Holiday Listenings

Eight wonderful Christmas albums to make your days merry & bright;  a little extra pick-me-up right before the Holidays.

1. Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas

2.A Very She & Him Christmas

3. Sojourn's A Child is Born

4. Michael Buble's Christmas

5.  Dave Barnes' Very Merry Christmas

6. Over the Rhine's Snow Angels

7.  James Taylor At Christmas

8.Maybe This Christmas with a variety of artists

The Christmas Story

A friend of mine posted this video and it was just too precious to pass up sharing it with you all!  I love the way it was shot and the narrators are adorable (kids + english accents = cuteness overload!).  Enjoy!

** you may have to stop the music from automatically playing by scrolling to the bottom of this page first!.  

$1 Christmas Craft

I was moseying around the house last week in an attempt to get a little bit more organized in the new house when I found a bag of felt that I had purchased at Hobby Lobby to make a few felt flowers.  Seeing how I was over the whole felt flower kick I was on one day, I decided I could use them for some other project... maybe even a Christmas project (our house is lacking a little in the Christmas decor department).  I began messing around with the felt and figured I would attempt to make a set of little Christmas trees to adorn our (sad excuse for a) mantle.

This is what I came up with.

And, this is how to do it.

1) Gather materials: 3 pieces of felt (found at the craft store for 4 for $1), scissors, tacky glue, and binder clips (optional).

 

2) Use one piece of felt and make a cone shape starting from one of the corners. 

3) Glue the edge down and then cut the bottom (sort of like a semi-circle) so the 'cone' will stand up evenly.

4) Place binder clips over the area you just glued together to help it adhere. (This step might be unecessary, but I found that the felt didn't really stick together with the tacky glue unless forced.)  Let your trees sit about 10 minutes before taking the clips off.  

        

5) Repeat steps 2-4 with three different sized cones.  (I was able to make all of my cone shapes out of one piece of felt.)

6) Decorate your trees however you'd like!  The good thing about this project is that you don't have to glue down any of the decorations on your trees because the felt pieces stick to one another!  So you can redecorate your trees as often as you'd like!

As a side note, I created the spiral design by drawing a circle on the felt (about the size of a cd) and cutting it into a spiral.  This makes it very easy to drape the spirals over the cones. 

 

I created the 'bunting tree' by making anther spiral out of a circle and cutting little triangles out of the green felt.  I found it helpful to use a little dab of glue on the triangles to keep them in place.  And, the smallest tree was created simply by cutting small circles out of the felt (pretty obvious, but I didn't want to leave the little guy unmentioned!)  

And here's our (sad excuse for a) mantle with felt trees and a little bunting piece I made with the extra felt and an empty frame I had laying around.

 

Merry Christmas!

Stephanie P.

Getting in the holiday spirit.

HAPPY DECEMBER!  To get us all in the holiday spirit, I'm going to give you my little rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas -- with 12 cute Christmas decorating ideas to spruce up your home this holiday season.

 

If you click on the pictures you will be redirected to the original source that may have some instructions on how to DIY.

I just love festive decorations, especially at Christmas and for some reason, having our own house this year makes me want to decorate 10 times more!  Hopefully you'll be inspired to decorate and maybe even get a little bit crafty and make your own decorations!  Be creative and think outside the box!

** If you haven't already noticed, I've also made a Christmas playlist to spread some holiday cheer!  So, yes, I will be listening to Christmas music from now until the end of the year!  : )

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Much love,

Stephanie P.