Getting Ready for Christmas Part Four (Or Craft Sale Lovelies)

Each year the kids' school has a craft sale. People send in all kinds of homemade items for the students to buy. It's quite the exciting day. This is what we sent in.

Colourful mustaches made by Little Miss.

Thrift store ornaments, new, still in packaging...

receive some love.

Getting Ready for Christmas Part Three (Or Thrift Store Wreath)

Our side door was in need of a little Christmas cheer. Several weeks ago I found these lovelies at a thrift store.

Glass. Vintage. I'm in love. Many still had price tags. 39 cents for some 99 cents for other bundles. Many came from Eaton's.

So let's get crafting, shall we? With my amazing power and strength, I turned an ordinary hanger into a circle with my bare hands. Amazing, eh? Snip off the hanger part. I used wire cutter for this part, not my bare hands.

And that is where my amazing power and strength end. With no strength left, I taped the two ends together.

I simply began by winding the wire that was attached to the glass bobble around the wreath frame.

 They were so wobbly at first, that I thought I would have to change tatics, but the more bobbles I added, the less wobbly they became. I started with the largest size and worked my way down to the little ones.

Until I had this. Shiny. Happy. Cheerful.

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Snow and Treat Tuesday

We woke up this morning to snow. Still not a lot, just enough to cover the ground. This is the view from our front door, hydro wires and all.

It's been a year and half since we moved. It's one of the best things we ever did. (We do miss our friends. We still see them, just not as often as we'd like!) One of the reasons we moved was to slow down, to take time to enjoy life, to live a simpler life. The pace of life IS slower here. Having more time has been a blessing. It's alowed us to do things like Treat Tuesday.

We love to bake in our house. I wanted to give the kids something to look forward to after school. Baking seemed like a natural thing to do. Tuesdays fit. So, Treat Tuesday.

 Such happiness on those little faces. They had a blast measuring, mixing, rolling.


And squishing. I think that this was Mr. Man's favourite part.

The recipe said that sprinkles were optional. Sprinkles aren't optional when kids are around. They are an essential. Once the squishing, stamping, and flattening was done, Mr. Man was done too. Little Miss was all to happy to decorate the cookies all by herself. I think that was her favourite part.

Getting Ready for Christmas Part Two (or Nativity Hide and Seek)

I thought I should mention that this year I have decided two things. One, I am much better at decorating in stages, hence the part one, etc. of decorating for Christmas. Two, I decided not to buy any new decorations (except for one string of outdoor lights), unless it came from a thrift store. Fast forward to Saturday. Out came the nativity scene. I love, love, love this nativity scene. It was a gift from Andrew and the kids a few years ago.

We carefully took it out of the box and put it on the side table in the living room.

Yah. Um. You-who! Nativity set! Come out, come out where ever you are! The set totally disappears.

Enter a box, some burlap left over from another project, corsage pins and ribbon from the thrift store.  Oh! And a cute little puppy.

Projects are always much more fun with a cute puppy.

I simply wrapped two boxes in burlap. One for the base and one for the back. Using a Sharpie, I wrote lyrics to a Christmas carol on some velvety ribbon and attached it to the box with the corsage pins. Voila! C'est tout fini! And now the nativity set has been found.

Now for some bunting at the top of the rug and this corner with complete. Stages, remember?

Getting Ready for Christmas Part One (Or hmmmm, Something's Not Quite Right With This Christmas Display, So I'll Make My Own Shutters)

Our jelly cupboard sits in the living next to the kitchen. (And yes it's full of jelly and other jarred goodness for the very first time in 16 years, but that's another post.) It normally looks like this.

About a week ago, I began to decorate it for Christmas. But something wasn't right.  The proportions were all wrong. Something was missing. And then it hit me. There wasn't enough height.  hmmmmm. Shutters would look great. But I have no shutters. So I guess I'll make some. And I did. Out of an old blind. What do think?

Yep, that's right! An old blind. A fake wood blind that no longer worked. The broken one that used to hang in our dining room. Remember this awful mess?

Well, with few cuts and a glue gun, the broken, fake wood blind turned into this. A lovely pair of shutters.

The shutters become the perfect backdrop for Christmas card holder that I made from an old frame vintage wire and bunting with vintage trim. You can get one here. It's a larger version of the frames that I made for Water for Christmas.

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And a it's a perfect backdrop for the happy snowmen.

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Making the shutters were easy. Remove the slats from a old, broken blind.

Place the slats side by side.  I chose to use seven for each shutter. Line up the slits.

Take another slat and lay it horizontally over the slits.

Mark where it needs to be cut. (I stacked all four slats and cut them with a miter saw). Glue the horizontal slats over the slits. For greater stability, cut two more slats with angles at either end. Glue them  on diagonally between the two horizontal slats. That's it! Finished!

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Etsy

It's open! Miracle-Round is now on Etsy! Friends and family have been encouraging me to sell the things I make on Etsy, and I finally did it. The shop is open. I donated items to an Etsy shop called  Water for Christmas, and to my delight, my items sold right away. You can check out the previous post for more info. Anyway, that was just the boost I needed to open my shop.

Right now, I think these are my favourite.

Africa and Etsy

One of my favourite blogs is Whatever. It was through that blog that I learned about Water for Christmas.

They were looking for crafters to donate items to their Etsy shop. I thought, "Hmmm, that's cool", but it pretty much ended there as I closed the computer and got on with all the things that children bring in life. A few days later I came across it again. This time I decided to act. I made these.

They sold. They're gone. I should have made more. But you can still shop for something else. It's awesome to give. Buy a gift for Christmas and at the same time you are giving the gift of clean water. How great is that?