Where are you Christmas?

I'm having a hard time getting into the Christmas grove this year.

The shopping is mostly done. The cards are practically finished. The house doesn't have a stitch of decorating done and despite listening to Christmas music - I'm not feeling it yet. I've got lots of wonderful project planned, I just can't find the creative energy to get moving.

: (

I thought going to church this weekend and seeing the children sing, that was going to give me the Christmas spirit. But it didn't.

I love Christmastime, it is my favorite holiday...

Hoping to get bitten by the Christmas bug soon.

Holiday Ornament Cards

My apologies to anyone on our Christmas card list - you're seeing our holiday cards a bit early. But, each one is unique so you still won't know which is yours 'till they are all done and in your mail box.

This idea was inspired by something a friend did last year, they have a tree by their door and with every photo card they get, each one is bunched with a hole, a ribbon goes through it and adorns that tree. So I thought, why can't our card include an ornament???

The ornament on the front of the card actually comes off - there is a photo of the kids on one side, and a lyric from one of my favorite Christmas Songs. (I've set a slide show to the song for friends and family to  check out the rest of our year....)

Here is what I used to make the cards:

• Pre-made cards, purchased at Michael's, 50 of them for $6 using a 40% coupon
• Holiday scrapbook paper, cut into rectangles for the front and inside of the cards, then circles for the ornaments. 
• Holiday messages printed on velim
• Glue Sticks
• Ribbon
• Clear tape
• Photo of the kids, cut into circles

To assemble the ornaments, I paired up coordinating papers and glued the picture to one side and the message to the other.

Then I punched a hole in the top of the ornament and strung a ribbon through it.

Next, time to create the cards. Simply glue one of the rectangles of scrapbook paper onto the front of the card. I also glued a circle to the front of the cards that were more plain so that once the ornament was removed the card could still be enjoyed.

For the inside of the card, I glued in another piece of paper and then our holiday message.

Then a small hole through the front of the card, and then the ribbon from the ornament is threaded through and taped to the inside.

And you've got a Holiday Ornament Card

It just isn't Thanksgiving without cranberry bread!

Hmmm Cranberry Bread - actually cranberry orange bread.

My mom and I used to make it each Thanksgiving, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it. But while her version is amazing. AMAZING... it takes a long time to make. There are many ingredients. Ingredients that need chopping.

A while back I tried the Pillsbury quick bread version and it just wasn't the same.

: )

So I started playing with it - and it turns out with just 2 added ingredients, you can get pretty damn close to Mom's amazing cranberry bread. Dried cranberries and orange juice.

First assemble your ingredients and helpers - just as mom passed her recipe down to me, I'm passing Pillsbury's down to my kids.

What you'll need to do is chop about half a cup of the dried cranberries and add them to the mix. (Pillsbury just doesn't include enough.)

And when it is time to add 1 cup of water, swap out 1/3rd of the water for orange juice.

And there you go - prepare as otherwise indicated.

There you go - my version of homemade cranberry bread.

Shhhhh, don't tell mom.

Crystal Garland

I bought this chandelier for $10 at the ReStore a few months ago, hoping to do something for my daughters room with it.

My plan for using it in my daughter's room didn't work out - but I held onto it knowing some use for it would come up. As the holidays are approaching it came to me - a crystal garland.

The crystals were very easy to remove from the fixture.

But they were filthy.

So they got a bath.

And then I simply attached them end to end, alternating so that the big crystals joined to the bigs and the little to the little.

And while I liked them draped on the light fixture in my dining room, I knew it was meant to be on our mantle. (Forgive my fall decorations, I haven't turned everything over yet - i just couldn't resist taking and sharing these pictures.)

I'll be sure to post an update when I get the holiday stuff up.

Double Stars

My creative mind couldn't stop at just the 3-d stars... I wanted to find a way to make double stars, stars that were puffed out on both sides.

I figured all the stars needed were some tabs on the outside edges.

So I created the little template on my computer:

Kind of looks more like a snow flake doesn't it?

Bear with me, I promise it will turn into a double sided star here shortly.

So with the template I could have either printed it on decorative paper, or done like I did which was to export this file as an SVG and then cut it using my Cricut.

I scored the back of 2 of the stars, along the tabs and along the point to the center as I did in my earlier project. This time I actually used a scoring tool - fancy dancy. I also made note that I score the lines that I wanted to be a peak, on the wrong side, and the lines that I wanted to be a valley on the right side. Something I forgot to note in the first project.

Then I folded everything making sure the tabs were folded wrong side together.

Ta-daaaa!

Now, we could have stopped here and glued the stars to a flat piece of paper if that is what we were going for. But it wasn't...

So I kept going. Next was to apply glue to the tabs of the stars.

Then line up the points of the left side and the right side and pinch together.

You have to be a little patient while waiting for the glue to catch before moving to the next point of the star.

But when you're done - you've got this, a double sided 3 d-star.

I kept on cutting, scoring, folding, gluing over and over 'till I had these:

Our little patriotic jar of stars...

And since I've got the template I can cut these on my cricut on any paper, anytime and at any size... I'm thinking metalic papers at the holidays... run some string or twine in between for lovely ornaments. Maybe by then I'll have a toy to emboss the papers too.