Snowy Little Houses

I've been slowly working on a snowy village to decorate our mantel. I was at the dollar store with the kid and picked up some cardboard houses with ugly pictures on them. I picked the pictures off with an exacto knife which was a pain the a**because, of course, they wouldn't come off in one big piece but in a zillion little bits.

Once the images were peeled off, I cut windows out of each house and painted them white with regular acrylic paint. The fact that I butchered the cardboard trying to get the images off added a nice "stucco" a-la-greek look to them.  I put little fake LED candles inside and looks like some gnomes are home eating dinner. (I unknowingly bought candles that flicker which I'm happy about). A few trees from IKEA and a full moon and presto; a snowy Christmas scene!

ugly boxes

scrapped and painted

(I wish I was good at thinking pictures in the dark-but here they are-a glowin'!)
 

 Snowy village

Kicking Off the Season with Homemade Wrapping Paper

I saw an advertisement on television the other day with a supremely plastic family shopping for their holiday decorations. They were standing in front of a giant wall of matchy-matchy decorations; rolls of wrapping paper, gift tags, bows, ribbons, boxes of balls, garlands, bobbles, icicles, ornaments, and Christmas tree lights all in turquoise and silver. All ready to go and in this worry free color combination sure to match any home decor. BAM! Insta-Christmas!

Not my kind of Christmas. Yup, we're busy during the holidays, but so what?  It's a perfect time of year to get creative and to try to minimize our time at the mall. The key is to start early. Okay, not right after Halloween kinda of early, like some manic businesses who need holiday based decorations at all times, but you know, about mid-November.

Every year, I love to invent my own wrapping paper. I use left-over paper, stickers, string, paint, whatever I have on hand. Here are papers I've been working on with my boy:

Collage Wrapping Paper

The kid's craft station and our recycling bin is full of leftover bits of papers, stickers and string which I collected and glued together on a large piece of paper. Then I covered the whole thing with lots of white glue. To finish it off I ran it through the sewing machine, going through it in random directions to give it strength. I think it turned out really festive!

Tons of glue is the key- brush it on with a paint brush.

Wait until it's completely dry and use a wide or decorative stitch

I also collect our coffee bags because they are non-biodegradable and the only coffee company that takes them back is way out in Burnaby, so I decided to re-purpose them.

I cut them open lengthwise and washed them out

I sewed them together piece by piece like making a quilt

I added more colors of thread and zigzaged all over it

My kid is modeling the new coffee paper

I cut the paper and sewed pouches

I can't decided which I like best, the silver lining of the printed side