DIY Gifts for Christmas

Hello, everyone! Well, since I'm almost done giving everyone our "made with Love" Christmas Gifts, here are pictures of some of them. I wasn't able to take pictures of all of them. Mostly I made all the gifts this year because we are saving for our wedding in May, but I also love to do this type of thing as you may have noticed. I took pictures of some of the gifts in a hurry before I wrapped them. So sorry about the quality. Take a look.....








These are travel bags I made for the men and some of the women in our family. The ziplock bags are great for storing a multitude of things. I saw this idea on Create (Public Channel) on Donna Dewberry's show. She often has some really good ideas for non-painting projects. This one was really easy, and just like with most sewing projects the cutting and preparation took a lot longer then the actual sewing.

This is a Tote I made especially for storing a scrapbook project. It has pockets inside for scissors, markers, etc.


Sorry about the lousy pictures. I was pretty busy making these and had to squeeze in pictures before I wrapped them. This is a purse I made. It looks a lot better in person.

This is a smaller version of the brown purse from above.

This is a purse I made for my Mom. It also looks better in person.


Finally, this is a Yoga Mat I made. I did end up finding a black shoe string to use at the end instead of the white one in the picture. I made a couple of other totes. One was a messenger bag for my sister, Anna, to store her sketching supplies and take to the beach. The other was a Large Tote for my other sister, Suzie. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures of these before I wrapped them and gave them away. All in all making the gifts was fun but a lot of work. I hope my family will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Christmas Images from our Home!

Visit Cindy from My Romantic Home's Friday Show & Tell. I have linked up this week again!

Welcome to our home for Christmas! I had some grand plans for Christmas decorating this year, especially since it is our first year here. However, making all our Christmas gifts this year took up more time than anticipated so those decorating plans didn't work out. I did the best I could under the circumstances.
Enjoy some Christmas images! By the way, our tree has "holes" within the branches because of our two cats. They took to climbing the tree early in December. I was finally able to get them to respect the tree by training them with with a spray water bottle. We plan to get a new tree next year. Merry Christmas!!

Welcome home for Christmas!

Put your feet up on our coffee table while you have some egg-nog!

Sorry about the distorted tree-blame our cats, Apollo & Rocky.

I used plastic ornament clips to protect the cats.

I plan to start collecting nutcrackers. This is my first one!

Cheap & Easy Christmas Pins!

Merry Christmas Eve Everyone! I had planned to travel home to Texas today to spend Christmas with my family...unfortunately, I am stuck at home because of inclement weather. We have ice, sleet, snow....blizzard like conditions in Oklahoma. Travel not advised either North or South. What bad timing, I was really looking forward to seeing my family for Christmas especially since I haven't been able to do that for a few years now. Hopefully, I will still be able to travel in a day or so. In the meantime, I have the time to upload some of my Christmas projects. This is a Christmas pin which I made for my co-workers. I made 42 of these. I made different color combinations but forgot to take pictures. Anyway, I thought I would share this Super Easy project!

I purchased these round wooden pieces from Hobby Lobby and the pin backings as well. I hot glued the pin first so that I could have something to hold while I painted the pin with acrylic paints. After the paint dried I applied glue and then glitter. Finally, I hot glued the bow on. Easy! Easy! You can also use square wood pieces and make little presents. It was a fun and cheap little project!

Cinnamon Stick Christmas Ornament

This is a cinnamon stick tree ornament that we made on Sunday. This project was brought to us by Amy from the craft group. They were very easy to make. You take one cinnamon stick and hot glue pieces of garland to create that tiered look on a christmas tree. Then just hot glue pieces of ribbon which you have knotted in the center to make look like bows and add the buttons in the center. The stars at the top are actually buttons. Finally, we added the ribbon hook with hot glue. I loved how easy and rustic these are!


This is my Shabby Chic Christmas cinnamon stick tree!

Roses on Christmas Tree

This is our 2008 Christmas Tree. I was on a really tight budget so I made all the "ornaments". I decorated this tree with roses, pine cones, cinnammon sticks, cotton for snow, green checkered fabric and some sage colored ribbon. I really liked how it turned out. By the way, sorry about the picture quality. I didn't know as much about camera lighting when I took this picture last year so you can't really see much detail on the tree.

I'll be sure to update with pictures of this year's tree and Christmas decorations. We put up our tree a couple of days after ThanksGiving. Unfortunately, I had to interrupt decorating our tree this year so that I could re-train our two cats to leave it alone! We have successfully retrained them by using the spray bottle--they hate that! It only took a couple of days for them to get the message that the tree is off-limits. Stay tuned for more Christmas images...

Bottle Whimsical Snowmen!

Hello, everyone! For this post I will be joining My Romantic Home's Show & Tell Friday post. This is the result of our latest craft group meeting. Jessica showed us all how to make snowmen out of vintage bottles and salt shakers. We filled them with tinsel, beads, buttons, glitter, and sequins. We made the heads out of some type of clay that air dries. We used toothpicks for the noses. It was alot of fun and the first time that we got to hang out in the little cottage behind my house. It was pretty cold outside and I just bought a new utility room heater and I was very pleased with how warm it kept the room. It kept it at a cozy 73 degrees. I finally moved all my craft stuff out there last week. I plan to update with some pictures of my craft room once I get it nice and organized.

These are Jessica's snowmen. I love how whimsical these turned out!

Some more snowmen....

Amy made this group of Snowmen mostly to give away as gifts for friends and family. They are all way cute!

These are my Mr & Mrs Clause figurines. Mrs Clause started out as an angel. I didn't like how that was turning out so I made The Clauses instead.

Happy ThanksGiving!

Happy be-lated ThanksGiving! I apologize for not upadating my blog sooner. I have been very busy making my Christmas gifts this year. Time has slipped by so quickly. I will update pictures of all the gifts I make after Christmas. But for now I would like to show you pictures of the first ThanksGiving Brian and I have hosted at our house! It was a lot of work preparing everything but really worth it! Brian's Dad, Mike, made the green bean casserole-yummy! Sitting next to him is his good friend Pat.

It was a great day and was wonderful to be able to spend it with family. The guy in the green shirt at the end of the table is my brother-in-law, John and sitting next to him is my sister, Suzie. Jon had just returned from a year long tour in Iraq so we were very thankful to have him back home safe and sound. All in all, a great day! Stay tuned for a Christmas decoration project.....

Buffet style service....

Here is a shot of our family members patiently awaiting a very late ThanksGiving lunch.