Holiday crafts - ornament advent calendar

Last year I saw this ornament advent calendar in one of the Pottery Barn catalogs and I really liked the idea so I thought I would try it out this year.

I shopped the after Christmas sales last year and picked up a bunch of ornaments for 90% off. This ugly cork board came from a thrift store for $3 - I covered it with some burlap fabric and now it looks new.

We had some plain white card stock lying around so I printed the numbers and cut out the tags.

Pin everything onto the cork board and you're done!





I used jute twine to hang all the ornaments. I should probably have used a thinner twine - or maybe a bolder font - so that the numbers aren't blocked but I am too lazy to redo it.

We hung it on the half wall as you go up the stairs - I always feel like that wall needs something so this was a good spot for it.

I think technically the ornaments should be taken off the board and hung on the tree as the days pass but I thought the ornaments looked so pretty up there that I just left it. So I guess technically its not an advent calendar after all!

Holiday crafts - ruffly wreath

I have been so busy lately there has been no time for blogging but I do have a bunch of stuff I want to write about so hopefully I will get to it all soon.

In the meantime here's a wreath I made today. I am SUPER excited about decorating for Christmas and since Josh refuses to let me decorate early (I have suggested it 3 times over the past week and have been shot down every time - apparently he's a little more patient than me!) I decided to do a few Christmas crafts to tide me over.

I saw this ruffly wreath on jonesdesigncompany and loved it so I followed her tutorial to make my own.


This is everything you need! I already had the glue gun and glue sticks so all I had to buy was a 10" wreath form and half a yard of felt (yay for $5 crafts!).

It took me a little while to get the bunching and scrunching down so I started off slow but once I got going it was pretty quick. I think start to finish was about an hour but I bet if I made another one it would be quicker since I wont have that trial and error part at the beginning.


I love it!



I bought the cheapest felt they had (it wasn't even wool - I think it was made from recycled water bottles) and I think it still looks pretty nice. I want to make more but I already have 2 berry wreaths that I use inside for the holidays so I think 3 red wreaths might be overkill. We'll see though :-)

Snakes!

I had plans to do some cool Halloween decor this year but the big day is a week away and so far I've only made 1 thing so I think I will have to reschedule the cool decor for next year!

I saw this awesome snake wreath in my Martha Stewart Living magazine and had to make one for our front door. It was super easy and cheap to make.

All you need is a grape vine wreath (usually around $4 at Michaels), snakes (found them at the dollar store), black spray paint, black craft paint and a hot glue gun.



Spray paint your wreath and hand paint the snakes with craft paint. (The first time around I spray painted the snakes - the large ones dried but the small ones got super sticky and never dried so I had to go back to the dollar store for more snakes - oops.)

Hand painting the small snakes doesn't take too long because you're just slapping a coat of paint on them - no need to be meticulous.

Once everything is dry hot glue the snakes to the wreath and you're done!



It looks grey-brown in some of the pictures but its actually black.





I painted the eyes and tongues red for a more creepy effect.

Of course we had a heat wave the week I put it up and the heat melted the glue so I came home from work one day and found half the snakes on the ground. Not awesome. So I added a little florist wire around the loose ones and since then they haven't moved.



Pretty cool huh?