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Friday, December 23, 2011

The Last Bit of Holiday Craftiness

Here's the last installment of my DIY holiday stuff for this year! Can you believe it's Christmas eve EVE?!

Cranberry Topiaries = fail.
Sadly, these were a failure. They may have worked out if I had given them a few tweeks, but by the time I had searched and found all the supplies I was not interested in going back to the drawing board to make design adjustments.

So, I started with the base. I just use floral foam trimmed-to-shape and stuffed it into the little pot. 

 Then I sat and trimmed all these little berries (this is actually only half of them) off of their twigs. 

After being trimmed they had this nice little stem that I used to poke them straight into the styrofoam ball. I loved that no glue was necessary... so I thought.

Not only did it look like this with all those big gaps between the berries,

but not all of the berries had nice long stems. You can guess what happened to the ones with short stems. If you looked at them funny they fell out.

So instead of cranberry topiaries, we have cranberries in a jar on the end table. Who knows, maybe I'll do something different with them next year, but at this point in the season that's where they're staying.

I might have been able to solve the issue of the gaps by painting the styrofoam ball a color other than white that would be less noticeable through the gaps. But that would require buying a whole thing of paint when I only really need enough to cover a styrofoam ball. And then what am I doing with the rest of that paint? It would be no good by the time I ever needed it for something again. Sounds like a waste of money to me.

Moving along, I made a "Pinspired" (Pinterest-inspired, get it? haha) gift for some friends of ours.
 Inexpensive bag of coffee beans + jars + small pillar candles + ribbon
Affordable, adorable. Everybody wins!

And, I made some really easy play dough for my nephews and niece.
2 cups of baking soda (that's one small box, in case you were wondering)
1.5 cups of water
1 cup of corn starch
Just mix together in a sauce pan and boil (stirring constantly) until doughy. I let it cool and then worked in some food coloring. If you wanted it all the same color then I guess you could put the food coloring in while it's cooking. The consistency is really nice and it makes about 4 softballs worth of play dough. 

Last but not least, and while not super crafty, I also got this idea from Pinterest. Rather than searching for a wrapping paper that I think is sufficiently stylish and cute (and therefore expensive), this year I simply bought a roll of brown postal wrapping paper. Yes, it looks just like a cardboard box. However, I once again utilized my wintry paper (also seen here) and monogrammed each box. It's simple, but still cute and personal.



I know what you're thinking, there are some projects I spoke of a while back that have not been worked on. This is true. And that's because I wanted to work on things that had to be done before Christmas first. The few that are left include- knitted pillow covers, a new wet bag for our cloth diapers, and whatever I was going to do with that purse. Don't worry, they're still on my list!

So there it is. Christmas projects complete. Stockings are hung. Gifts are wrapped. All that's left is to wait for the big day! We are really excited around here since our bebe is older this year (20 months tomorrow!) and we know she is going to be excited about her gifts. Christmas becomes a completely different holiday at that point. I don't think I've ever been more excited for Christmas morning than I am this year!  I'll be sure to return with lots of pictures to share. Until then, Merry Christmas to all!

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