Paper Snowflakes

I love the whimsical touch it can add to a home, to have lots of homemade paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, but sometimes it's hard to know just how to make them.

I thought I'd share my FAVORITE tutorials:

Last year we used this one, from 'Here's Looking at Me Kid', and made garlands strung in rows, from the ceiling. SO easy, and they turn out beautifully. We went right back to the same tutorial again this year, but tried using parchment paper, cut into squares, and hung them over the table, and over the old window on the bookshelf. I love them even more!

This is the first time we used this tutorial, from 'Kerli and Animals' (which I also mentioned in this post), and I thought it was ALSO very user friendly. You don't even have to start with a square. We used regular printer paper for these (haven't hung these ones yet but I'll post a pic when we do).

I've seen a couple of tutorials out there, that I don't understand, so I hope this helps someone searching for something a bit easier.

Homemade Christmas

I really wanted to add more COLOR to our home this Christmas. Our color scheme is usually red, gold, and creme, but I figured, if we were changing the tree, why not change everything?

Some colorful Christmas pictures that inspired me:

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The problem is, it's kind of hard to just change it all on a whim, when you have a limited budget and none of your old decorations match, so I did my best. Over the next few years, we'll be able to accumulate more color. (Knowing me though, I'll probably want to switch to an all white color scheme by then.)

So anyway, I brought some color into our home, by making this ornament garland I saw on Pinterest.

Since I was going to need a lot of ornaments, I bought the cheapest ones I could find, from Wal-Mart. They came in sets of 8, for $2.50. AND I used a few of our old red ones, too.

I would have liked to use ribbon to hang them, but I prefer to keep the spending to a minimum, and I didn't have any ribbon on hand, so I used twine. It shows in a couple of places, which bothers me to no end, but I finally had to settle.

We hung it by our table.

(I decided to just leave the balloons up, from Penelope's birthday. That way, we get a little more use out of them.)

I made the wreath from a tutorial on Good Knits

It's {FINALLY} beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I feel like we kind of got a later start on decorating than we usually do. We've just been behind this year. We had family in town for Thanksgiving and everything else took a back seat. It took me awhile to get going again. It's starting to look like we're not even going to get Christmas cards out! : (

But the house is looking festive at last, and that makes me happy! We'll start with the tree.

Usually our tree looks like this:

I LOVE it! It's HUGE, and FULL, and BEAUTIFUL!!

But this year we wanted something different. With a curious little one year old running around, we didn't want the big tree falling on her and we didn't want her to break the ornaments. We came to the conclusion that we needed a smaller, more sparse, simply decorated, Christmas tree! It's funny how you get so used to the 'norm'. I almost felt nervous going to the tree lot to look at SMALL trees! Like I wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. It's just a tree, I know, but I wanted it to feel like Christmas and it usually DOES. . . .with our BIG tree. So I got a little nervous.

But when we got this gem home, we all fell in love with our humble little tree. It's just cute. Not overbearing.

Hubba built a little table for it to sit on, and I got some new, cheaper ornaments in the next few days, while he was at work.

I used this tutorial for the snowflakes. (If you're going to make these, DON'T FORGET her note in the beginning of the pattern! The dc are actually sc!! I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong at first.)

I also got some tinsel garlands and a few small ornaments from Wal-Mart. I added some candy canes and my 'peace sign', and she was complete.

The boys have told me on numerous occasions, that this is the BEST tree and that it's so much prettier than any we've ever had. You can imagine, from what I told you before, (about my self-esteem hinging on my children's acceptance), that I was beaming after hearing that. They were so excited to show daddy the decorated tree, when he came home from work in the morning.

This cotton ball Christmas window is something I saw on pinterest and LOVED the idea of 'snow' around my tree, so we strung up some cotton balls and craft pom poms from the ceiling with thread. I LOVE!!

tomorrow: tiny Christmas scenes, an ornament garland, and a crocheted wreath

Birthday girl

As I mentioned before, we just celebrated our teeny little girl's one year birthday. I love this girly so much and we had fun celebrating with her. Some details:

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1. The 'party' table. We don't do big parties for our kids, with all of OUR friends. Just don't see the point. So it was just the five of us, but I always love to make it special, with some decorations and a cake. (Balloons, tapered candles, polka dot napkins, and small paper plates from Zurchers! Who knew they had such cute party supplies there? I also got some stripey straws there.)

2. Flower Garland. I just bought a bunch of artificial flowers from Wal-Mart. I formed the flowers into a garland and connected them to each other using flower wire (don't know if that's the correct term. I got it in the flower section at Hobby Lobby). Then I cut off any long stems that were sticking out and, voila! A simple way to add some color to the party decor.

3. Chocolate cake with Salted Caramel Frosting. My frosting was too runny but the cake was still delicious. (Note: We don't drink coffee so I replaced that with an equal amount of water and a teaspoon or so of cardamom.) Remember my cake stand?

4. I made Penelope a chevron blanket, from this pattern. There's a similar one for FREE, here.

5. Presents.

6. Our antique store find. Remember this post? Also, tissue paper and tulle flower tutorial here.

7. & 8. Birthday girl, enjoying her cake.

Happy Fourth!!

The Fourth of July Weekend has been lots of fun! The boys went to see some big hot air balloons with their daddy on Saturday, we all went to a parade this morning, and had a barbecue afterwards, with some friends and family.

{tutorial for paper pinwheel cupcake toppers, from The Long Thread}

{tutorial for dot banner, from Talkin' Chow, Playin' House}

PROUD to be an AMERICAN!

Amy Atlas

Amy Atlas is my hero. I mean, really. Could this be any cuter?

My three year old turns FOUR in just a few days. Oh how I wish I could pull something like this off.

Making the house look pretty for my Valentine.

Okay, let's be honest, really it's just for myself. I don't know that my Valentine really cares what the house looks like.

My boys LOVE to have a craft to do so, the other day when my {almost} 4 year old (can he really be that old?) asked me to do crafts with him, I thought 'this is my chance to do a little decorating while he stays occupied with a craft'. I got to thinking and looking through my craft shelves, and I came up with a 'LOVE' banner and some coffee filter flowers.

(not so sure about my terminology here. These are just things I've seen around the blogosphere, that I wanted to try)

I love how my Valentine's Day banner turned out.

Inspired by these, which I posted last year, and the lollies I found here, I made this banner with brown craft paper, pages from an old book, small red heart doilies leftover from last Valentine's Day, and a glue gun.

I freehanded some letters onto poster board, cut them out, and used spray adhesive to glue on some Martha Stewart glitter.

Then I used tacky glue to glue the letters to the hearts.

I hung the lollies and flowers on a pom pom garland with clothespins.

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I think maybe one of my New Year's Resolutions should be to post more tutorials. I NEVER think to do step-by-step pictures until after the fact. I'm making that my goal-MORE tutorials. Maybe I'll even do my very first VLOG!

This time, the thought came after I had already made the banner, so no step-by-step pics for that, BUT I took a few pictures of the coffee filter flower-making.

This is what it looks like when it's done.

Very simple.

You need: coffee filters, glue gun, glue sticks, and a stapler

Start by taking one of the filters, holding it upright,

then you just want to scrunch up the bottom. Messy is good. You don't want them to be perfectly folded.

staple at the bottom, to hold the 'petal' together

You need six of these 'petals' and one regular filter to make HALF of the flower.

now flatten out the coffee filter and then just scrunch it up in the middle

Now it should look like this (below):

take your glue gun and just put LOTS of glue all over it.

one by one, lay FIVE of the 'petals' onto the glue, covering the whole circle.

Put some more glue in the middle and glue the last 'petal' in the center.

Now it looks like this:

as the glue is drying, I hold it from the bottom and mold it to the shape I like

Make another one of these.

Put some glue on the back of one of the halves,

and stick them together to make the FLOWER

VOILA!! .

I made the smaller ones using baking cups (cupcake holders).