Hula hoop ornament wreaths
Have you seen all the ornament wreaths everybody’s doing? I think they are so pretty and festive.
I have been dying to make two for our front doors. But the standard size would be too small because our doors are large. I would need at least a 30″ foam and those aren’t cheap and easy to find.
Then I saw Kate’s from Centsational Girl tutorial on how she made her beautiful ornament garland. I just love her style and the colors of her mantle.
And then an idea came to me. I could make an ornament wreath as big as I wanted by stringing them on to wire like she did for her ornament garland.
I already had the ornaments on hand, and using Kate’s tutorial I made an ornament garland until I had a enough to form a 30″ circle. {Kate’s tutorial on how to string the ornaments was super easy, I think by doing it this way rather than gluing them on individually saved me a ton of time}. But the ornament garland wasn’t stable enough to keep a circle shape. It needed something behind it. So I sat and stared at it for awhile. Anybody else do this when you get stuck? And then my husband walked into to the room. All I can say is, thank God I married an inventor. He asked what I was doing with the garland and I told him my dilema, and he instantly said, why not use hula hoops? Woohoo! Problem solved. Love that guy. Off to Walmart I went and picked up four $5 kid size hula hoops {got 4 just to be safe which turned out to be a life saver in the end}.
Hot Chocolate Station
I love me some good hot chocolate, especially when it’s cold outside, which seems like for ever ago here in San Diego. I do a hot chocolate station every year at Christmas. Even though it is usually hot outside at Christmas in San Diego we all drink it as if it is blustering outside. Our way of making it seem like a wintery Christmas for a day.
I pretty much use what I have on hand and then embellish it with festive decorations
I also include hot apple cider in with the hot chocolate station using the mulling spices from Williams Sonoma {that stuff is the best!}. I used my sillhouette machine to make all the labels
I put the mugs in a tiered cupcake stand which I embellished with ribbon and bunting
I added fake snow to the bottom of the tiers with mini ornament lights. I loved how the battery operated mini lights lit up wrapped around the tiers, it was so festive.
I made the mini Christmas bunting from decorative ribbon, super duper easy to do. You just fold 1″ of ribbon in half and then cut the triangle and glue it to whatever string or ribbon you like. Quick and easy.
Something I actually made without Pinterest inspiration
There is SO much inspiration on Pinterest, sometimes I wonder if it makes me not be as creative as I used to be when I didn’t have Pinterest. Anyone else feel that way?
Last month I was pinning a lot of Christmas inspiration ideas on Pinterest, and of course I ran out of time to do all the items I was inspired by. I was able to get this quick and easy ornament flower holder done. Well, my version that is.
It is an ornament glued to a small round mirror to hold flowers. For mine, I used light bulb ornaments that I got in a 3 pack from the dollar store
I used my glue gun rather than the glue they recommended and it worked perfect. The ornaments even held water for the fresh flower I put in it from Costco
It was a super quick, inexpensive and an easy project to do, I made 10 of them in probably 15 minutes. I will for sure be using them again next year. {I got the round mirrors from Michaels, I think they were 8 in a pack for a couple of bucks}
But what I am really proud of, is that I did a LAST minute non-Pinterest inspired idea. Can you believe it?
What I got for Christmas
Merry belated Christmas! Have you recovered yet from all the festivities? I know I was beat today. We had a fun, family filled Christmas weekend with lots of wrapping, cooking and entertaining and of course lots of last minute decorating.
Santa was good to me this year, and I couldn’t be more happier with the thoughtful and generous gifts I received. Wanna know what I got?
My early Christmas present was my new Nikon d5100 camera
My favorite perfume Carolina Herrera Parfum Spray
Which I immediately put them to use for my this inspiration pin for our Christmas dinner {I even already had those cute polka dot cups to use}
Christmas tablescape
I finally got my new camera! I feel whole again! It was weird for me not to have a camera, and my iPhone camera just wasn’t cutting it. Now I get to show you some fun stuff I have done in the last couple of weeks while my camera was away! So get ready for lots of pictures in this post…
The thing I am most excited about is how I was able to re-create this inspiration picture form BHG that I pinned on Pinterest
Oh how I fell hard for this centerpiece. I just knew I wanted it on my table. I saw the boxwood wreaths on sale at Joss & Main online right after Christmas and got giddy over finding them so soon. So I anxiously waited for them to come in the mail. When they finally did, I was just a tad surprised. They were smaller than what I had expected, and I hoped that my glass cake plates I already had would work. Well, two out of the three did, and so I went on a hunt for the third, the smallest one. Luckily, it only took me 4 stores to find the perfect small glass cake plate, Pier One had just the right size
I was shocked when I found the silver bird at HomeGoods, I wasn’t even looking for it and there it was! It was if this centerpiece was meant to be
Christmas Subway Style Sign
I am getting to know my Silhouette machine a little better. It really is a fun machine to play with, especially to make signs. Which I recently did this last weekend, and I must say, it is addicting once you get the hang of it.
Subway style Christmas signs and printables are all over blogland and Pinterest, and I was itching to make one myself. I am also loving the use of turquoise and red everyone is using for decorating this year.
I had some leftover oak cabinet fronts that were perfect to use for this project. My original plan was to stencil the letters in white, but I really liked the look of the white contact paper that I used, so I just went that route. If you have a Silhouette machine, I highly recommend buying a roll of white contact paper to use for your vinyl. It is way cheaper, easy to use and goes a long way.
This is the sign I made for myself
I bought the actual words from the Silhouette on line store when they were having their .50 sale after Thanksgiving. It took the guess work out of trying to find the right font for a saying. Plus I can use them again next year for another sign or project.
Santa Hat & Parfait Desserts
I have a lot of talents, but one of them is NOT baking. But now with Pinterest and all the eye candy of anything and everything to bake, I pin really cute desserts, as if I am a baker. So when I was going to go to my friends Christmas party on Saturday, I offered to bring a dessert. She had said that she was going to make theses Santa Hat brownies off of Pinterest but didn’t think she could find the time to make them
“No problem” I said, “I will bring them!” She was SUPER excited. I decided to follow this recipe which seemed simpler because they used melted white chocolate chips for the white on the hat
I was hoping to buy ready made brownies, but decided, like an idiot, to make my own, Well, in my baking skills kinda way, from a box mix. To eliminate cutting out circles from a large pan of brownies, I decided to pour the batter into mini cupcake pans. Fail. Where I went wrong I have no idea. I greased the pan, I pre-heated the oven, I left them in for as long as the box said. When I took them out of the oven, they were hard as a rock, and wouldn’t even come out of the pan with a sharp knife! Seriously, I am so not a baker!
I had also decided to make some Christmas styled parfaits that I pinned on Pinterest.
Martha does it again!
I have a love/hate relationship with Martha Stewart. Her Martha Stewart Living magazine and web site are FULL of inspiration and great ideas for decorating cooking and parties, which I love. But then sometimes I look at it all and think I am such a failure, so then I hate Martha {not really hate, but strongly dislike is a better word}. I have heard, that her daughter has said, that she loves her mom but… she gets on her nerves as well, with her tips, tricks and decorating. SO that makes me feel better.
This year I started digitally subscribing to a couple of magazines. Another love/hate relationship I have. What is nice, is that I always have the magazines at my finger tips via my iPhone or my iPad. But, unlike a paper magazine that you can see sitting on your table, the magazines are kept in a neat app on your device. So I don’t see them until I click on the app. Which means I forget to read them…
I just got the latest digital issue of Martha Stewart Living. It would say it was a pretty good issue, nice recipes, an article about sugar, exercising, you know the usual. But then it got swoon worthy when I clicked to turn to page 99.
