Holiday Ornaments: Part 1

It's that time of year to make the Christmas ornaments. This is the third year the kids will make homemade ornaments for the family. I have to admit the two prior years I picked the projects and I kept it simple and fun. This year with Crafty Kid being so interested in crafting I let her help me pick out items at Michael's that we would use to decorate and fill our ornaments. I have to take advantage of what little time is left where I am "cool step-mom" and she wants to spend hours on end with me seeing where our creativity will take us.

Below are a list of items we picked up to use. Other than the ornaments themselves this is just a suggested list of decorative items you can use:

• Ornaments (plastic is best for kids to work with)
• Punch outs (Star, Snowflake, Heart)
• Scrapbooking paper
• Glitter
• Epson salt (looks like snow!)
• Crafting glue (dries clear)
• Glitter glue (silver, gold, & white)
• Embellishments

We chose clear plastic ornaments that were flattened so the items didn't have as much room to move. However round, square, or any size plastic fillable ornaments would work for (most of) these projects.

I had found some Mickey Mouse scrapbook paper on sale for $.07 and thought it would be fun to use different punch shapes with this paper. I started to punch out the paper and realized filling the ornament was going to be very hard to do. Since the paper had a white backing this made for a great snowflake cut out. I decided to glue some of the snowflakes and some carefully cut out Mickey's to the inside of the globe. Through trial and error I found that crafting glue (for foam, wood, or plastic) works best as it dries clear. I used a Q-tip instead of the brush in the glue jar, as that was too messy, to put the glue on the cut out paper. I then put the cut out on the top of my pinky and carefully put it inside the ornament. Each time before the glue would dry I would swirl the glitter around so that it would stick to the sides. Hopefully you can see in this last picture that it turned out great once the glue was fully dry.

While I worked on my Mickey ornament, Crafty Kid was up to her own projects. She really loved using the glitter glue as you can see below. She thought it made everything look nicely "frosted". The glitter glue bottles were a $1 a piece find. Go figure it was her favorite thing after all the money we spent! (LOL) The Epson salt we are still deciding if it's as cool of a "snow effect" as we want. Full disclosure that we originally wanted to make "melted snowmen" but that didn't turn out as nice and easy as what we saw on Pinterest. I might share my "fail" with you in the next blog. (Hence part 2 of Holiday Ornament's coming soon!)

Below are some of the ideas we came up with using what we had on hand. It's always great to save what you can from previous projects. Those yellow flowers and the red cherries are left over from when I made my Mary Poppins hat!

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the things we made. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Halloween Window Decorating - 2014

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I have so many fond memories surrounding the 31st day of October. When I was a kid we would visit my Grandma Mac (mom's mom) every year dressed up in our costumes, and with me having younger sisters I did it well beyond the appropriate tricker-treating age. (My last year out I was 21 and dressed as Paul Stanley from Kiss.)

Grandma Mac used to decorate her house in grand fashion, give us extra treats for stopping by, and every year she answered the door dressed as a witch. She tried to convince us she was a witch every day of the year, and that she only showed us the hat and broom on Halloween. (I honestly thought if I waited up long enough if I'd see her fly past the moon. Probably until I was at least 12.)

My mom continued Grandma Mac's tradition and decorated my childhood house for every holiday, including usually forgotten ones like Thanksgiving and Easter. Although, in my opinion, her showmanship was best at Christmas and Halloween. So as soon as I bought my own house I couldn't wait to carry on the tradition of decorating for Halloween. Especially seeing Grandma Mac's health doesn't allow for crazy decorating or witch playing, and my Mom has found less time to do it herself as us kids have gotten older.

This project contains items bought at the local Family Dollar. I'm showing you what you can do to the outside front of your house for under $30. *(see note below)

Here are a few of the things I bought. Note they all say a dollar on them :) 

Tip: Car window clings seem to stick better and the colors are more vibrant.

If using windowing clings make sure you have access to the outside of your window. Most new windows fold down so you can clean the outside. The window clings only have one sticky side so in order for the image to show correctly you have to put it on the outside of the window. This also prevents any animals you have from being able to eat the decorations.

If you can't access the outsides of your windows then you can use a more traditional paper cutout like the ones above. These are ones I saved from last year. I like to save what I can each year in order to build up my collection and keep things cost effective.

When building the windows I like to have a theme in mind for each one. That helps me decide what decorations to pick and keeps it from looking cluttered. This is my Grandma Mac window :)

Here is my spider theme that you'll see I later added a skeleton grim reaper to below.

I like to decorate the top windows as well, and since those don't fold out, I used the paper cutouts.

I always have a door cover and this year I really liked the "Do Not Enter" as it matched nicely with my wooden signs and the caution tape I like putting on my garage door.

*Please note that I bought my wooden signs last year. They were around $10 each at my local CVS and I didn't include them in my cost of decorating this year.

AND NOW ONTO THE BIG REVEAL OF THE WHOLE HOUSE....

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Ta-da! 

Hope you enjoyed my Halloween decorating tips. 

Have yourself a Spooky day on October 31st!