24 DAYS FOR CHRISTMAS

I am super excited about my advent calendar...I was a sucker and ordered one on ebay because I didn't want one as big as the pattern I found on the site that I mentioned in the last post. So in the advent calendar, I plan on putting two little pieces of candy each day and a little piece of laminated paper with one of the below activities. I can't wait till Thursday to start!!!
-make homemade caramel
-make a candy train
-go see Santa Claus
-have a picnic by the Christmas Tree
-Red/Green night - only serve food in these colors for a night
-decorate the Christmas Tree
-make a Gingerbread house
-drive around looking at Christmas Lights
-wrap Christmas presents
-go Christmas Caroling - then go home for yummy cookies and hot cocoa
-make Christmas Cards
-write a letter to Santa
-make candy molds
-make a paper chain
-make footprint snowmen
-string popcorn
-PJ night! everybody get a new pair of PJ's
-host or go to a kids Christmas party
-make snowmen out of marshmallows
-make caramel corn and watch a Christmas movie
-Read some fun Christmas books
-make snowmen pancakes
-take a meal to a family who's sick or needy
-make a Christmas gift for someone else
-make edible snowflakes
-make snowflakes out of paper to hang
-make sugar cone trees
-make Christmas cookies
-read the Christmas story
-make pine cone ornaments
-make Christmas Pizzas
These are all just ideas, we aren't doing all of them, but definitely most of them! Most of them are free and a few cost a small amount of money. Hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas season!!!

Happy Holidays :)

Okay, just so everyone knows, I haven't dropped off the face of the planet! Life has just been crazy and I haven't had the energy to be craft, but Thanks Giving is 2 days away and Christmas is nearly upon us. Which means...lots of crafting must me done! I have lots of projects I'm getting supplies for this weekend and then I'm sure I"ll be posting lots of fun things! Plus I'll have a camera by then too! Mine sorta bit the dust - too many falls in the rocks, concrete and brick, surprised it lasted 4 years!
Now to the main reason I'm posting - I have been dying to make an advent Calendar by December first for my kiddos, I grew up with one and I loved it, it's one of my favorite Christmas traditions. But trying to cut out all the little pieces for the pockets has been making me crazy, so in all my searching today - I was about to just buy one - but alas, I found this AMAZING tutorial/pattern!!! You should totally check it out!!! I'm planning on making square pockets instead of ornaments, but I love that it has a print out for all the cute little characters that go on the pockets! So I will have mine posted by next week!!!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Mummy Cans and Candy Bouquets

For the Mummy Cans you start with some empty cans (I just used vegetable cans and removed the paper), some muslin, tacky glue and some googly eyes.

I didn't really picture the next part, but you're doing to want to tear your muslin into strips, then tie the strips together. Once you've done this you'll put a bit of glue on the can and press the end of the strip down.

Then wrap it all around the can until it looks "mummified" enough for you, cut it off and place a dab of glue on the end. Tuck the glued end under one of pieces that's wrapped around the can so that you can't see the end.

Lastly, figure out where on the can you want your eyes, the back of this can ended up have more sticking out so I did it on this side. You put two dabs of glue where you want the eyes, press the eyes on and voila! You have a cute mummy that probably cost you about 25 cents or less to make.

Now to the Candy Bouquet - these are way more fun with Christmas colors, but they are still fun for fall! For the first party I bought a 3 inch pot, 4 inch Styrofoam ball and a 25 oz bag (the $5 bag at target) of mini candies. I already had toothpicks and a few glue sticks. You hot glue all the toothpicks to the end of the candy wrapper. Hot glue the ball into the pot, then press all the tooth-picked candy into the ball. I used the whole bag of chocolates.

This is the part I forgot to buy when I went out for the other stuff, you also need a spool of thick wired ribbon, I used a whole spool, it was 3 feet of ribbon. You'll also need floral picks, they look like big green toothpicks with wire on one end (Michaels has them with their floral and Styrofoam stuff). You cut the ribbon into strips and scrunch the ends together, then wrap the wired end of the floral pick around it to make it stay. Then press all the ribbon picks into the Styrofoam around the candy.

To finish it, tie a ribbon onto the pot and voila, a cute candy bouquet! I had to hot glue the ribbon onto the pot to get it to stay. I only used about 3 small glue sticks for the whole thing!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful fall!!! It's crazy to think that Christmas is just around the corner, I really need to get started on Christmas projects!!!

Cute Plaques :)

I'm finally getting around to blogging again! Sorry for being gone so long, Morning Sickness has been kicking my butt!!! So onto funner things...

I made this fun plaque that I can't wait to get up on the wall! I just love the quote too!!! I spent half an hour or so mixing colors to get just the right red to match a red plaque saying that I have in my kitchen only to realize after I had the plaque painted that it was too dark to put black vinyl on. So I ended up going with white and I love it! (Ignore the fact that I used my sink to take pictures on)

This FUN plaque I've been wanting to make for a month now I finally whipped up today! I LOVE how the green looks with the black! I can't wait to get this up on the wall too! Which mean's I better start pulling out my Halloween decor :)

Both of these are super simple, just grab some craft paint, a little 1 inch foam brush. The paint was dry withing about 20 minutes, I sanded the edges up and pressed the vinyl on...super easy! Love quick projects!!!

Linking to:

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My FIRST wood project!

I LOVE my new desk! The desk cost 25$, then I spent about 18$ on paint and primer, I think it's a pretty good price, since I can't go to a store and find something like this! I absolutely love it! I can't wait to have all fun craft stuff in it! I finally feel like a real crafter now that i've redone a piece of furniture! So here is the

Before:
After:

The top edge turned out great, it was so fun sanding it! I spray painted the hardware black because I wasn't big on the brass color, and I didn't want to go spend money on cute hardware, I love how it pops against the white!

I loved sanding the drawers to match!

I love the two legs on it, it adds so much to it! I loved sanding this part to add even more character, it turned out better than I could have hoped!

I love how even the bottom has character!

For a first project, I think it turned out great! All I did was sand the top a little, primed the whole thing with 2 can's of Rustoleum Painter's Touch white Primer, then I used 3 can's of Rustoleum's Painter's Touch Flat White Spray paint! Then I sanded all the edges like crazy to give it the wonderful used look. The hardware was sprayed with Rustoleum's Painters Touch Black Spray paint. It was super easy, and turned out perfect for me! I am totally in love with it and can't wait to move it into my craft room tonight!

Garden Goodness and I won something!

I am SO incredibly excited, I have won several giveaways before, but they have always been small. This time I won an Epic Letterpress on the blog Brown Paper Packages. I've never won anything big, and this is HUGE for me :) I am SUPER duper EXCITED to get it! Can you tell ;)

On another note, our (it's at my parents house around the corner from us, we had it put in while we were living with them, so it's a family garden, but we love it!) garden is producing some YUMMY looking melons and I can't wait to try them! My boys planted most of them from seeds in May, and they have gotten ginormous! I can't wait to plant more this fall!

My little guy hopped in the picture :) He loves the garden!

My new Desk! Whoot Whoot!

This morning while searching craigslist I found this adorable desk! I'm in love with it! I"d like to change out the hardware and re-stain it because the top has some scratches that I need to sand down. This baby cost 25$ and it's solid oak! No particle board, yipee!!! I can't wait to get it into my craft room!!! (this is the picture off of the craigslist add).