Last Minute Christmas Crafts

     This Christmas season we were severely slacking on getting everything done on time, so like many of you all this week was cram packed full of last minute ideas and for me... crafts

This is what we came up with, a little help from pinterest on the snow globe and the mason jar with hot chocolate.



Mason Jar Hot Chocolate:
-Mason Jar
-Fabric
-Stamp
-Stamp pad
-Scissors
-Your favorite Chocolate
-Marsh mellows
-Peppermint candy
-Ribbon

We used Stephen's hot cocoa from Costco because there is a lot 

in the can,it was decently priced and it tastes so good!

Layer: hot cocoa, marsh mellows, and then peppermints

Cut Fabric into squares, put them on top of the flat piece of 

the lid, then seal them in with the screw part of the lid

Stamp the top with your favorite stamp. I chose Santa, 

Oh holy night, and star stamps

Snow Globe:

-Mason jar

-Super glue

-Cute toy

-Glitter

-Gift card

-Water

 Super glue toy to the flat part of the lid. We chose a 

Christmas looking rubber ducky. Super glue the gift

card onto the toy. Pinterest says use hot glue, but we

found out that it falls off fast. Super glue works

wonders!

Fill mason jar up with water and add as much glitters

as you see fit. We chose to do A LOT! Seal it tight

and enjoy.

This was a fun craft for my husband and I. We were sturggling with where to put all of our stockings so he thought of the clever idea to use a coat rack and have out stockings dangling from the top. What my husband did was cut wire hangers and twist them so they have a hook at the top and the hook from the hanger at the bottom ("S" formation). He did that 5x for the 5 stockings. We took $1 store garlin, and $1 store ribbon and twisted it around the poles, then we added our clearance red and green lights around the polls and that was it. The coat rack had a shelf on it so we added presents on the rack as well.

 Finished project :) turned out fantastic!

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas,

Christmas Decor

  It's that time of year again and MAN has time flown. Last year I was in NJ seeing white snow all over the ground, this year im in WA with  no snow on the ground. This past year I've lived in NJ, NC, and now WA...crazy. Last week we got everyone in our house downstairs and we pulled out all of our Christmas decorations. It was so much fun listening to music, laughing, story telling about our childhood memories and decorating our house.

            

 
                               

Christmas Lanterns:

 These are done the same way as

the Fall Lanterns but I added Christmas balls

and Christmas leaves

Or another way to do a Christmas lantern is fill up the 

lanterns with Christmas tree balls. Pick

two or 3 different ball colors and it looks very pretty

As you can tell we had an abundance of Christmas

tree balls so we put them everywhere :) This is a flower

vase and we added green balls to make it look

like leaves or grass and then added pretty gold and red leaves

The extra balls we put in a cute basket on our end tables

I saw on Pinterest people hanging their Christmas balls on their chandelier and that looked so cute, if we had a chandelier I would have loved to do that. I've also seen, if you take a cheap frame and paint it green or red or which ever Christmas color, take pretty ribbon and tie it to the top of the frame and dangle small Christmas balls down to the middle. such a cute idea!

 NOT MY PICTURES- found them off Pinterest    

Have tons of fun decorating
Love you all,

Fall Decor

   I am ALOT late on my fall decorations but I really wanted to get the blog post out. 

   Quick update on us: We moved to Vancouver, Washington in the middle of September. We moved in with our cousin Savannah, her boyfriend Brian, and our brother in law Jack. We have my dog Kiski still and our cat Taylor, we also have Savannah's doberman pincher Lucian and her cat Snow... so that's... lets count.... 9 mouths to feed in our decently sized 3 bedroom house! We love it. Our house is just big enough for all of us to have our own space and not feel claustrophobic. 

   

  For work I do marketing and customer service for a local Bread/Bakery company, its amazing; I love it so much and I am happy with everyone that works there. 

  Zack is pretty much liking his job as a recruiter. Hes doing so good and i'm so happy for him. He works a lot of hours right now, I never get to see him but that's what it takes to be a recruiters wife. At least for the next year he will work a ton of hours but I get to eat dinner every night with him, even if its at 9 or 10 pm and I get to cuddle with him every night, so i'm not complaining :)

 We're doing really well here. It snowed the other day which was cool, and today it was 25* so its a bit cold but our home is warm and cozy so I try to stay indoors :D

Now for the decor:

Fall Lanterns

What you need:

- string of light 100 bulb lights

-sissors

-Gorilla tape. 

-Ellen on your TV

(As seen in the pictures, I used electrical tape... doesnt work to well so I had to go back and tape Gorilla tape over the other tape.

Time it takes to complete this craft is the same time it takes to 

watch an episode of Ellen on the DVR :)

This is the top of the inside all taped up looks like. The easiest way 

I found was detaching all the sides, start at the top of the 

lantern and work your way down. 

 Add fall leaves and a pine cone or two. I got mine in the clearance

section of my local craft store. Lights were on sale for $4 and the 

fall leaves were on clearance for $3 so this hole craft cost me about $15 to do both lanterns

Added both of them to our book shelf and it looks fantastic if I do say so myself

OUR HALLOWEEN PARTY:

Dirt cups: Chocolate pudding, Oreo crust crumbles, and 

gummy worms. I wrote on the cups sayings like "Boo!"

"trick or treat" "R.I.P" and "Happy Halloween"

Mummy weenies- Hot dogs cut in half, croissant wrapped around the

weenie like a mummy. cook in the oven on 350* for like 15-20 

(until the croissant is golden brown)

Homemade bagel bits:

mini bagels, your favorite spaghetti sauce, cheese, pepperonis,

 and olives. I cut the pepperonis into a smaller circle and 

put olives on top so they look like a face 

screaming... creepy huh? 

Cooked them on 350* for 15-20 mins, until

cheese is cooked on top

Cupcakes from the store and the $1 store cupcake display

Punch: Hawaiian punch, orange sherbet, and eye balls that we got

from the $1 store too.

My Ariel pumpkin

 After I painted them, they looked a million times better

 Everyones pumpkins :)

Turkey day crafts:

Our nana made these cute turkeys with nuts, foe leaves, and 

a few googly eyes

Our Aunt made this paper wreath. Multi-color paper, calligraphy pen,

and needle pins. Pin all the cut out leaves onto a Styrofoam wreath,

write about 20 thing you are thankful for around 

the middle of the wreath. 

Love you all,

Craft: head phones

  When I worked for Glass Production, a few of the girls I worked with all went to Bolivia for missions work. I was never allowed to go to another country for missions work, and it was always too expensive for me. One day I saw the girls making these bracelets, I asked why are they making so many and she told me they were making them for all the little boys in the orphanage that they stay in Bolivia. I, of course wanted to help as much as possible, if I cant go to Bolivia I will help with this cute idea. So I bought a bunch of colored string and hemp string at Michael's and everyday during work, at home, and in the car (not driving of course), I would just make bracelets to show that, even though I couldn't help them get to Bolivia with donations, I could help in other ways.

  With that said, I was looking online at craft websites and blog after blog after blog where I stumbled upon a website that had thousands and thousands of crafts... pretty easy crafts (not that I could ever find the website again to keep looking at it). Well I found these head phones that were wrapped with yarn. It looked really cool so I thought, well I have hundreds of different color string up stairs that I'm never going to use again, why not?? So this is what I came up with:

You will need:

• colored string or yarn (I like string because yarn gets fuzzy after a while and I carry my headphone with me every where.. including the gym so I didn't want it to get ruined so easy)
• Head phones
• Tape

 

I used the same knots that I used to make the bracelets. Tie like the picture shows and then do the same to the opposite side, alternate between sides. It'll have the knot on either side of the cord making the effect that its flat.

When the head phone split I chose 2 more colors and used a single knot all the way to the head phone piece. That makes a cool spiral knot look.

 

 

 

This craft was easy, it just took me a few hours. I always get compliments on the head phone when ever I bring them out. There is so many color combinations you can choose. I think kids would really have fun with this craft too. Kids usually want cool looking head  phone, or their favorite color, now you can buy the plain white ones and spice them up with every color of the rainbow :) Have fun!

 

 

Love you all,

Craft: Coasters

  Cheap inexpensive way to make cute coasters to match any home décor. It also makes a really cute gift idea.

What you would need:

• Felt stickers (I got mine at the $1 store; they are for moving furniture)
• Decorative gems-vase fillers that were $3 at a thrift store ( you can see the gems that I used in my lanterns in this blog)
• Tiles (got them for $0.47 at Lowes) I was going for the beach theme so they look like sand
• Hot glue gun

Yes, the gems are oval, but the bottom of them are flat so I super glued them upside down and they still hold really really well. I ruffed up the tiles a little bit with Sand paper to help them stick some more.

I did 4 coasters. The one on the left shows that you don't have to have a design and they still look super cute. On the right I did a simple flower.

I put the felt stickers on the bottom so they don't scratch my pretty newly painted table :)

Oh, I hot glued them on also just in case.

This project probably took me 30 mins to complete. The hot glue dries pretty much instantly so I was ready to use them as soon as I was done gluing the bottoms on. Simple as that. To make it a gift, if you don't know what the persons home decor is, instead of colored gems you can Mog Podge craft paper on the tiles. Do about 5-6 coats, let 10 mins per-coat to dry and there you have it, cheap, cute coaster that only cost maybe $5 Have fun

 

 

 

This is the one I made with scrap book paper. my mother in law loved it so much she made me make her a set too :) They are a good idea for the holidays if you are in a bind with money

 

Love you all,