This year I am really trying to be more creative, and document that creativity with this blog. Hopefully it will inspire me further, and inspire others along the way!
Well, I did some small Christmas crafts last year that I wanted to share, and since I am just recently committing to updating this blog more, I am just now posting about Christmas! Good thing Santa wasn't this late... the kids would have been heartbroken!
As I said in my last post, this was our first Christmas in our new home. I knew I wanted some fresh decor this year, but couldn't spend too much. I ended up making some inexpensive paper garland for around the house, making pine cone ornaments, and painting some artwork for our mantle myself. I also chose to do a different kind of tree skirt.
First I made the paper garland (can you see it up there in the window?? Sorry there is not a closer picture!). I bought one of those big pads of paper in Christmas theme from Michael's, on sale of course. What I love about those is all of the designs coordinate and are made to go together perfectly! I cut the sheets into squares with a paper cutter, then cut out the wedge at the bottom with scissors. It is hard work, but so cute! Then I punched hoes in the top corners and ran regular old yarn through to string it up. I had extra yarn from something else, so all it really cost me was the $10 for paper, time, and hand strength. It doesn't look like much in the picture, but it added a nice punch of color and cheer to our house... we do still have white walls after all, and need all the color punch we can get!
Another of my projects this year was to make my own christmas art for our mantle. I looked at buying some fun prints, but decided I'd rather spend that money on presents for the boys instead. So I had some canvases and paint already on hand, and went to work! I made a pretty evergreen, a pine cone (my obsession this year!), and a "may your days be merry and bright" sign. I liked it. I also took some extra pine cones from my last project (see the wreath post below) and tied yarn to them to make pine cone garland and ornaments. It was very simple, and prickly.
While I was in my art space painting, miss Birdie Bird Dog kept giving me the "Really? Let's go inside" look. Even though she was impatient with me, she's the best painting companion!
For our "tree skirt" we did a train-scape! It was so fun and whimsical, and I was so glad that we just happened to think of it while playing trains with the boys one day! I kept thinking "now how am I going to do a tree skirt without spending too much, and clashing with the rug", and so on and so on. Then one day we just didn't pick up the boys' trains and I put them together under the tree and it was so cute! We may do it every year because it was adorable and they got to play there. We did start to get presents wrapped and ended up putting them in the fireplace (we haven't used it), but eventually we had too many and the train had to go. But in the beginning before we had presents, it was a cute way to make that space not seem so bare!
See the presents in the Fireplace??
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