Christmas Ornaments

My friend, Morgan is doing a fun Christmas ornament exchange in December. I thought long and hard about what to make for the exchange. I wanted to do these fun wood and vinyl ornaments since they would cost the least amount of money ($0), but since energy is at a premium around here for me, I decided on less time consuming but more expensive ornaments. These are still fairly inexpensive per ornament, I just had to buy the stuff to make them. My 4-year-old helped me make a few the other day, so they’re also pretty easy.

The fake snow was the most expensive part (I used a 40% off coupon at Michaels). We don’t do glass ornaments in our house, the balls are plastic. I just grabbed a bunch of mini-ornament packs that fit inside the ball and I hung a Santa from the cap. I also got some mini-Christmas trees, but I haven’t figured out how to easily have those hang from the cap, so I’ll probably take them back and get more Santas.

I’m getting into a Christmas mood early this year. I don’t even know yet how many ornaments I need for the exchange. It’s fun to make stuff though, especially when they don’t take much time at all. I just couldn’t resist.

Update

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long! My oldest son had Fall break from school so we went to Washington state for a week and a half to visit my husband's family. We've been home for almost a week, but I caught a cold right at the end and I haven't gotten over it yet. Along with my cold, I'm expecting baby #4 in the Spring, so I've been sick with that and the valley fever hasn't gone away. My midwife told me to expect to have valley fever for a good 6 months (it can go away sooner, but she's not expecting it). Everything combined makes me very tired right now. Tomorrow, my husband will be helping me with a project that I've had on the back burner since we bought the house. It shouldn't take long and I'll try to post about it and a few other things I need to start working (when I get the energy) soon.

Craft Night and Crafts

I was talking to my mother the other day and she told me that she'd been watching for a post about how my craft night the other day went. That reminded me that I've been really bad about blogging lately. I'm still sick, although I can feel the end of the valley fever in sight. I'm hoping another week or two will be the end and I can come back strong and finish a few things around here (like the laundry...).

Craft night went really well. I spent a good chunk of the day cleaning up my downstairs for the evening, so I had no energy to do anything but sit and chat that night. Since that's half the point of my craft nights, I didn't feel bad at all. We had a good turnout and everyone had fun (as far as I could tell). Morgan and I are already brainstorming ideas for our next craft night at the end of January - after all the holidays. We'll get more details after my health returns and when it gets a bit closer to the New Year.

So, I didn't get anything made that night. A couple nights later, my husband and I were at a loss for what to do and all my craft projects from our church craft night at the beginning of September were sitting unfinished in the living room. I convinced him to help me put together the candy corn topiary kit I'd bought and hadn't done. I'm proud to say that with my husband's help, we had this baby finished in 40 minutes! Super cute, huh? I'm thinking of doing two more at different heights and maybe a set of Christmas tree topiaries, too. You can also see the Spooky board we had available for my craft night last week.

Since it was General Conference weekend and I hadn't (and still haven't) hauled my craft table back upstairs to the craft room, I sat down during Saturday's sessions and finished the rest of my kits from early September. Here's my Christmas Stackers. I couldn't leave well enough alone though. I called my friend who'd cut all the vinyl for this project and got the name of the font, so I could make mine double sided. :) Obviously, you can't see that in the picture, but it will look great from both sides on display at Christmas this year!

Last, but not least, I finished up the Christmas Advent calendar. It's made from a mini-muffin tin, cool, huh? I dry-brushed black paint on the edges of the paper since I don't have an ink pad for that. The instructions said to tie some ribbon through the pre-drilled holes that don't exist, so my husband will be digging out a drill bit that goes through metal before Christmas and fixing that. Plus, I think I'm going to spray paint the pan white to be a little more Christmasy and a little less kitcheny.

Please excuse the horrible background. I bought the vinyl tablecloth for craft night so I wouldn't get paint on my dining table and I haven't put it away yet. Plus, you can see the fun water-coloring my boys were doing while I crafted on Saturday.

I'm hoping by Thanksgiving to have a few things crossed off my To-Do list, but I have to feel better before I can start anything new. It drives me CRAZY sometimes!