Happy Valentines Day!

Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day. I thought I would show the Valentines I made for my boy's friends at school.

Tyler goes to a Mother's Day Out Program and only has 6 in his class, so I wanted to make something cute, but easy. I used my Cricut to make these butterflies.
The cut is off the "Simply Sweet" cartridge using the butterfly cut in floral paper and the Shadow option for the background on purple card stock. The card stock was needed to make them sturdy enough to hold the sucker. I ran the butterflies through my Xyron and stuck them on the card stock.

I then made 2 small cuts in the center with a straight blade and stuck a Dum-Dum through them. On the back I just wrote "From: Tyler" Very easy, but I thought they looked cute.

For Samuel's class, I wanted to also make something easy, but still cute. I used the two flower shapes on my George and Basic Shapes Cartridge - both on shadow so the hole would not be cut in the flower. For these Blow Pops, I used a 3" size for the flowers and leaves. (The sample I made was with a Dum-Dum and I made those with 2.5" shapes.) For the top flower, I used printed paper and then folded them up toward the sucker. For the bottom leave, I used matching card stock and left them flat.
For the leaf, I used the acorn cut on the Doodlebug cartridge, but just tossed the remaining pieces. My son wrote "From: Samuel" on the back of the leaf and I wrote his classmates names on the front.
The girls flowers were 1 or 4 printed pink papers with matching pink card stock. The boys were a two-tone green with purple card stock. To push the sucker through the center, I made a small whole with a sharp pointed tool and then pushed the sucker through the hole. I then used a small piece of scrapbook adhesive to adhere the leaf to the bottom petal.

As a special flower for his teacher, I used the left over card stock and one of the printed papers to make a larger flower for her. (We also gave her a small gift, but I thought this was cute.
I then placed tissue paper in the bottom of a small blue (his school color) tote pail and arranged the flowers in the pail.
Although he's a boy and this may seem a little girly, my son was very excited to hand out his flowers. Valentines is the one day a year a mom of two boys can get away with making something a little sweet.

Christmas Decorating - Master Bedroom

This is the first year I've really done much decorating at all in my bedroom. Some years I have used a ceramic tree, you know the ones with the little colored light, but I decided to do something a little more. Not much, but a little.
I found this quilt on Black Friday for $18 at Wal-Mart. The colors are a good match for the bedding I already use.

Then I found these wreaths at Hobby Lobby. They are actually candle rings, but I thought they would be pretty hanging above our bed. I found some red and gold ribbon to tie in to the bedding. They look tiny in the picture, but they make a bigger impact in person. I'm working on a new painting to go behind my bed, so next year these will find a new home, maybe hanging in the windows on each side of our bed.

Then I decided to do another tabletop tree. I've had this tree for a couple years, but I've never used it because I didn't like the bottom of the tree. But with the quilt, I thought it would be cute to do a tree with all handmade ornaments.

I love these bears! A friend of my mom's made these for me when I was younger.

Another friend of my mom's has made me several ornaments like this and my mom has nearly enough to do an entire tree. They are beautiful!

And it gives me a great place to put the little ornaments that the boys have made.

This one I made years ago when I was in high school.

To keep with the homemade theme, I Mod Podged a star topper and a few other ornaments that you can see below in a post.

That completes my Christmas Tour of my home. If you've missed it, keep scrolling or click on the labels below.

Christmas Decorating - Boys Rooms

Today's post is pretty short and simple, but I wanted to show my boys trees. They are really nothing fancy, but each have ornaments that they like and they are simple little Christmas touches to their room.

I have just small tabletop trees in their rooms, mostly because they are still at the age where they need as much floor room as possible. This is Tyler's tree (my 2 year old). It is decorated mostly with Sesame Street ornaments, Thomas the Train and some other cute little things. You can also see a wooden camel right on the front. That was a gift from our nursery director at church last year. She had her husband get all of the kids ornaments when he made a trip to Jerusalm with our church.
This is Samuel's tree (my 6 year old). His tree has Hot Wheels cars, Mater and Lightening McQueen and Star Wars. Not sure if you can see the rather large black ornament in the front of the tree, but that's Darth Vader my Mother-in-Law bought for him last year. I joked that nothing says Christmas like Darth Vader! LOL And he will plug into the Christmas lights which light up his light saber and he'll make that creepy breathing noise. That really makes a Christmas tree unique - and he loves it!

I just added a couple things in the bathroom. I couldn't decide where to put these two Santa Claus items because I have such little Santa stuff since most of mine revolves around snowmen. So when I was trying to figure out what to put in there to add a little Christmas cheer, I thought the bathroom would be a good place. I added the little picture of my nieces family and called it good. I thought about doing another tabletop tree here, but decided that my husband might put me away. LOL

Tomorrow, one last room - my bedroom. To see the rest of my house, keep scrolling.

Decopaged Ornaments

This year I added a new tabletop tree to my bedroom which I'll show you tomorrow. For that tree, I made three star ornaments and a star topper. I started with a these:

And ended up with these:

I simply Mod Podged Christmas scrapbook paper onto the stars in alternating patterns. To cut out the shapes, I layed the paper over the stars and folded it along the shapes. I then cut them out and Mod Podged them on. Very simple, just a little bit of time. This is a craft you could easily do with your children too!

Visit tomorrow and I'll show you the entire tree and the rest of my bedroom.

I'm linking this post up to Blue Eyed Blessings Holly Bloggy Christmas Bash. Lots of Great Ideas!

Christmas Decorations - Kitchen

My kitchen holds my other large tree. By large, I mean not a tabletop tree. It is a smaller, 6 ft., narrow tree, but it does the job. Our largest collection of items has to be our M&M collection. We have around two dozen large dispensers, dozens of toppers, ornaments and decorations for several other holidays. So to showcase most of our Christmas items, I started putting up a tree a couple of years ago. It is placed in our kitchen and this window is at the front of the house so it can be seen from the street. This tree has all colored lights and all of the decorations are M&M ornaments, toppers, lights, etc.
Under the tree are our M&M village tins. I used to put these along the mantel or on the entertainment center, but I like it so much more having it all together in one location.
We have collected many over the years and have been given a lot by friends and family. And our boys love it.
On the counter next to the tree, I have our M&M advent counter and ceramic M&M house. It is actually a Christmas village piece and lights up.

The train toppers that are not ornaments, I decided to put above one of the cabinets this year. They are out of the way of little hands that have trouble keeping away, but can still be seen.

To see my dinning room and living room, just keep scrolling down. Tomorrow I'll feature my boys trees and bathroom. And don't forget my giveaway!

Christmas Decorations - Dining Room

Today I'm going to show my dining room Christmas decorations. We don't have a formal dining room, this is the table we use for every day. And we also have a very open floor plan. Our dining room is at the front of the house and is open to both the living room and the kitchen on the right.

So, any table centerpiece I use, I like to to be easily movable. Last year I came up with this idea. Using a table runner I had made by a friend, I place the three different sized glass cylinder vases along the runner. The large center vase has small gold and silver ornaments. The medium vases I have red and green ornaments. The four small vases had silver beads in two and gold beads in two. Above the table, I have gold and silver ornaments hanging from the chandelier.
What I like best about the centerpiece is how easily I can change the look. When we have company over, I can easily stretch it out along the length of the table. But for everyday, I simple push it toward the center of the table so that we can use the table space.

And I can bunch them together even more into a smaller circle. And when we are having dinner, I can just slide the entire thing to one end of the table and afterwards I can simply slide it back into place.

Against the wall, I have my table all in blue and silver. This year I wanted to do something really different. It all started with this silver tray. On a trip wondering through Hobby Lobby (love to do that!), I saw this tray 1/2 off. I had the idea to use it with my Santa's Cookies plate which I also usually pair with this tea pot and mug. After playing with it a while, I came up with this arrangement. Then I pulled together a couple more of my blue, white and silver snowmen items for the other side.

But that left me with a hole in the center. I decided it would be the perfect place for another tabletop tree. I pulled off all of my clear snowflake ornaments off my big tree and added them. I bought the topper and skirt, which I thought was a perfect color match, at Hobby Lobby of course.

I was really happy how it turned out for only having bought a couple little things to pull it all together.

And a couple more little things: A Christmas card holder I made several years ago. You can see my instructions here.

And another of my favorite little snowmen.

And a snowman candle jar holder I made. Details are also here.

Tomorrow I will show my kitchen decorations which is done all in M&Ms.

12/20 - I'm adding this post to Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphasis Monday. Click on the Christmas Label below to see all of the rooms in my home and our little touches of the holidays.