Tag Archives: Christmas

Christmas 2012: Glass Bead Ornament

Earlier this week I participated in a Secret Santa Cyber Ornament Swap. Using the website Elfster we were assigned a name and spending limit ($20) and given a few days to make an ornament. Our deadline was today so I haven’t received mine yet but I am looking forward to getting it in the mail.

Today, I thought I would share with you the glass bead ornament I made as my gift. The end result is really very pretty but the best part is that it takes around ten minutes to make.

Supplies:

shatterproof ornaments
glass jewelry beads (or plastic if you want to cut costs), I used various sizes
hot glue

I used red ornaments in case any of the background happened to be peeping through after I glued on the beads. To start with I applied a line of glue around the ornament. Then I started placing beads around.

For this particular ornament I worked in rows and alternating colors. You could use any pattern though. I think it would look pretty one solid color with beads of random size glued all over. It’s your ornament decorate it how you want to!I continued the banding around the ornament starting at the top and working my way down. Once I made it to the center, I reversed the pattern and worked my way to the bottom of the ornament. At this point the ornament was beginning to get a bit top heavy. The weight of those beads really start to add up!

You can see in the picture above that a tiny bit of the background does show through. So make sure whatever color ornament you use you don’t mind showing through. Might not look so hot if an orange background was peeking through.

I took a small strip of yarn and tied it on as a hanger and then gave it a test ~~drive~~ hang on the tree.

Quick. Easy. Beautiful.

Thats the way we roll around here.

I used the left over beads to decorate a few of the ornaments for the mantel. I like this look too and think I might have to make some more like this for next year!

So there you have it. A simple DIY glass bead ornament in under ten minutes (two if you use my simpler design above)!

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Christmas 2012: Our Mantel

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This little ~~elf~~ momma has been busy decorating the house for Christmas. Now if I could only clean up the mess I made doing it. Does anybody else run into that same problem? Sometimes, I’m like a tornado… leaving a path wherever I go!

So while the house may not be back in order yet, the mantel is decorated and spreading the Christmas cheer and warmth throughout the house. So without further ado here is a picture overload (because that’s what we really care about) of the mantel.

Like before, I mainly used what we had in our Christmas decor stockpile. I did splurge a little though by buying the beautiful poinsettia and the red ornaments on the garland. But that’s my goal… to add a little each year.

I kept with the traditional red and green for my decorations this year. Mainly because that’s what I have but I have to tell you I am really digging all this red. It is so cheerful and is really refreshing to see such bold color in our living room. Could this be a sign of things to come decor wise in our home?

This is one of my favorite pictures of Michael Luke and me. It was taken on our honeymoon and we used it as our first Christmas card together! I love how the green contrast with the red so well and love setting it out every year. Don’t we look young? Not so much now but up until we frequently got asked if we were teenagers! I’m 28 now and judging by the latest responses of the cashiers at the grocery store I might could pass as college student. Forward progress!

The red ornaments are simple inexpensive shatterproof ornaments. I bought some glass beads and hot glued them on to add a little pizzaz to them! They are so cute I might have to add more next year.

The little red flowers were only fifty cents at Jo-Ann. In the past I have used them for decoration on gifts but I thought they worked perfectly placed sparingly in the garland. The white trees I have had for a few years but originally came from Wal-Mart. Score one for EDLP (Every Day Low Prices)! The best part about them is that they are plastic so I don’t have to worry about breaking them.

I think I have used this cross for every season this year. It seems to always be appropriate and I couldn’t resist pairing it with our nativity scene.

Originally I didn’t plan for these little glass ornaments to hang over the ledge but the garland sort of fell that way I like the end result.

All our stocking are hung by the chimney with care. (For more on our stockings click here.)

And here’s little Noah displaying her awe and wonderment of our tree. Let’s just say it has been a real learning experience for her to restrain from grabbing every ornament off the tree!

I’ll be back later to share pics of our new tree (see our old one here) and our new ornament that symbolizes our anniversary from earlier this year (see all our other ornaments here).

Are you through decorating your house for Christmas? Do you leave a path wherever you have been while decorating? What are your favorite colors to decorate with for Christmas? Traditional? Blue? Pink? Silver? Gold?

See how I worked with what we had on our Spring, and Fall mantels earlier this year. Decorating for the season doesn’t have to be a huge expense… shop around the house.

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A Delightful Unusual Christmas

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I hope you had a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Michael Luke, Noah, and I really enjoyed getting to spend the holidays together as a family.

Our Christmas celebration was a little different than in years past and not just because of the addition of a baby. Instead of trying to set the record for the most families visited in forty-eight hours, this year we just stayed home. It was nice! Even though we missed spending time with our families, we had been looking forward to a slower-paced holiday schedule and the opportunity to focus more on the true reason for Christmas!

Michael Luke worked Christmas Eve morning… I really didn’t mind because this gave me a chance to clean up a little bit around the house while jamming out to some Pandora music (holiday style). A clean house just helps everything feel a little more special; and these days, it really is special if the house is clean!

He ended up having a short work day, so we did some last minute shopping for Noah. Nothing overboard though, since she would much rather have been eating than opening gifts. While out, we also scouted out a few stores to see if they had any trees left. I mentioned (here) that we planned to replace ours after this Christmas. Trees were few and far between to be found… which totally put a kink in my plan to grab one on sale the day after Christmas. We found a few at Home Depot that would do the trick, but they opened at 6:00 a.m. December 26!!! As much as I wanted a new tree, six in the morning was not a possibility for me. Thankfully, Michael Luke volunteered to swing by Wal-Mart and Home Depot before he went to work Monday morning. My troubles were put to ease, and we continued on with our Christmas Eve activities.

Michael Luke requested red beans and rice for Christmas dinner. Maybe a little unusual, but he wanted it to be a reminder of others who had less than we did to eat. So I did a little recipe searching and found this yummy sounding Caribbean Red Beans and Rice recipe. Nutmeg and cinnamon were involved, so it sounded like the perfect recipe for a Christmas dinner… and it was. As a side we had sweet potatoes and for dessert bread pudding.

Everything was delicious! Michael Luke has requested this to be a Christmas tradition. Which is fine with me, because it was super easy, and we had leftovers for the next day. That’s right, I didn’t cook at all Christmas Day. We even had a ready-made Whole Foods pizza Christmas night. Yum!

Anyway, after supper we listened to some Christmas music, had a short devotional, and sang a hymn as a family before putting Noah to bed (in her own room for the first time). Later, Michael Luke and I exchanged gifts and called it an early night. That will probably change in a year or two.

Christmas morning, we woke up to the sounds of a crying baby… not Jesus, Noah. After feeding her we brought her downstairs, so she (we) could open her presents.

Santa brought her some pacifiers and a banana-shaped teether.

In all of the commotion of the morning, we managed to get ready for the church service and on time too. This was Noah’s first time to attend a church service. She slept through the whole thing. The rest of the day was spent lounging around the house and enjoying time together as a family. A little different than usual but wonderful.

The day after Christmas, Michael Luke kept to his end of the bargain which consisted of me staying in bed and him hitting up Wal-Mart and Home Depot before work. He brought home two trees, one from Wal-Mart and one from Home Depot, that looked like they would work. The funny thing is he took my compact car, a Huyndai Elantra, instead of our Ford Escape. The car was packed full with one tree in the trunk and the other taking up the back and passenger seats (it was a floor model so there was no box for it)! Haha! A little crammed but it fit.

The GE Black Hill Spruce tree from Home Depot was our favorite. It’s a 7′-6″ LED pre-lit tree. By waiting until after Christmas, we got 50% off for the low price of $130. That’s a big step up from our $30 tree!

Our old tree is no comparison to this. We plan to buy one more ornament in March (more about that here), but we might have to buy a few more to decorate the tree next year!

That wraps up our Christmas activities. Did anybody else find any good day-after-Christmas deals?

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