Better late than never...

So one month post-Christmas, I'm finally 1) updating my blog and 2) showing your our stockings! I had set a goal of having them complete by Christmas Eve. I met than goal by a whopping 30 minutes. On 12/23/2010 at 11:30pm, I hung our stockings by the chimney with care. Yay me! :)

Please excuse the quality. This is a 11:31pm picture taken with the iPhone and zero editing.

I was SO proud of myself for making these! It had been on my To Do list for much too long. My daughter is 2 (almost 3) and she had yet to have a stocking of her own. Bad mom! :)

I used a variation of the lined stocking with cuff tutorial from Cluck, Cluck, Sew. I did make a couple of modifications, but it's been a month now and I don't recall what those were! Her directions were easy to follow, though, so for that, she is AWESOME.

Now that I have this Christmas post out of the way, my next one will be for Valentine's Day. I have very little to work with for that holiday, so it's all going on my mantle.

Glitter Trees

These turned out so cute! The supplies I used were: candle holder (dollar store), styrofoam tree forms (dollar store), E600, white Elmer's glue and glitter (dollar store...again!).

The first thing I did was smush the candle holder onto the bottom of the tree form so I could make sure I had the forms centered on the holders. Then, following E6000's directions, I put glue on both surfaces...all around the top of the candle holder and all in the little groove that I created on the bottom of the tree form. I let these sit about 12 hours, although the instructions say you should leave them alone for 24 hours. The instructions also say you shouldn't use it on styrofoam, but it was fine.

After they glue dried, I used copius amounts of Elmer's white glue (raid the kid's stash!) and liberally spread it all over the tree form using one of the super cheap foam brushes. DOn't be stingy with the glue...you need something for the glitter to stick to. Then I took the glitter and shook it all over, covering all of the glue. Use LOTS of glitter! If you find that you missed a spot, go back and put more glue, then sprinkle over more glitter.

In my case, I bought my glitter at the dollar store and it came in little bitty bottles, so I had to refill my bottles with my overflow glitter several times. I sprinkled on my glitter holding over an open file folder so that when I ran out of glitter in my bottle, I could just easily pour it right back in.

This project was super easy. Not including the dry time for the candle holder and tree form, it took me less than 30 minutes to make all three. This was also a super cheap project! I already had the different glues and a sponge brush, so my other supplies cost $8. I have a small tree left over (it was a 2-pack for $1), as well as lots of glitter still remaining.

Pretty, right?



You certainly don't have to use traditional Christmas colors. The color combos are limited only by the colors of glitter you can find. :)