Christmas Tree Skirt

Ugly Christmas Sweater Parties. It seems everyone is having one lately, and I've never actually had an ugly sweater to wear. It's just not my thing.  So this year, I saw a pin of someone who converted a tree skirt into a skirt for a holiday party.  Super cute idea, and I just had to try it out. 

 Of course I waited until the last minute to make it, so I went with the easiest steps possible.  I wrapped the tree skirt around my waist, and had my mom pin across it where the extra fabric. This created a guide for me to use when cutting off the extra fabric.   (back side of the skirt is below)

Then I used sticky Velcro pieces to hold the skirt in place.  Unfortunately, the Velcro wasn't sticking that well to the felt of my skirt so I had to sew them on.   

I was going to throw away the skirt after the holiday season, but I'll be keeping it, everyone loved it! 

A Grinch Date Night

Christmas movies are guilty pleasure of mine, I will try my hardest to watch them all in the month before Christmas. However, my boyfriend doesn't share this interest with me. So when I found a date night idea from the Dating Divas for dinner and the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas, one I know he'll watch, I knew I had to plan it for the bf and I. We had a great time planning a menu with a theme, and it was easy and free!

I printed out this FREE printable invitation, and delivered it to J's house.

For dinner we had a green smoothie, and tried to have a green meal, but the pesto didn't have a lot of color.

Winter Porch Decorations

After so many of the neighbors complemented my fall decorations, I had to continue with winter.  

I really wish I had some wooden skis though....

DIY Advent Calendar

When I was a child, one of my favorite things about the countdown to Christmas, was the advent calendar my family had.  It was a wooden tree that hung on the wall, and each day you would take a mini ornament out of a box and place it on the tree.  My sister and I had to split the days by even and odd so we wouldn't fight over who got to do it each day.

So when I found a wooden tree advent calendar at Micheals I knew I needed it.  I love having this new advent calendar that reminds me a little Christmases past.

I painted the tree and glued Christmas paper to the front of each drawer, 

and added sparkling sticker numbers. 

Hanukkah Table

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoyed the break from work as much as I did.  Here's a late post from a while ago.  I've been busy blogging for my work blog, thriftingdenver.org, and had no time to also do things for my own blog.  I'm not Jewish, but Goodwill wanted to show Denver our readers that you can find items for any holiday in our stores, so I created this tablescape.

Fall Porch Decorations

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween. I love passing out candy to the cute little kids in my neighborhood every year.  This year I decorated my porch a little more than normal, and even dressed up like a witch to pass out candy; read more here.

Now that Halloween is over, I decorated my porch for fall/Thanksgiving.  I went to a pumkin patch earlier this month with the boyfriend and we picked our own pumpkins and even bought some corn stalks for the porch.

Monogram Pumpkin Directions

Halloween Porch Decorations

I'm not normally a Halloween decorator. I'm definitely not a fan of scary movies or haunted houses.  I was more scared than the 13 year olds I took to a haunted house this year.  They thought that was hilarious.  After finding ideas on Pinterest I decided to decorate with a cute witch theme.  I have a few other blog posts that show the different parts of the porch decorations I made, but I wanted one with all the decorations and my costume.

 Broom Parking Sign

DIY Witches Shoes

 The kids loved my smoking cauldron :)

I love these spiderweb tights!

Monogram Pumpkin

This fall Pinterest has been flooded with different ways to decorate a pumpkin without carving it.  After finding a fake pumpkin at Goodwill for $2 I decided to give one of the ideas a try. 

What You Need:

Pumpkin- real or fake

Spray Paint

Paint pen

(Optional:)

Glue

Glitter

Directions:

Spray paint your pumpkin outside or in a well-ventilated area. Make sure you cover the area around the pumpkin with a plastic tablecloth or use a cardboard box.  It took me about 3 coats to get the pumpkin covered,  

While the pumpkin was drying I used Word to find an 'A' that I liked.  After the pumpkin is dry you can hand draw the letter onto the pumpkin, which is what I did; or you can print the letter out on paper, cut it out and trace around it on the pumpkin. Then use the paint pen, or a paintbrush if your skilled J, to fill in the letter.  You can also add glitter to the letter for some added flair. 

DIY Witch Shoes

I made this super cute sign for my halloween porch decorations, and thought I needed some witch shoes to go with it.  I found a tutorial for the shoes from here.  I followed all her directions, but didn't take pictures of any of the steps.

What You Need:
1 pair of shoes, mine were $4 at Goodwill
Aluminum foil
Masking tape
Newspaper
Mod Podge
Spray paint

Directions: 

Take a section of foil and fold it to be the same width at the toe of the shoes. Make sure the foil peice is about 3-4 inches long, depending on how much of a curving toe you want. Use masking tape to secure the foil to the bottom of the shoe right under the toe. Make sure you have a section of the foil at least 2 inches long on the front, then use it to mold the curled toe of the shoe.

Once the bend of the shoe is made, cover it with maksing tape.  Continue the above steps with the other shoe.

Once both shoes have curled toes, cover each one with newspaper and mod podge. This will help the shoe look uniform, otherwise the toe will look different than the rest of the shoe when painted.

After the newspaper has dried, spray paint the shoe any color you want. You can cover it with glitter, add a buckle or jewel.  The spiders on mine were rings I found at the party store.  Since there wasn't an easy way to attach them with glue, I ended up using a ribbon to hold them on.  Not my favoite since you can see them, but they will look great on halloween.

Pearl Bracelets

Project three of catching up on blog posts. This craft was a spontaneous one that I did on Wednesday night when I realized I had all the parts for it already.

What You Need: 

Ribbon 

Pearls, any size

Fishing line or thin jewelry wire

Needle nose pliers

Directions:

Cut enough ribbon to tie around your wrist,  and tie a knot about 1 inch from the end.  Then take the wire and push it through the ribbon on the side with the knot.  Put a pearl on the end of the wire and wrap the ribbon halfway around the pearl and push the wire out the other side of the pearl. 

Continue adding pearls and ribbon until the it is long enough to wrap around your wrist. Finish with another knot on the end and curl the wire with pliers.

Quick and Easy- Mini French Dip Sandwiches

The boyfriend and I had one of those days where neither of us wanted to cook dinner, or even come up with something to eat.  So we scrolled through my Pinterest recipe board. This easy recipe, from Mama Loves Food, won in the end and we loved it so much we already have plans to do the same thing with ham and swiss, and pepperoni and mozzerella.

What You Need:
1 package of crescent rolls, 8 count
1/2 pound Roast Beef
1 package swiss cheese slices
1 Au Jus sauce packet
Horseradish sauce (optional)


Directions: 
Unroll the crescent rolls onto a cookie sheet. On each roll place a slice of roast beef and a half slice of cheese.

Roll the crescents from the wide end to the narrow end. Bake at 375 degrees for 11 to 13 minutes. While the rolls are baking, prepare the Au Jus according to the package.

Halloween- Witch Parking Sign

Project two from catching up on blog posts. I wanted to make this sign for my halloween decorations on my porch last year, and just didn't have the time.  I think it turned out great, and will look even better when I have fog from my fog machine coming out of the cauldron I bought.  Bring on the trick or treaters!

DIY Fabric Napkins

Wow! Time flies when you're having fun...or in my case working.  After a month of nonstop work events, I'm finally able to spend some time writing blog posts for some of the things I've been working on.

A few years ago for my birthday my mom got me a sewing machine because I had all these great ideas for things I wanted to make, an apron, tote bags, skirts… my list was long.  Since then I have made a few things, but the completed list is pretty short. So when I created my summer bucket list I added a few sewing projects. 

I had about a yard of fabric in different patterns for different holidays, so I decided to make 6 napkins with each design. 

What you Need:

At least 1 1/2 yards of cotton fabric of your choice  

Sewing Machine

Sewing supplies- thread, scissors, tape measure, pins etc…

Iron

Directions:

First thing to remember when sewing is always wash and iron the fabric before starting. It’s always bad if the fabric decides to shrink the first time you wash it.  Then measure the fabric, and figure out how big you can make each napkin. Mine were all cut about 14” in each direction.  

After cutting all the fabric into squares I used an iron to hold the edges I would sew. To make it easier I only did the two, opposite sides.  I folded a less than a ¼ inch of the fabric over, and then folded once more at ¼ inch.

Since the first fold is smaller, I wanted to make sure I sewed it, so I sewed very close to the edge. 

Continue with the same steps as above to fold and sew the remaining edges of your napkins, and you're done. 

The napkins were so easy to make, I decided to buy more fabric to make a few napkins to keep on hand for housewarming gifts.