This year I was determined to do something different for our Christmas card photo. I researched and checked Pinterest, but kept coming up with the same ideas. Tons of people were doing similar family photos. I have a strange quirk in that I love to be original and different. So I have been thinking and brainstorming for a while now on ideas. It hit me finally, I LOVE Christmas carols! Why not let my kids act them out in pictures 🙂
Today I am sharing another gift I have been making for my friends and family this Christmas, homemade hot chocolate mix. I tried several recipes, but ended up just making my own 🙂
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I have been busy making Christmas gifts for my friends and family because I love to give homemade gifts. I love to receive them also. Just knowing someone loves me enough to put some effort into a gift is really special. Today I am sharing one of my favorite gifts I am making: detox bath in a jar.
Yesterday I hosted my annual gingerbread building party! This year we were able to do gingerbread nativity scenes 🙂 I have an awesome friend who gave me a gingerbread nativity kit last year for Christmas. I have been waiting all year to use it with my small group girls for our annual party and it was so much fun.
Today is my birthday so I wanted to share a fun craft my girls and I are doing together. I have been getting ready for Christmas here lately. Making gifts, getting out decorations and crafting of course! I made some easy but cute little gift tags for this year that I’m sharing today.
As promised, I finally got my templates for the felt wall nativity finished. With a lot of help from my hubby I now have them uploaded for all my readers who have been begging for them! Happy Thanksgiving everyone and I hope the templates help 🙂
I have seen the cute felt Christmas trees all over Pinterest. They hang on a wall and have felt ornaments for kids to decorate and play with. Well in our home, we focus on the nativity and the true reason behind why we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus. So I decided to do my own version of a felt wall toy for my children. I thought I would share it now since many people are already looking forward to/preparing for Christmas.
As I was putting away our Christmas decor last week I went through the every year struggle of what to do with the Christmas Cards we got this year. I love them and appreciate that friends and family took the time to send us a card. These sweet cards matter to us, but I’m an anti-clutter type of girl and didn’t have a good way to organize them (quickly) so I could keep them nicely. So usually I keep this years cards in the Christmas decorations box and then the next year I get out the decorations and we reminisce over last years cards getting excited over the upcoming season. Well here it is time to put away our 2011 Christmas stuff, and I see 2010’s cards in the box and can’t bring myself to do the normal, “ok I’ve kept these over a year and I’m not a pack rat” reasoning with myself.Â
So my solution was to get online and research ideas to reuse or save old Christmas cards. I found lots of great ideas like using the front cover to cut out Christmas tags for next year or making ornaments from the front covers with the kids. Then I came across my favorite one which was to use index card rings to make card books. This made it an organized storage idea plus I could still keep the heartfelt messages from family and friends, I loved it. So, I recently went to Walmart (not my idea of fun) to go through a recent huge clearance section they are having in their garden center. One of the things I found was index card rings! They were on clearance for 75 cents for a package, and I was so excited to find not only what I needed but for half off.Â
Next I gathered the last two years of cards and stacked them separately and used my 3 hole punch to punch 2 holes in each card that would be equal length apart. Then I used the rings to bind them together. These were easy and quick, probably only took me 15 min start to finish. A great naptime project, and now they are packed away neatly with the Christmas decor.
I plan on putting them out on the coffee table next Christmas season for us to look through and reminisce. I only wish I’d found this idea sooner so I could have kept all the past Christmas cards also…. oh well 2010’s cards are a good year to start with I guess. Thanks for stopping by 🙂 Johanna
My Crazy Blessed Life! 