Easy, cute Christmas Trees!

My feelings toward this season are not new to society.  In fact, it's rather cliche' to speak of the excitement of the season but it still holds true for me:)  I'm pumped! There is SO much going on around our house and I rather like the hustle and bustle of the holidays. 
I am working on an Advent Calendar for the kids and will also be adding something new this year - a countdown to Christmas for my man!  Again, these will have to be discussed another day:)
As I was saying yesterday, I tried to put forth an effort to decorate various areas of my house.  This is such a step UP from last year, considering I was 9 months pregnant and could not decorate a thing.  Bless my man's heart.  He put up the trees last year and I loved it.  I can not even recall what they looked like but the decorating was taken care of and my heart was happy.
In addition to adding a centerpiece at my dining table, I also tackled the top of our TV armoire.  We do not have a fireplace nor a mantle so the armoire serves as our spot to hang the stockings.  To make the top more festive in addition to the stockings, I found a "how to" guide for paper trees in Disney's Family Fun December/January 2013 issue.  I will be honest.  I subscribed to Family Fun because I found an amazing deal on it - like $4 for two years or something ridiculous like that.  However, I was not really impressed with it because the "crafts" seemed like interning for Martha Stewart instead of family fun.  So imagine my surprise when I came across this craft idea to make Christmas trees out of magazines.  Now I'm gonna show you how I did mine but I still kept my opinion that the crafts are not really ones I'm gonna do with my kids.  Don't get me wrong, some can be done with kids but for my family if we're gonna do crafts, it's gotta be completed in less than 10 minutes or their interest is GONE.  I would not recommend doing this tree craft with kids as it took me a good 45 minutes to make two trees.  The project itself is easy. The amount of time is due to folding all that paper.

1. Start with any magazine you are finished reading.  I used one Family Fun mag and one Parenting mag, I believe.

2. Take the top right corner and fold it toward the spine of the magazine.  It will form a right triangle and still leave about 2-3 inches of your page left at the bottom.

 

3. Take your newly formed triangle and fold it again towards the spine of your magazine.  It will now leave a point hanging below the edge of your magazine.

4.  Tuck the point of your page under the triangle in order to make the edge flush with the rest of the magazine.  Repeat this process for every page.  When your finished with the pages, fold the front and back cover likewise and tape those two covers together.

5.  This is what your final tree should look like after you glue a ball ornament on the top.

Here my trees make their debut at the top of our armoire.  And for those of you who are counting, yes, there should be six stockings but I got these before Quattro was born.  And I'm too cheap to order his before Christmas.  I'm waiting til they go on sale after Christmas (he's young, he'll never know). 

Merry Christmas, y'all!

 

 

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

I do not particularly remember having a fondness for Christmas decorating as a child.  I mean, I LOVE this time of year but I don't remember participating in helping my mom decorate.  I guess for me, my sense of ownership in having a part in the celebration of Christmas came when I was in college. Having secured a position at Importer's Warehouse, (which was a definite step up from my position at Bruno's - not that Bruno's wasn't good, it paid the bills but I was the ONLY cashier old enough to work past their 10:30 p.m. rule for labor law compliance and the working til midnight every night coupled with 8:00 a.m. classes did not mix) I dealt with Christmas decorations day in, day out.  I always found it funny that Importer's Warehouse's main sales were generated from Christmas trees and Christmas decor yet the owners were Seventh Day Adventist and didn't even celebrate the Christmas holiday.
Anyway, that year, me and my college roommate bought Christmas decorations and we got a tree. I was hooked!  I loved it.  Now I adore seeing the house all festive with Christmas reds here and there.  However, I am still a cheapskate and a tightwad.  So I've tried to get creative and lo and behold, I think I have:)
My sweet mother-in-law has given us three artificial trees over the years.  Whenever she goes to throw one out, we take it in.  Three free trees!  Who can beat that? 
Having headed up the Holiday Auction for three years, I received some of the decorations from one of the auctions.  My man was put on the assignment of cutting 64 "discs" of wood and I kept some of them after the event.  I showed you in a previous post how I used them as a centerpiece.  For Christmas, I wanted to spice them up.  Of course, I found a pin on Pinterest for using epsom salt in the bottom of a Mason jar to look like snow.  Here's what I did. Again, Pinterest was my muse:)

Once I placed my salt and tea lights in the jars, I needed to tie in the Christmas feel.  Here are the materials I used.  My husband had purchased the salt for some project he had going in the garage so I just used a little of what he had already.  So this was free to me:) The cedar that I used, I got from my neighbor who just so happened to be trimming back his trees recently.  I used the cedar for this project and to drape across the top of my armoire in the living room. Again, free! The rest of the materials were purchased at the Dollar Tree.  Here they are:

And for the final product?

Pretty cute (and easy) if I do say so myself.  They look really soft and inviting with the candles lit.

 

Not sure how many years I have been going to my mom's house to decorate her tree but I truly enjoy it. I think what I enjoy is I get to tell her what she needs to buy for her tree and then I decorate without having spent a dime:) She's of the age where she has a little more budget to spend on Christmas decor but has a lot of shoulder problems and can not decorate the tree. It's turned out to be a pretty fun time for her and I. This year I brought little man with me. The tree turned out beautifully but for some reason these are the only pics I caught of the day:

 

I have some more cheap decorations to share but since this has turned into a long post, I will save them for another time:)

Merry Christmas, y'all!