The most effective way to do it is to do it – Amelia Earhart

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Holiday projects

Easy Christmas Garland for your Staircase

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When we moved into this house one of my favorite area’s of the home was our entryway. I love a grand staircase in the entryway of a home. My staircase isn’t grand but I love it. If you’ve read my blog before you may remember reading my post Painting and staining our stair railing  from about a year ago. It was a big job but made a huge difference in the look of our entryway. I’ve decorated our staircase at Christmas time for the past few years but this year I decided to change it.

Everyone loves a staircase decorated with beautiful lighted garland. What I don’t love is the price of the beautiful lighted garland. So instead of buying the ready made decorated and lighted garland I set out to make my own.

I discovered these cute little battery operated copper wire fairy lights on Amazon and bought a few. They immediately went up in a several places in my home, and then I purchased more. They come in a 6 pack on Amazon for $10 and the batteries are included. For small lights they are nice and  bright. Here’s a link to the ones I used if you are interested in buying them. (If you don’t see the link below, click on post header to open this post)

 

I found some inexpensive artificial Christmas garland at Hobby Lobby for $9.99, but they sell all holiday items for 50% off so each strand was only $5. I used 3 1/2 of those for my staircase. I also bought burlap and small gold and white Christmas bulbs at Hobby Lobby. I already had jute cord and that was all I needed.

I had to cut the garland for the short railing. The artificial garland has wire loops on each end so they string together for longer area’s. It’s wire throughout so you can shape it how you want it to hang on the stair railing.  Then I used the jute cord to tie the garland on.

I tied big bows because I wanted this to have a bit of a farmhouse look to it, and the big floppy bow and long curly strands add to that look. Once that was on I used the burlap to make simple large bows. I used the 5.5 inch wide size for the bows and tied them to the posts.

I wound the lights into the garland and hid the small white battery pack on the inside of the garland so it couldn’t be seen, but was easily accessible . Lastly I hung small ornaments all along the garland.

I did this on the stair railing going up stairs and along the railing across the upstairs hallway.

I used the burlap and gold and white ornaments so the decorations on the staircase would coordinate with the decorations on my Christmas tree.

In all I spend around $50 for the garland and decorations for my staircase. Not too bad!

It’s the first thing people see when they come to visit and I am really happy with it. It took a little time to get it up, but it was very easy and the price was right!

You could change up the burlap for ribbon and use a different color cord or ribbon to attach the artificial garland to the stair railing to get a different look.

If you found this helpful I would love to hear from you. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog.

Happy Holiday’s!

Cindy

DIY Snow Globe

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Today I’m going to show you how I used a yogurt jar to make handmade snow globes. A few months back I spotted the Oui by Yoplait Yogurt at the store and decided to try it out. (It’s yummy by the way.) But I kinda bought it for the jar. 😉 They are so tiny and cute!! I saved several jars and decided to use them to make waterless snow globes. I took the label off, washed them and used Goof Off to clean them up.

I bought a few small wood slices, a little bit wider than the jar to use for the base, and some snowflakes at Hobby Lobby. I also bought a small package of Christmas buttons for crafting. I positioned the buttons where I wanted them and used a hot glue gun to glue them to the wood slices. I added just a little bit of the snow flakes to the inside of the jar and then put a ring of hot glue around the open edge of the jar and carefully set the wood slice on the jar. I turned it over once the glue was set and had myself a little waterless snow globe.

That was kind of my tester and I did the rest of them a little different. I really like the cute bottle brush trees so I ordered some of those on line. Then while out shopping I came upon some really cute wood trees and bought those.

I needed the bottle brush trees to be shorter so I took the gold base off the bottom and used wire cutters to cut the tree down. I trimmed the “branches” from the bottom so there was enough wire sticking out to place it back on the base. I then used a small amount of hot glue to secure it back into the same hole.

I made a few of these using both the bottle brush trees as well as the wood trees and glued them to the wood slice. Make sure it will fit into the jar you are using before you glue them down to the base. I again only used a small amount of snow to just cover the bottom of the globe. You want to be able to see the tree’s and not cover them.

After I glued it to the base I used a little Buffalo Plaid Ribbon that I also found at Hobby Lobby and glued that around the base of the jar.

I wanted some variety so I decided to change it up a little and turn the jar right side up and add some fabric to the top of the snow globe to give it an old fashion jelly jar look. I glued the tree’s to the bottom of the jar this time, added the snow and then used a round piece of fabric on the top. I pre-measured and cut the fabric so it would fit the way I wanted it to.

I once again put a ring of glue along the top ridge of the jar and set the fabric in place. Then I added more glue to keep the edges of the fabric down. To finish it off I used the Buffalo Plaid Ribbon around the top of the jar and tied it in a bow on the back.

This is a fun and easy Christmas craft you can do with your kids. These would make great teacher gifts or neighbor gifts as well. You can be creative and use different items to create the scene you want in your snow globe. It was quick, easy and inexpensive. The Yoplait jars worked great but baby food jars or larger canning jars would work as well.

I hope you found this helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for stopping by to take a look. And if you are interested, please sign up for my emails to see more posts like this one.

Cindy

Chalk Painted Gourds

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You know those little plastic cheap gourds you buy in a bag for the fall holidays. I decided to paint mine. I saw a few posts on Pinterest and decided to try it. One of the things I learned is you need to shellac the pumpkins and gourds before you paint them.

You can see that I started painting a few of them, but I was getting a lot of bleed through. So a few coats of shellac was required to stop that.

I picked 3 colors to paint these gourds. Old White, Old Violet and some left over custom color I still had from a previous project.

Another fun idea to change up those plastic pumpkins is to use Fabric Tape.

I painted these ones white so the orange wouldn’t show through. But you don’t have to paint them if you like the orange showing through a little bit. The posibilities are endless with fabric tape.

I gave the painted gourds a coat of clear wax that gives them a silky, matte finish.

If you want to give those cheap plastic gourds a make over to match your home decor this is an easy project. There is a little time commitment but well worth the effort.

Happy fall holidays to everyone!

Cindy

Christmas Tree 🎄Oh Christmas Tree

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Do you like to decorate for the holidays? I do!  Do you have waaayyyy too many decorations? Guilty! At least when it comes to Christmas. 😉 And don’t tell my husband but my holiday decorating hoard is still growing!! Haha

I have a few Christmas trees up this year. 3 to be exact. This is the one Santa leaves his presents under. 🎁 It sits in the front room.

 

I think traditions are important and we have a tradition of giving our children an ornament every year, so we have a tree in the basement for the kids to decorate.

I love this tree because every year the kids go through their box of ornaments and remember past Christmas’s together.

And because you can never have too many Christmas trees I have one for the porch.

Hoping everyone is enjoying the holiday season!