub and a Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub. They all smell SOOOO wonderful and are so easy to make!! Plus they make GREAT gifts!!!

You can use any kind of baking oil for these recipes when it just calls for oil. Olive Oil works fine, but it has a stronger smell than some of the other oils. Grape Seed oil works well and doesn't have a strong smell.  These all make about 16 ounces of scrub!!

My favorite is the Gingerbread Sugar Scrub because I LOVE Gingerbread!!!!

Gingerbread Sugar Scrub
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 cup oil

I also LOVE LOVE the smell of the Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub.... this one is good enough to eat....

Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub
1 cup Coconut Oil (in the solid form)
1 cup Honey
1/2 cup white sugar
Mix together the Coconut Oil in it's solid form together with the honey until they are mixed together. Add in the sugar.

We learned from experience that you don't want to melt the coconut oil into a liquid state or it will not combine with the honey!!!

Last we made a Candy Cane Sugar Scrub.

Candy Cane Sugar Scrub
2 cups white sugar
1 cup oil
Several drops of mint (to your preference)
Split into two portions and add a VERY small amount of red coloring

The first time I made this I used food coloring. While it gave a really nice red color, it also slightly stained my hands red when I used it!! We used soap colorant and that worked better, but didn't give us a bright red color. In my opinion, I prefer this to red hands....

And I am SOOO nice :) I here are the labels I used to decorate my jars with!!!!

Sugar Scrub Printable Labels

I can't wait to give these as gifts and use some myself this Holiday season!!!

Childs Chalkboard Frame

Last week I showed the gift I made for my 6 year old niece, this week I am showing the gift I made for her younger sister, our 3 year old niece. I also found this frame at Good Will, and of course I did not take a before picture, but it was in bad shape! I spray painted the frame gray, and used my Rust-o-leum chalk board paint in teal to paint the background board. Since this is for a 3 year old girl, I trimmed the outline of the frame in pink, because what 3 year old does not love pink! I then used my Silhouette to stencil her name on the bottom of the frame!



Used my Martha Stewart stencils to add some blue flowers and one beautiful blue butterfly!




I attached the background to the frame, added felt to the back and was done! I decided not to add any hanging hardware because I am not sure how she will want to use it!

When I was photoing the finished product, my little man decided he needed to write Merry Christmas on the board as well! He was having lots of fun drawing on it, so I hope our niece will like it just as much!

Easy Co Worker Christmas Gifts

I have been making a ton of little hot chocolate gifts for myself, my mom and mother in law to give as gifts. It was so fun, I think I might have gotten a bit carried away! But that's ok, who doesn't love chocolate on a spoon!!



These chocolate spoon were so easy to make. Just pour a little chocolate into the spoon, add your candy decoration and let them harden! I found that the spoon needed to be elevated a bit on the end to dry the best, so I used scrabble tiles, because they were right there, I also used a plate upside down, and that worked out well too. I found m&m's worked well, candy canes crumbled also worked well. I crumbled up candy cane hersey kisses and those melted into the chocolate, so I didn't use them on many.


More spoons with the plate support...


I was also a marshmallow dipping fool!






Yum! Lot's of chocolate dipped Marshmallows!!

The finished product. I made two versions! The first had 4 packets of coco in it. We used Nestle and I liked how it said "Warming Chocolate Moments" on the front of it. That added a nice touch. Four spoons, several marshmallows covered in chocolate and a small bottle of Bailey's!!

These were packaged in a small red box and turned out great!

The smaller individual serving gift included one pack of hot chocolate mix, one spoon, and two marshmallows. I love how these turned out!

Ugly Christmas Sweaters!

Last weekend we went to an ugly Christmas Sweater Party!

This was my uncle and the winner of the ugly sweater party! He won a traveling ax trophy.

My dad and his 3D tree ugly sweater!! My mom took a wall hanging and attached it to his sweater along with several small sweaters that spelled out "Christmas"
The lovely ugly sweater my sister made for her husband (I helped!!) This won an ugly sweater contest the weekend before!! Notice the short sleeves with the nice gold trim!!

This was my ugly sweater! Hot glue made this possible! It's a bit hard to tell from this picture, but mine had Christmas lights that flickered! And lots of bells! I was a little disappointed, I thought I would get a vote, but I didn't!

A group shot of the ugly sweaters! Aren't we all pretty in our ugly sweaters!! Little Man had an "ugly" sweater that I bought at Good Will that was a nice train sweater vest, but he was so excited by it, I felt bad making it into an ugly sweater, so he is wearing Santa Jammies!

Linked up to an Ugly Christmas Sweater Shindig

Easy Christmas Art Work

When preparing for my guests I had this morning, last night this empty frame was driving me nuts! So I created some easy 5 minute art! It really only took me 5 minutes!

My frame before. Empty!

I taped red fabric to the back of the mat, then put the frame back together.


When I made my Christmas pillows a few weeks back, I knew how much I hated using the iron, so I prepared a few extra trees using the Wonder Under product, so I have a bunch of fabric trees with the paper backing on them. I used basic tape runner and glued the trees to the outside of my glass frame.

And we have a super easy Christmas decoration. And all of it can be re-used in the future since I only used tape! The flash on my camera emphasized the creases in my fabric, but they are not that noticeable on the wall.... like I said, I don't like to iron.... but that would be an easy fix!

Christmas Ornaments

I am having too much fun with felt! After making my felt pillows, I decided to make some ornaments! My 3 yards of felt is almost gone! I have been tracing and cutting hundreds and hundreds of frosting cap sized circles.
I found Styrofoam balls at the dollar store which were the perfect size! This is just a small - very small sample of the amount of green felt circles I used.
It's so easy to assemble! Fold the circle in half and then in fourths.
Stick a pin in it and then place it onto the ball. I packed the ornaments a bit thicker than needed, but I liked the shape of it!
I added a red ribbon and we have a nice easy Christmas ornament!

Christmas Pillows

I am so excited, I just finished two Christmas pillows!

The pillow on the right was inspired by the Crate and Barrel pillow.
I started by cutting 3 inch circles form about a 1/2 a yard of green felt fabric. I decided to only do one shade of green for my version.


I cut a tree shape out of felt, and used the fabulous tutorials all over the web folding the circle into forth and then put one stitch through it and then into the tree shaped background.

I then continued this about a hundred times!!


Until I had covered the entire tree.


I then used white fabric to sew a pillow. I like to make my pillows with the envelope closure so I can easily change my pillow cases out. I then hand sewed the tree to my pillow. This was a little harder than I thought because I had to be careful I did not sew through bother layers of the pillow. The inside of this pillow is very messy, but it's the inside, so it does not matter!

The back of the pillow.
I also made another pillow that I pined on Pinterest a while back. The original pin was Quiltish but I found it from the blog: inspired honey bee. I love how this pillow turned out. Even though I am not good at using Wonder Under, I used it and then used my sewing machine to outline the trees to the pillow.



Both of my pillows! Love them!