wicka-wicka-wack – reeeewiiiindddd. This is a re-post, orginally from last July when I was a brand new blogger. Since I’m such a Christmas nut, this was a popular post (at the time) and my readership was much smaller, I thought I’d bring it back (waaaaay back) as I knew it would be new (who knew it would be new? I knew) to my new readers . HO Ho. HOt out today isn’t it? Enjoy!

My name is Elaine and I’m addicted to Christmas. No seriously.

Okay, so I’m not crazy-put-your-stuff-out-in-October-crazy but I do LOVE the holiday season. I love the warmth, the tradition, the coziness, the shimmering lights, the hustle, the quietness, the FEELING. I love Christmas.

I also love crafting and making things and that is how my little annual tradition of Christmas Craft Night was born. The concept was to get some girls together, drink some wine, chat, enjoy each others company and make a Christmas craft! And it took off. Big time. So now it has become an annual tradition that my friends say they love. And I love hosting it. Love it. The best compliment I received was from a friend who told me that the craft night was, for her, the sign that the Christmas season had begun. She looks forward to it every year to kick off the season and get her in the Christmas spirit. Wow.

So how I start is, I pick a craft that seems doable in a few hours. The point of Christmas Craft Night is that every girl leaves with a completed craft. I always host it right at the beginning of December so that the ladies can enjoy that years craft for the whole month.

After I choose the craft I do a trial run to make sure that it’s doable in an evening and work out any glitches. Then I design an invitation to send out that features what the craft will look like. In earlier years I’d include a list of supplies for the ladies to bring but now I just pick up the supplies myself (to save them running around and take advantage of bulk deals) and then just charge a fee that covers their potion of the supplies. I aim to always keep it under $20.

Here is what last years invitation looked like:

Well, here we are. The last day of 2011 and my last Christmas post of the season! On to fresh new projects for 2012!

But, before we do, here’s a looky at our holiday table.

I showed you how I created the main centrepiece yesterday but let’s look at a few other details.

The place settings looked like this…

And a closer look…

For the first time ever I did place cards just for fun. Little snowy pinecones that held a name penned by my little guy. Okay, so he’s only 2 1/2 so perhaps I did it helped him. But regardless, cute no?

I looked EVERYWHERE for spray snow in a can the week before Christmas to give the pine cones a snowy flocked look but could not find any ANYWHERE. Argh. So I set out to create my own and did so with a combination of white spray paint, epsom salts and white glitter! I simply sprayed the cones (overhead so that the under side of the ‘branches’ weren’t white) then sprinkled heavily with the epsom salt and glitter. I layered this about five times!

Another great detail were these adorable mitten cutlery holders.

They are actually through Avon (my coworker sells it) but the way they came wasn’t going to quite work for the look I had in mind…

So I cut off the green ‘hook’ and felted button and found a replacement…

Every holiday table needs a little sparkle! I simply hot glue gunned these on and I had instant charm :).

Oh, and the red placemats you see are left over from last Christmas. They are a snowy reindeer theme and fit the colour of my table perfectly so I really wanted to use them. Unfortunately since they are only paper/cardboard I didn’t have enough for every place setting (lost a few last year due to spills) so I simply alternated them around the table. I think they almost have a ‘charger’ feeling layered on my fabric placemats.

And a bit more sparkle in the form of silver stars. My sister bought me these litle gems years ago that I simply scattered across the table.

And of course we had to have Christmas crackers too! I was enamored with these when I found them. Especially the faux wood grain…

because it not only matched my table cloth perfectly but the faux wood grain went amazingly well with my candles.

Do you see the wood grain on the red candle? Awesome. And it’s hard to tell in the picture but the bark has a shimmer all over it.

And a few ‘aerial’ shots… you know, so you can see the view point of any 9ft tall guests.

And a few more normal views… well, my actual view point as I sat down to our super yummy Christmas feast (thanks Chef Kev).

I hope you all have a very wonderful New Year’s celebration. Best wishes to you and your family for a prosperous 2012 filled with laughter, family, friends and above all, good health.

See you in the new year and thank you for taking the time out of your day to follow my little blog 🙂

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and are gearing up for some fun for tomorrow night –  New Year’s Eve! We’re off for a quiet(ish) night of drinks and games at a friend’s and looking forward to ringing in 2012!

With Christmas having just passed, I’d like to share a few of the touches that made our Christmas day dinner extra special. We hosted this year and Chef Kev took care of our amazing meal while I got busy making sure the house was festive and beautiful.

Here is the table centrepiece that I designed… and how I did it!

First I started with a bunch of grocery store bouquets. I really like designing my own arrangements and find these bouquets fit the ‘bill’ as they are cheaper then nursery or florist cut flowers. Plus by doing the arrangement myself I get to do something fun and creative!

The best part about this year was that my little ‘punch card’ at the supermarket was full (where they punch your card every time you buy some flowers and when your card is full you get some free) so this whole arrangement cost me $6! $26 if I didn’t have a full punch card.

My table setting was going to feature red and white so I wanted to reflect that in my arrangement. I came home with some red carnations, white dahlias, baby’s breath and some green tiger grass.

Then I chose my vase style (low and long for this project) and added my floral preserve. I like keeping my centrepieces low so that when dining it doesn’t distract from, or impede seeing and conversing with my guests!

Next I added in some cranberries since they are so Christmasey and look so pretty ;)… plus they actually do have an added benefit when designing your arrangement. The cranberries hold your flowers in place so there is no need for foam, frogs or a tape grid (sounds like a bad 80’s band name – “the foam frogs and tape grids”) but I digress…

This is another one of those posts where the pictures can basically do all the talking.

We put our beautiful tree up this past weekend – a huge Grand Fir. Gorgeous! It was so big we even had to trim the top down. Gotta love that!

We went to a tree farm for the first and our little boy loved it – well we all did actually. So, without further ado…

“the one”

gimme that camera mommy!

hot (luke warm) apple cider – a hit!

but not as cool as the penguin

all dressed and aglow!

I added a few little signs tucked inside for some texture

one of my fave ornaments given to me years ago by one of my besties. Love how it captures the light.

Even Belle got her own ornament!

little snow clusters

shimmery feathers for more texure

faux roses (with fake dew) to catch the light. I also love how the lights make my green balls glow. Love that shade!

And some unbreakables down low. Little toddler hands helped here.

from my mother-in-law a few years back.

looking up!

I LOVE how the tree reflects in these mirrors in our entry way. One of my favourite parts!

Check out my other merry Christmas posts! 🙂
Reindeer Noses party favours
Quaint little village… and a 2 1/2 year old Yeti
Rudolph’s long lost cousin “Sparkle”
Merry Mantel
Have a holly jolly… front door stoop?
Christmas in July

Now, I like me some fun reindeer games a fun party so I’ve been really looking forward to my husband (Chef Kev’s) Christmas work party this year. It’s always been a blast in the past (not a blast from the past – but a blast IN the past) so when I was asked to design this year’s party favours (to be on the table when guests arrive) the discussion went something like this…

Kev: “hey, will you make the party favours for my work party this year. Only if you have time, no pressure”

Elaine: {inside voice – what! Christmas! crafty stuff! Designy things! party favours? I’m SO in! … but play it cool…} Outside voice: “sigh, oh, okay… but only if you make me dinner for a week”

Kev: “I already do. Oh, and thanks”

Elaine {inside voice again – Dang! Foiled again by my quick tongue. Must. think. out details longer. next. time.} Outside voice: “right”.

So that was that. Operation design party favours had begun.

Before I lose you, here is what I did. Details below if you’ve read this far (and thanks if so).

And here is how it came to be.

I went to pinterest for some inspiration and searched ‘Christmas party favours’. I had a few criteria when searching. 1) It had to be relatively easy to do as I had to do 50 of them and 2) It had to be relatively cost effective, as well… I had to do 50 of them!

This caught my eye.

(source: “A personal touch” blog via pinterest) 

But I wanted to give it my own spin. So I set out redesigning the header card portion.

And today (well every day) it is free for you if you’d like it!

Once I had designed my header card and sticker I purchased my brown and red reindeer noses. You can buy whatever you’d like of course, but for mine I bought: milk chocolate covered caramels, malt balls and jujubes as well as dark chocolate covered espresso beans and almonds. Rudolph’s nose is a cherry sour.

I then purchased 4″x6″ treat bags (lollipop bags) at the craft store (Michaels) and convinced Chef Kev to help me divy up the chocolate!

I trimmed down my header cards that I had printed on card stock (which are actually 4.25″ wide so there is a slight over hang on each side) and scored them with my paper cutter. I happen to have a trimmer that has a setting made for scoring but you can use a bone scorer or even lightly score with an exacto blade if you are comfortable with that route (do not press hard as you will cut right through – you want to apply very light pressure to simply cut only the top fibres of your paper). You always want to score on the side that you are folding away from (so in this case, the printed side).

Score right along the edge where the red ‘front’ meets the green ‘back’.

I put the headers aside for a moment while I moved on to folding the top edge of the treat bags over (about 1/2 – 3/4″ and stapled once on each side. Chef Kev helped here too!

Then I used a tape runner (that I already had but you can get them at the craft store in the scrapbooking section) and applied a strip along the inside BACK ONLY of the card (bottom part). You don’t need to do the top/front as your round circle sticker will seal that side.

Then I lined the top of my bag fold into the crease and pressed down along the tape.

After I folded the top over I applied my round sticker (printed on “Avery 5294″ 2.5” circle label stock) to close the front part of the header card and attach it to the bag.

I actually found if I applied the sticker upside down I had more control. You may have noticed in the free template image earlier in this post that I left a blank spot where the label goes. The label stock has a bit of ‘show through’ so you could see it through the sticker if you had the pattern run across the whole card. It actually works well as you have a ‘guide’ to line your sticker up to so that each favour looks the exact same (sticker isn’t lower and higher as you look at different packages). Bonus 🙂

And now the really fun part – gluing Rudolph’s little nose on! For this I just used white craft glue and a toothpick to apply. I let the noses dry a few hours so that none would fall off in transport.

Here are a few pics of my workshop mid-nose application….

Did I mention I had to do 50 of these!?

Once they were dry it was time for the ‘after shot’!

I won’t have many words in this post (my husband – Chef Kev – will challenge that statement as he does not think it’s possible) but these pictures speak for themselves!

I have a great little Christmas Village (Caddington Village by Lemax for those interested) and love setting it up each year. The warm glow from the buildings and snowy ground just seem to peaceful and serene. I grabbed my camera to capture some of the warmth so please take a virtual little stroll through my village 😉 … but beware of Yeti’s.

That’s me in the green hat.

Did anyone notice what that little dog did to my newspaper box? Don’t eat the yellow snow. tsk tsk little doggy.

Busted. That’s Santa in the background and he’s heading to the department store. I knew it!

So calm and serene right? Peaceful. And then the storm came in (as it does EVERY day)…

Look familiar?

Don’t let his cuteness fool you. This little Yeti has a mission…

And as the storm blows out…

Sigh. It WAS peaceful and serene (but I wouldn’t change it for a second). Well, actually I do change it. Twice a day. If setting it back up means ‘change’. 😉