gift wrap

Wrapping Christmas Gifts
Gift wrapping paper is how we usually wrap a gift, that or a gift bag full of tissue paper. Yes I am one of those what is the easy way out kind of girl, but I do dress the package up so it looks like I spent a little more on the gift.
This year I have also wrapped most of my gifts in the cute little Christmas tree paper. But I am going to try to think of some “green” gift wrapping ideas. I have read some magazines that have shown some cute ideas along with some of my own.
First off I love the magazine Ready Made, it has some really cute ideas. I am giving my sister in law a stack of cooking books for Christmas and I wanted a creative idea to wrap them. I found that you could take an old shirt (I am going to use flannel) and wrap up anything. I think this is what I will do with her gift. Then I will add the cookie cutters on the outside for a bow like feel. And to give a hint onto what is in the gift. What about an apron.
Taking a paper mache box and decoupaging it, and decorating it, and using that box to put your gift in. You could use this method more than once.
Another one I a lot of the time I use. I put my gift inside a basket, bowl, box, etc. This way their wrapping is their gift too!
Some other ways of wrapping online were
-a cigar box
-http://www.furochic.com/
-cereal boxes into gift wrap, you can cover then with any sort of paper
-wrap the boxes in old maps or even new ones that you never use for that matter
-wrap with magazine pages for those small presents
-sew a bag, a reusable one, out of cloth, they are not that hard to make, give it a try
-http://www.squidoo.com/ecofriendlygiftwrapping
-http://www.wholeliving.com/article/eco-gift-wrap
-http://www.dannyseo.com/ some books I found that are definitely going on my want list

Hope these are some great ideas that you can use for that last minute wrapping.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

O christmas tree O christmas tree

Decorating your Christmas tree is the topic for this post. My friend has a two year old and was wondering if she should even decorate her Christmas tree, I told she should, all she had however where breakables that she did not want to put on the tree. So I did some suggesting on what she could use around the house to decorate her tree. Here are some suggestions:

***Take some flowers of any type and put them on the tree. Stick then into the tree, then if they fall they will not break.
***Try putting different kinds of candy by stringing them as garland.
Make a fabric garland for added color or paper towel rolls that are painted different colors and cut them to make and string garland, or even construction paper garland. Use old cloths that are lying around or need to be sent to Goodwill, sting them onto a rope to make it rustic.
****Make cardboard ornaments and let the little guy decorate some of them. Who cares what they look like, they helped make them. Then later on when they get older they will really appreciate them. Use old cereal boxes that you have lying around. Make different shapes paint them or cover them with decorative scrapbook paper, using mod podge of course.
***Pine cones, good for ornaments and garland, put some glitter on them to add sparkle.
***Use scraps of wood for ornaments.
***Get the kids involved look at this fun site.

Hope these are some fun ideas for you to look at. Thanks for stopping by!

Im dreaming of a green Christmas

So I have been very busy recently. My brother just got married last Saturday so most of my focus was on that. I have wanted to blog for a good while now. So today I finally am getting the chance. After spending most of my morning out and about on this Black Friday, I have come home with almost nothing. But that is okay with me. I like to make things. I like to have a story behind each of my gifts. I like to pray for each person that I am making that item for. I did get two cricut cartridges for myself which were on sale at Michaels so that I could make some cute things with them. I am excited about those.

So onto my handmade Christmas. I have a lot of ideas for handmade and a "green" Christmas. Here are a few ideas:
1. Going to make ornaments out of cardboard and paper. Decorated with glitter.
2. Artwork
3. Candles from my mother-in-law
4. Making a random assortment of cards. So that they could use them through out the entire year. Using recycled papers. I found this one here, for a possible card.
5. A shirt cape for my nephew
6. Fabric flowers for my niece
7. Old crayons to new ones
8. Baking
9. Rolled up Magazine frames
10. Another apron made out of a curtain,vintage buttons, and a table cloth, I made one for my friend a while back and it turned out so cute.

There may be other things I will make but that is what I am going to leave you with for now.

Ill leave you with a few things to go and check out:
**An interesting article and website that you should check out Fave Crafts
**Who would of thought, Have a computer geek that you need to get for, check this out
**Craft Critique