Christmas Ornament 2015

Every year I give the kids a Christmas ornament. For the past few years, I have made it a goal to make them and not buy them. I am really proud of myself for getting them made early this year. I even had them finished before Thanksgiving!

I can thank Pinterest and Roz for the idea for this year's ornament. Roz made a goal to read 52 books in 2015 so I decided to make book ornaments for everyone. I found instructions on Pinterest to make miniature books. They weren't necessarily supposed to be ornaments, but that was an easy fix with the addition of a piece of string.

The first step was to ask everyone what their favorite books were this year. I texted Roz to ask her and didn't mention why I wanted to know. I wanted to make one for Trevor too, so I had to text him on the sly as well. I ended up making him a book on his "to read" pile instead of his favorite for the year.

I went to Amazon and printed off tiny images of each book's front cover. If it was available I printed the back cover too. For the novels I was able to find excerpts and pasted them into a document in tiny font to print. So the tiny words in the book are really from each book. 

They all start with the real first sentence, but the following pages ended up in no particular order due to double sided printing and page folding. The comic and more graphic novels are a little bit different. They have tiny, printed screen shots of the preview pages courtesy of Amazon.

It's hard to tell from these photos, but the books are tiny. Most of them are just over an inch in height. The biggest is still under two inches tall.

My favorite ended up being Hayden's little Calvin and Hobbes book. It really looks just like a tiny version of the real thing! He reads C&H every day at lunch. Even though it is too small to read the actual words, he could tell me what it says because he has them memorized!

Here are all eight completed ornaments...

Top row: 

Lego Ninjago (JD), Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Eli), Cat in the Hat (Annabeth)

Bottom row: 

Calvin and Hobbes (Hayden), Around the World in 80 Days (Justus), 

Solar Flare (Wesley), The Nightingale (Roz), and Field of Prey (Trevor)

If you want to see them, here are some of the other ornaments I've made in recent years...
Hot Cocoa Mugs 2014
Stamped Washers 2013
Felt Owls 2012

Cheesy

We were all super excited the Packers made it to the play-offs this year. Today was the NFC championship game and if they won they would have gone to the Super Bowl right here in Phoenix!

We made a few game day preparations. My parents brought their big Packer flag and hung it out by the pool. They even brought their Packer car flag to put on the Buick!

Friday we ran to JoAnn's to get some yellow fleece so we could make some cute cheese scarves. I think Roz had one (or made one) a long time ago, but my mom and I had recently seen them again on Facebook. They are super easy to make and since they are fleece there isn't even any sewing involved. The fleece was on sale for $3 a yard. We got 2 yards and made 12 scarves! One for everyone with a couple to spare. I gave one of the extras to a friend and made her an honorary Packer fan even though she doesn't know anything about football!

We all wore our Packer gear to church on Sunday. Most of our church family isn't really into football so they get a kick out of our Packer obsession. Before we left we took a few photos.

Everyone in this photo was born in Green Bay - except for poor Jerry. We adopted him into the Green Bay and Packer family many years ago though.

Unfortunately, all our decorations and attire didn't help them pull off a win. It was a crazy game, but in the end we lost.

But there's always next year! Go Pack Go!

Christmas Crafts

We like to make a few gifts ourselves each Christmas. Pinterest is a great resource! All these ideas were found there.

These oversized Christmas cards were a fun way to re-use the lids to wipe containers. I printed out the templates on card stock. Hayden and Wesley colored them.

The hardest part was taking the picture for inside the door. First I was too far away, then I was too close. I finally got it right. I think they turned out really cute!

I helped Annabeth make a candle for each Grandma. She colored with marker on tissue paper. It went surprisingly well. I thought the tissue paper would tear, but it didn't. Then I took her artwork and used a hair dryer to melt it into the candle. It worked great! Once they were cool you couldn't even tell there was tissue paper there, it just looked like regular wax.

I helped the boys make a little treat for their neighborhood friends. We bought some Christmas baggies at the dollar store and filled them with Whoppers. Then we printed out this funny little saying to staple on the bags:

You've been naughty

so here's the scoop,

all you're getting 

is reindeer poop!

The boys thought it was pretty funny! Once they were done we loaded in the car to go deliver them. It was a bust, no one was home. We did get them handed out eventually. Hopefully their friends thought they were as funny as the boys did. If not, then at least they got a bag of candy.

Fun Dollars have become a new tradition. I found the fun dollar template online a couple years ago and have been using it ever since. The boys got coupons for:

1. One night to stay up late

2. One day skip chores

3. One day skip math

4. Candy bar or beverage of their choice

5. One extra computer turn

6. One bubble bath

This year I even made up a few for Roz! I thought the most creative one was we will pay her electric bill one month this year.

I like to make a gift for the kids each year. I saw these little shelves on Pinterest (of course) and thought they would be a fun way to keep some items handy near each child's bed. I bought the wood crates and letter tiles at JoAnn's and spent several evenings painting them out in the guest house.

I didn't think the kids would understand what they were when they opened them so I made up these little labels to attach before wrapping. 

The kids liked them more than I thought they would. Wesley has been asking me every day to get them hung up but I haven't made the trip to Home Depot to the supplies yet.

I didn't take a picture, but I had enough letter tiles left to make Roz a bonus ornament spelling out her full name and one for a friend too!

Christmas Ornament 2014

Every year I give the kids an ornament. In the past couple years, I've stamped metal and hand-stitched felt to make their ornaments. I thought I'd do something a little different this year. I found a tutorial for these cute little hot cocoa mug ornaments on Pinterest. They are made mostly of paper towel tubes and card stock.

I think they're adorable! I guess it is a bit hard to judge their size by these photos, but the mugs are only about 2 inches tall (not including the peppermint stick).

I bought a dollar store bag of plastic candy canes and broke off the ends instead of using a straw as suggested in the tutorial. The only other thing I bought was the baker's twine to hang them with, the rest of the items were either recycled or I had them on hand.

I had a little assembly line going and made seven. I customized each one with the year and names. You'll notice Justus' doesn't have any "whipped cream" on top. That's because he hates whipped cream so I thought I should leave it off his!

Now I wish I would have made one for myself. I might have to make a few more!

Meaningful Christmas: Jesse Tree

Hard to believe, especially here in Arizona, but Christmas is just around the corner. If you are looking for a wonderful way to make Christmas meaningful I highly recommend a Jesse Tree. This will be our seventh year doing one and we love it.

You can start with Advent or you can just start on December 1st and go through Christmas Day, which is what we do. Each day we read the Bible and a short devotional then hang an ornament on a little tree. There are many websites out there to give you ideas and there is no right way. Each family does it a bit differently.

There are kits you can buy, but it is easy to just make your own ornaments. They ornaments can be printed on paper or if you get real creative you can buy items to hang as ornaments that are a bit more three dimensional (like a mini-globe, twine, wheat, etc). The tree itself can be a branch that is secured in a pot or you can use a mini-Christmas tree. That is what we do and it works well. There are free online devotionals or Jesse Tree books you can buy.

One of these days I want to try and update my paper ornaments to something like this…

The children really get a lot out of it. I think the review of familiar Bible stories helps them and it reminds us each day about the reason we're celebrating! It also helps the kids understand the Old Testament is just as much about Jesus as the New Testament and makes it very clear that God had everything all planned out long before Jesus was even born!

The first ornament is the stump of a tree, from the verses (Isaiah 11:1-2) A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. We talk about how God can take a tree that has been cut down (dead) and give it the hope of new life through a new shoot (Jesus). Then we'll move onto creation, the fall, Noah, Abraham, etc.

If you are interested, here are some links I found long ago in 2007 (they actually still work!):
Jesse Tree Instructions and Printable Ornaments
Free Devotional 
Another Tree with Printable Ornaments
Yet another option
or search "Jesse Tree" on Google or Pinterest

[Note: This is an edited re-post. I wanted to share it again a few weeks before December so if you're interested in giving this a try you have time to get things printed.]

Bookmarks

We like to give homemade gifts. They're fun to make and we know that someone won't receive two of the same gift! We give all the grandparents a photo calendar every year. I think we've been doing the calendar now since Roz was three or four… in other words, a long time!

This year we decided to make another photo gift for the Arizona grandparents. [We didn't make a set for Grandma Linda because she reads books on her Kindle and doesn't need a bookmark anymore!]

I had seen this idea on Pinterest and thought it might be a fun project. The boys helped. They chose what color they wanted their tassels to be and helped make them. It was pretty easy - just wrapped some embroidery floss around a some cardboard and tied it off after cutting.

I took the photos one morning and sent them to the one-hour photo for Jerry to pick up on his way home. The boys understood they were supposed look like they were hanging from a rope and posed nicely. Annabeth, of course, had no clue what we were doing! She tried to copy her brothers, but never stood still enough for me to get a good shot. I ended up having to lay her on the floor. It worked though!

The cutting was probably the hardest part because you have to trim very carefully and as close as possible. Once that was done, I laminated them and punched a hole to attach the tassel.

I wanted to package them nicely so they didn't get tangled and so they looked cute when they were opened. I thought about it awhile and finally decided to cut slits into a piece of card stock to hold the tassels. Then I made a label and "packaged" them.

If you don't have any bookworms in your family (I can't imagine!) then these would make really cute Christmas tree ornaments. You wouldn't even need to make tassels if you were using them as ornaments.

They turned out even better than we expected! They were a big hit with the grandparents and Jerry requested a set for himself.

Craftastic!

Since it's coming into guest season, I've been working on a few things for the guest house. Most of these ideas are my own version of something I have seen on a blog (usually via Pinterest). If you want to see my guest house Pinterest board, click here.

I wanted to stencil the cardinal directions and elevation along with our latitude and longitude on the guest house walls, but decided to make this instead. The boards are from a pallet left here during pool construction. I just used an old transfer technique I learned in middle school art class to transfer the lettering onto the board and then filled it in with a black Sharpie. Twine holds in all together and acts a hanger. [The pool arrow sign below it was a project I made last year. And, yes, it really points to the pool.]

I finally printed out my "Guest House Rules" poster. I made the "rough draft" last year using the free online photo editor Pic Monkey. Unfortunately, I had the settings wrong to print a large size without cutting off some of the words so I had to re-do it. It didn't take too long since I had already worked out all the details. I sent it to Costco get a 16x20 print. One of these days I'm going to mount it on a board. I tried a frame and didn't like it.

While I was on Costco's photo site, I found a couple stock photos of beaches. You can print these stock photos out like your own for only $1.49, so I ordered two and stuck them in a couple dollar store frames to balance the wall.

We made scarecrows at our church family night a couple weeks ago and I grabbed a little bit of extra burlap to make this wreath. It was easy, but time consuming. I used a piece of foam pipe insulation as the form and then tied (I didn't count but it felt like a million) strips of burlap around the form. I think it came out pretty cute but the insulation isn't quite sturdy enough to hold the shape I wanted so I had to use tacks to keep it from being more of an oval.

The next two projects are more makeover than craft. I got both the "painting" and mirror from a friend who didn't want them anymore. I thought I'd give them a little makeover to match the coastal/beach theme I am going for out in the guest house.

The painting started out like this...

A few coats of white spray paint to the frame and some acrylic paint to "canvas" and I had this...

The mirror went from this (sorry for the bad photo - it's the only before I could find)...

I painted the frame and added a piece of scrapbook paper to the top.

When my parents were here last year we made a trip to IKEA. Among other things we found a set of these metal vases. I love them. They come in this color, cream, and an orangish red. If you want to look for them they are called Socker. I saw you could buy packages of sticks to put in vases, but I have a ton of branches in my back lot thanks to wind storms this summer. I cut a few and saved my money.

Last year, I used a few more sticks from the backyard and some twine to make this star.

This next little craft is still a work in progress. I just love colored bottles so I have collected a few to put above the cabinets in the guest house. Some were already colored and some I colored using various methods. The white one is just straight up paint - makes it look like milk glass. The more turquoise ones are Mod Podge and food coloring. The Mod Podge method worked better on the bottles with wider mouths, so this method would work great on Mason jars. Of course, these are NOT food safe or even water proof, just strictly for decoration. I still have a few more bottles to work on and a couple got messed up so I'm going to wash them and try again.

A few weeks ago the kids and I did some painting with water colors. I put my water color sunset in a dollar store frame (that I spray painted white) and hung it in the main bedroom of the guest house.

This cute little palm tree was an IKEA find. I thought it went well with my beachy theme. My mom bought the little basket when she was here last year and this little guy fit in it perfectly.

Sometime last year I got two ceramic sea shells (only one is pictured) from the dollar store. They were kind of ugly colors but I knew a little white spray paint could fix that.

In my internet wanderings I had seen this nautical pier post. I thought something like that might be a nice addition to the decorative ledge in the guest house living room, but I wasn't about to pay $80 plus $40 shipping.

I found this stump out in our wood pile. I bought some rope and ended up with this:

My cost... I'm guessing that piece of rope cost about $1 and about 2 minutes of my time. (I bought a 50 ft. rope for $8 and used about 1/8 of it.) 

This last project took two seconds! I put some sand in a Mason jar with a candle and tied on some twine. Cheap (free really) and cute!

I updated the guest house "tour" if you want to see these items in their new home. They look a lot better in person so why don't you come see us! 

Christmas Ornament 2012

Every year we give the kids an ornament. When they decorate their own trees, I hope they enjoy looking back at all their ornaments as much I enjoy looking at mine. Some years I buy the ornaments, some years I make them. This year I made them.

Earlier this year I finally gave in and joined Pinterest. I have really enjoyed it. I have found lots of crafts and recipes to try out (some more successful than other). This year's ornaments are one of the projects I came across in my "pinning". I chose different colors for each child except the girls. I liked the brown and pink combo so much that I made two of those!

These were simple to make and very inexpensive (pretty much free). The hardest part was cutting out the little felt pieces! I hand stitched them with embroidery floss I already had on hand. I also had the ric rac trim and most of the felt. I think they turned out really cute.

I wanted to take a photo of all seven owls together, but Annabeth took a liking to hers and carried it off. I couldn't find it anywhere. Thankfully, it turned up later. Just use your imagination and pretend there is another pink/brown owl on the bottom right.

If you come across any cute ornament patterns, send them my way! I've already started looking for the 2013 ornament.