Easy Peasy Christmas Trees

I thought that I saw this on Just a Girl...but when I went to link it, I couldn't find it...so if this is someone else's wonderful project..so sorry (I know that it's been around since the dark ages, but I like to give credit where credit is do!) Please don't think we have glitzy dust in our house...I need to spray it with something better to keep all that pesky stuff on!

Start with an old magazine (this one was a Women's Day from the 1900's..funny huh!), but the best one was an old IKEA catalog that got shoved in our junky bookcase....perfect pages, great size!

Anywhoo....fold the right hand corner down into the spine of the magazine, every page....break the spine as you go, folding it open really good (this will help it "round" out in the end.Next, take the "new" right corner and fold the page again into the spine of the magazine. Leaves you with a diamondy-upside down-ice cream cone shape. Fold that end triangle up into the page so that you'll have a nice flat surface for the tree to stand.

This is what it'll look like when you're done. Still needed something so I brushed a little modge podge onto the edges (which helped keep the ends closed) and sprinkled glitter on them....what's with glitter? Everything looks better with glitter!
There you have it, I got 2 of these finished during a couple of Christmas specials....cheap and easy...and if I don't like them, I can just toss them without feeling guilty.

Snow Day Recap

Some of you may have heard that it snowed in the upper midwest the other day...yeah, I'm shocked too!

The boys have been waiting with baited breath...they woke up Tuesday morning before the sun was up....it's going to Snow Today!! (SnOw, SnOw, SnOw. snnnoooow) School was impossible, the more it piled up outside, the less I was getting out of them...so I gave in, told them to throw on their snow pants and get outside before I went nuts!

Jamie and Riley have decided that they Love to scrape off the vehicles...we'll see how long that lasts! (when asked if he'd like to help, Corey..in the nice warm truck...said "yeah...no" smart kid!)

These pictures were taken before the crazy big snow, but enough to get in some good winter fun!

(snow angels, not passed out from excitement)

We have a ton of little snow men outside now...all have been sufficiently marked by the dogs...why do they DO that!?!

Corey drew his perfect snow land picture. Isn't it wonderful...oh wait...let's look closer:Daddy and Riley, smiling as they ride in a sled down the slide (yeah right)
a snow man, Jamie making a snow angel....wait....that's Corey with a frown and a snowball in his face! Who could have been so mean to do that?!?...
Mom....throwing said snowball! (ok...I've never hit anyone in the face with a snowball...can you see the look on my face...ahahaha, I'll get you my pretty...what the heck Corey!)

(and the dog is not dead, he's rolling in the snow...and has some super humungo claws!)

Well, Everybody's Doin' It....

Yep, you guessed it....an ornament wreath! The beauty above was my inspiration from CB2. Have you ever been in there? It's amazing...I could spend my entire life in there....so modern, clean..GLASS! (definitely not for a home full of boys, but a girl can dream right!?!) So this wonderfully amazing, colorful beyond reason wreath is made out of 80 some ornaments that are like $3 a piece...you do the math...yep, we can't afford that either ;) But, what I can afford are 2 boxes of plastic balls from IKEA for $4 a piece! I spent a whopping $10 including tax on this wreath. No it's not like the one above, but it's realistic for us....the boys can bounce it off the floor and I won't have to physically harm anyone!

Here's what you need:

~a coat hanger

~pliers to unwrap the coat hanger (it's also helpful to have one with the little wire cutter doohickey for the end)

~2 boxes of cheapo balls (There were 80 smallish ornaments all together)

~big ol wire ribbon

~one hugely helpful hint is to hot glue the tops of the ornaments on...these were so cheap that I probably could have gotten away without it...actually it was a pain in the butt because the glue smooshed up through the top of the hanger and my dad and I sat around for an hour picking glue out so that I could string them on!!!! (even then, I couldn't really shove them on the wire, so I used the fishing line hangers that came in the box...notice all the little strings and blobs of glue? Nice huh!)

Then just haphazardly shove ornaments around until it works and you're out of ornaments.

The directions said to twist the end of the coat hanger and secure with tape...yeah, it was hard to unwrap it, let alone rip your fingers off crazy hard to re-wrap the ends! I was muttering some extremely Christmasy words as my dad walked by and said "Why don't you just hook the ends together?" Uhhh....I don't know.....he's a genius I tell you!
Super sucky picture, but hopefully you'll get the just of it: bend wire into a loop on one end, pull the other end through the loop and bend it into a loop...forming kind of a hooky loop thingy (yeah, I homeschool..hehehe).

Originally I was going to make 2 wreaths, one silver, one red...but this takes a ton of ornaments. I had bought some incredibly cute candy striped ribbon at Joann's. There was too much going on with the striping and multi colored ornaments so I took it back for a huge glittery silver ribbon...ehhh..it's not perfect, but it will do!