Got plain gift bag-itis?

Tonight, I sent my main man out to buy me gift bags.  He hit up the good ol' Dollar Tree but he came back with REALLY ugly bags.  They were not Christmas-y in the least.  Nope.  Not at all!  They were plain navy blue.  Huh?  What's a girl do do?  The presents need to be taken to school tomorrow morning and I have ugly gift bags. 

Well, thank goodness for my Cricut!  I could seriously kiss it at times like these.  I cut out some circles in 3 different sizes and some snow flakes using some scrapbook paper I had, grabbed some buttons and leftover ribbon and ended up with some pretty cute bags if I do say so myself!  I even used spray adhesive which made it super fast (and super sticky!).  In it the secretaries will find a cute Christmas mug, a snowman ornament and some peppermint bark.

I made snowmen out of the circles and layered the snowmen with the snowflake cutouts from my Cricut.  Then I added buttons for eyes and down the front, a ribbon for a scarf and painted on a nose and some black dots to form a cute happy face for our snowman.  Cute, no?

Christmas Craft:

Its not too late to get your Christmas craft on!  This one only took a few short minutes...would've taken less time if I hadn't had an 8 year old helper.  I've been dying to do this all month but I was super busy at the beginning of the month.  I had some surgery last Friday so the first part of the month was spent making sure that I had everything ready for Christmas.  Now that its over, I have some time to go back and do some things I really wanted to do.  I may even try to make gingerbread cookies...we'll see.

SO, the snowman ornament...who's seen these in the stores?  I totally thought I could do this...no problemo!

What you'll need:
clear glass ball ornaments
fake snow
black and orange paint pens
ribbon (optional)
white glitter (optional)

Take all the tops off your ornaments carefully!  You don't want to mess up the wire or the top part of the ornament!  Then fill with fake snow.

This is pretty messy...and much more so with an 8 year old!  Hubby will have to vacuum now since I can't!  I filled ours up about 2/3rds full so that the snow will move a bit. 

Here's Belle...She wanted to take a picture of her stuffing the ornament!

I found these nifty sharpie paint pens at Michael's.  They were sold individually which is nice.  You don't have to buy a big pack when you only need 2.  And, I have to tell you, I liked them better than other paint pens I've used in the past. 

Add a smiley face to your snowman.

And a carrot for its nose.

Here's all 3 of mine done.  You can see that I added a corncob pipe too.  It was an afterthought but the carrot looked so big that I wanted to balance him out a bit. 

Top him off with a cute ribbon.

And....VOILA!

You now have a super cute snowman ornament!  I think I love him.  I do have a thing for snowmen.  And, at a fraction of the cost, I now have my own!  I made 6.  I had the ribbon.  The ornaments came in boxes of 3 at the Dollar Tree (which had amazing Christmas stuff this year!).  I got the fake snow for $1.99 at AC Moore.  I got the paint pens at Micheal's for $1.99 for the black and $2.69 for the orange and I didn't even use a coupon!   Now that I have the pens and left over snow, I can make some more especially if I find clear ornaments on sale after Christmas!  I just adore that little guy.  I think I'll call him Fred.  Yep, Fred the snowman!

A great teacher gift

Mod Podge Initial Plate

Look out!

I told you they were coming!  You may get a couple of posts in the next couple of days...although its a bit busy around here but I'll try my hardest to get some more pictures taken of some of the things I've been doing around the house for the holidays!

First up:  Tinsel Tree

I made these a couple of years ago and LOVE them.  They are so fun and playful.  I have a couple of different sizes and different colors.  They are also super easy to make!  All you need is a cone, some tinsel, and the trusty hot glue gun (and have some scissors handy too!).  I bought my cone several years ago and then lost it....oops.  I found it again and was so excited to share with you this quick and easy tutorial!

Supplies:

First, you need to glue the tinsel to the very tip of the cone.  A lower temperature glue works best because hot glue and styrofoam are not friends. 

Then just start wrapping the tinsel around the cone.  You'll need to glue it in a few spots, especially for a large cone. 

See how I held the tinsel in place with my middle and ring fingers.  I flipped the tale of the tinsel over my index finger to give me room to glue.  Then just push it down and hold it for a sec and you're good to go.

When you get to the bottom, you're going to want to cut it and then glue it so that it covers the bottom of the side of the cone (not the bottom of the cone- they won't stand!).  Pull it back on the other side...about 180 degrees from where you put your last glue spot and glue it again so it does not slide off the bottom on one side.  You can do it several times if you feel the need but I usually only do the 2 times on the last row and have never had problems with them.

Here is what they look like with my snowmen. I actually have more but most of them go in the kitchen although they may not make it there this year.  I may put one or 2 out here to keep the other snowmen company.  We'll see.  I'm not showing you my whole black cabinet yet because I have a few things to add to it...remember my fall sign?  Yeah, I'm cooking up something for Christmas too.

And did you notice how in the first picture, the Christmas tree behind the blue tinsel tree is a little blurry?  My friend just taught me how to do that today!!  WooHoo!  Love the new camera!

Up next, a different kind of Advent Calendar!