Tag Archives: decorations

New Year and Christmas Thoughts – Card display

By

It was a dreary New Year’s day yesterday. The sun tried real hard to shine dimly through the thinner clouds. The temperature was quite nice, it was around 59°F.

For New Year’s dinner we had black eyed peas with ham, boiled cabbage, homemade chicken strips and corn bread followed by a slice of my homemade pumpkin pie.
I began making and baking my pumpkin pie around the midnight hour New Year’s Eve and it was still in the oven when the New Year rang in.
I’m considering ‘making a new year pie during the midnight hour’ a tradition. It would help me stay awake to ring in the new year. I hope I can remember it for next year. We shall see.

Here’s a few photos from Christmas 2018.
I managed to convince Sheli Bean to wear his Santa hat/vest long enough to get some photos of him. Then he delighted in taking the thing off and shaking it like he was trying to kill it. 😀

Our Grandson and SheliBean found a rare winter sun puddle to enjoy.

People don’t send out Christmas cards much anymore. We send out only about a half dozen. How to display the cards folks give us has always been an issue. This year, I had a brain storm and decided to hang a small cork board up to hang the cards on. I didn’t decorate the cork board much, but I’m happy with it. I plan to make this method of card display a part of our Christmas decor from now on.

Now back to today:
Do you still heve your holiday decorations up? We still have our tree up and all the decor. We’ll keep it up for a bit longer or until the mood hits to store it for the year. Fortunately, our livingroom is large enough that our Christmas tree and stuff doesn’t get in the way of normal living.

I hope you all rang in the New Year safely with happiness and smiles.
I’m wishing you all a year full of joy and success!

 

.

Snowman made of cans

By

I realize this is a little late in the season, but I’ve been under the weather for the last week. Thankfully I’m better now.
I finally finished this snowman yesterday. I want to go ahead and post it. I got the idea from Pinterest seeing snowmen made out of cans.I absolutely adore this guy.
He brightens up the room and
makes me smile every time I look at him.

Wishing you all happiness with your Christmas projects.

Here’s a few highlights of how I made my snowman.

-I used 28 ounce cans.
-I used my old hot glue gun instead of my low temp glue gun. The glue’s slower setting and gives more time for moving the cans into place.
-I ran into an issue with hot gluing the cans together and having a neat seam. I also worried that the cans might snap apart if they got banged around any. I made a cardboard cap for the cans and hot glued it in the top and then hot glued the cans together at the cardboard ends. This worked out really well.
-For the brim of the hat, I glued 3 small paper plates together. I figure that my snowman won’t ever be outside so the paper plates wouldn’t be a problem.
-For the hat, I left the open end of the can up to put flowers and stuff in.
-My husband spray painted the hat black and then spray painted the body white.
-The white paint didn’t cover as well as I liked, so I went over the body with white acrylic paint and a coat of glitter paint.
-I hot glued the hat to the body.
-I sculpted the nose out of polymer clay and hot glued it on snowman’s face.
-I painted the eyes, mouth and buttons.
-I crocheted the scarf.

.

Candy Cane decor

By

cannycaneI made a candy cane decoration out of empty paper towel tubes. It was harder than I thought it’d be to make the rounded crook of the cane. It took a few tries, but I figured it out and finally got one to came out fairly adequate.

Now on to my next project… whatever will it be…

I hope your week is filled with success
and Happy craftings!

.

Ready for Rain

By

4-4-2016-rc
For a while now, I’ve wanted to make a rain chain. I think it’s a quaint and cheerful decoration.
I found a website that has helpful directions on how to make a rain chain.

There was a few things I needed to do differently from the directions.
I didn’t want to hang a chain under a gutter spout because if we decide to move, it’s something that we’d need to fix.
I toyed with the idea of hanging the chain from a shepherd’s hook and let it dangle over a container. It took me a day or two to think of a bird bath.
The chain would have to be shorter over a birdbath, but I decided a few small buckets might be quite charming.
I finally had it all worked out in my mind, I just needed to get my supplies together. It took a few weeks, but finally I had them all gathered up.

 

We worked on the flower bed off and all during last week and set up the bird bath. The weather Sunday was a bit chilly, but nice enough for us to stay outside and make my rain chain. It was quite late in the afternoon when we got started on it and after dark when we finished.

 

The stone dangling from the bottom of the chain is a small garden stone I bought last year. It set on my patio table because it was too small to put in my garden. I was delighted when I discovered it was the right weight and size to use with my rain chain. Pretty neat huh?4-4-2016-rc00

I plan to plant annual flowers around the birdbath and also I might even plant some chard for tasty color. Oh and I plan to put my garden flag hanger there too… as soon as I make a flag for it…

I can hardly wait for the next rain so I can see how my rain chain is going to do. I hope I can get a clear photo of it in action to share.

Wishing you all cheerful days of sunshine.ec-sunny

sp-line-orange

4-3-2016-rc04-3-2016-rc14-3-2016-rc24-3-2016-rc34-3-2016-rc44-3-2016-rc54-4-2016-rc000spacer2

Great Glowing Easter Eggs

By

egglight1As I was going through my old blog picture/files I came across the many different holders/displays I made for battery operated tealights.
I decided not to wait til Friday to post this Flashback because Easter is coming up and this might make a fun decorating idea for someone to use.

egglight2
This is one of my more favorite ideas that I put together. I placed battery operated tea lights in plastic eggs. They’re such a fun inexpensive decoration.

egglight3
My husband told me that I needed to drill a 1/16 inch hole in the plastic egg so the heat from the battery operated light can vent out.

So, if you decide to use this idea of putting battery operated tealights in plastic eggs, be sure to drill a hole in the eggs to help the heat vent out.

Be sure to keep an eye on the eggs and tealights in case they over heat and need to be turned off.

Here’s wishing you all a very bright
& cheery rest of the weekend.

smileggs

~*~
Here’s a photo pf the battery operated tealights I use.egglight4
🙂
3-spcbg