Holiday Cheer

Last year I had grand ideas of decorating for the holidays by cooking figgy pudding and boning ducks. This year, while still in the holiday spirit, I have been a bit more realistic, and unlike my usual procrastinating self, I've also started early. Here's a glimpse into a few of the holiday crafts I've been attempting around the house.


I made my first holiday wreath from stuff in my yard. I started with a $4 twiggy wreath from Michaels.

I cut some bay grasses from my yard that needed to be trimmed down before winter anyways.

 I added the grasses by tucking them in while going in one circular direction. A lot of the grass stuck out pretty far, but I liked it that way.

 Then, with my flashlight (it was late) and scissors in tow, I cut some sprigs off of my holly bush out front. The one downside to taking your materials from outside, and not buying them, is that you have to deal with all of the spider webs and creepy crawlies that get tangled up in your flora.

 Again, I just shoved the little holly springs into the wreath, in one main circular direction. I quickly learned that if I only decorated the "face" of the wreath, then the top, and inside would look really bare when I lifted it up, so I had to go back and do some adjusting. I also found some baby pine cones from the pine tree out front and jammed those in as well.

I wanted it to look really earthy, so I loosely stuck some grass on top of the holly.

Here are a few shots after I hung it on the front door.

 I've been "etching" to try this project since I saw this post last year. First, I printed out the words "holiday cheer" in 72 pt font, scotch taped the words to painters tape, which was on a wooden cutting board. I cut out the letters with an exacto knife. As you can see, the letters aren't perfect, but I sort of liked the imperfections.

 

 This was the scary part. The etching cream has all kinds of warnings on it. It even uses the word "fatal!" I mean, it dissolves glass, what could it do to my insides?! I was worried I would accidentally get some on my hand and then wipe my eye, and that I would get a globular shape etched into my eyeball

 

 
 I watched it from the inside to make sure it wasn't bleeding. You only need to leave it on for 60 seconds, so I was kind of anxious about making sure that I didn't over-etch.

 After washing it thoroughly and pealing off the tape, here's the result.

 Then, I cut out the word holiday and repeated the process.

 

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For this last project, I simply grabbed a square glass vase and picked pine cones from my front yard. There were lots of baby cones when I went out, and only a few that had the typical pine cone shape. They also came pre-sapped. No white spray paint needed.

I put up my tree, but one of the lights is broken, so the top of the tree isn't lit. I'm waiting until I can replace the bulb to hang the ornaments. I already broke out the Christmas music, however, and my cheese factor is getting dangerously high. You might say I'm pretty "sappy" over Christmas this year. (haha, get it?) I might have even been singing "fa la la la la to the dogs last night..."

Just throwing on some chili tonight while I grade leftover papers that I should have done over Thanksgiving. I hope you're having a great start to the Holiday season!