Our Christmas Card 2013 - Part 2

Christmas Card 2013 - Part 2 

A few months back while looking around for card inspiration I found this photo prop idea from Sara-Anne Photograpy.

Ain't this cute!

We have a similar Little Tikes car we found on our local Freecycle back in the spring.  It is missing a door but you can't complain about free, right?  Ours had a yellow top though and yellow doesn't really say "Christmas" so I decided the little coupe needed a paint job.

After spray painting the top white, the red didn't really 'pop' so that got spray painted, too.  Then I hounded Hubz to find us a tree for the top.  At first, he came back with a limb.  Literally.  

A limb.

Dude.

Back to the woods he went and came back with a decent baby tree for the project.  Yes, a tree was harmed in the making of this picture.  Don't tell.

Once everything was painted and the tree had been found, I asked Hubz to take Bean out one afternoon and snap some pictures.  

Ladies, let me just give you some advice here.  Never ask your husband to be in charge of getting the Christmas card picture.  Never.  It's not a good idea to leave them in charge of something so important.  If you do, you might wind up with something like this.

Not what I was going for.

I decided I should take over then and Bean enjoyed her second photo shoot, too.  After settling on the image I wanted, I used Picmonkey.com to add some Christmas cheer to it.

This is the picture used for the inside of our cards.  Merry Merry!

       

Recycled Snowman Advent Calendar

Recycled Snowman Advent Calendar

For the past couple of years we've been created different advent calendars so Bean can count down the days 'til Christmas.  We've had the Christmas book countdown and last year we did the Christmas sock countdown.

This year's advent calendar was inspired by this post from MPMideas.com.  I asked the gals at work to help me save 24 toilet and paper towel rolls for this project.

I took pictures of Bean and I painting and decorating these little fellas but they seem to be lost off my phone.

We painted (most) of our rolls and I used the bastard glue gun that steals people's fingerprints to attach the earmuffs, eyes and scarves.  We reused the numbers from last year's sock calendar.

(Dear Santa, I would like a new glue gun for Christmas please.  My fingers can't take much more.)

I say we painted most of them because I somehow miscounted the little boogers and once the paint and sinister glue gun were put away, I realized there were only 23.  I quickly picked up Little No. 7 here, the snowman cousin from the tropics, and slapped him together.  After two hours of painting and crafting with a 5 year-old and several third degree burns, you really don't give a crap any more, you know?

Little No. 7 - ain't he cute!

The hardest part about this is keeping them all standing upright.

Bean loves them.  I like the fact that most of the materials were recycled from other things or projects and once she gets the surprise inside each day, the poor little dude goes right into the trash.  By Christmas Eve, the mantel will be Christmas decoration free!  Nothing to pack up. 

Get on your broom and ride!

Witch's Broom Revamp

This Halloween Bean wanted to be a witch.  I have no idea why because she doesn't watch anything with witches in it.  But I was just glad she didn't pick out anything that reminded me of Hooker Spice so I was fine with the witch idea.

We went off to Party City in search of an acceptable witchy costume and Bean found one called Miss Matched Witch.  It is all different colors (my fave) so of course that was the one.  She also wanted a broom to go with the costume.

We found one but thought it was kinda plain.

No fear!  Mommy can slap some crap on it and call it pretty!

Excuse the pictures because 1) I remembered I needed to pretty it up around 9pm the night before she needed it for her school carnival and 2) do you know how hard it is to take a picture of a long, tiny broom?  It's hard.

I started off by spray painting the entire broom black.  At this point I wasn't really sure what exactly was gonna get slapped onto this thing so I figured I might as well spray paint the whole thing.  I used Krylon Short Cuts in black because I knew I didn't need a whole bunch of paint.  Then I sprayed the bottom part of the broom (what's that called?  The wiskers, wisk, part I don't use much?) with Krylon Glitter Paint.

Can I just stop a moment and tell y'all that I have found my new best friend in this Krylon Glitter paint?  It is amazeballs and I love it.  This weekend I think I'll spray it on everything in my house.  Maybe even the dogs.

Pardon this crappy picture.

God's gift to glitter lovers.
Thank ya, Jesus!

After all that fabulousness dried, I wrapped the handle in wide purple satin ribbon.  Then I used this cute Trick or Treat ribbon to dress it up.  This ribbon really goes well with Bean's costume.

Eat Rick?  Is this Walking Dead ribbon?

It still needed something more than paint, glitter and ribbon, I thought.  So I wrapped the top of the wisky part with orange baker's twine.

This is the best picture I could get of the finished project.  I know you can't see the whole thing but just use your imaginations, kids.

Ready to ride.

When I showed it to Bean the next day, she loved it.  And here is the Miss Matched Witch herself enjoying her new ride.

Pinterest Projects - Bunny Eggs

This year Bean's class will have an Easter party and egg hunt.  All the students had to bring in filled eggs for the egg hunt.  I found this adorable idea one day on Pinterest and thought it would be a great activity for us to do.

Look at how cute those ribbon eggs are.  These are the creation of Christina from I Gotta Create!

I pulled together my supplies but realized I didn't have any wired ribbon that would work.  Everything I had was either really wide or for a different holiday.  Christina also made these chenille eared ones and I had some pink chenille that I thought would work.  But nope, the chenille I had was too fat to go through the holes in the eggs.

What we did have on hand was plain old white pipe cleaners.  Fine.  Not as flashy but fine.  Whatever.  (Can you notice the slightest crafting disappointment there?)

We cut the pipe cleaners in half and ran them through the holes.  Hubz actually helped us and this was his job.  Bean had said that she wanted us to do this "as a family".  Hubz put on a smile and started making bunny ears.  Isn't he a good Daddy?

I hot glued on the eyes and the tails.  My fingers are still recovering.  They'll be fine as soon as the crusty wears off.

Bean made the bunny faces.  She is getting to be a pro at making faces on our crafts.

So here's our version of the bunny eggs.

Look at that one being all cheeky!

Some of them needed some added washi tape to help keep their pants up.

They didn't turn out as crafty cute as the ones Christina made but Bean was very proud of them.  She thought the bunny ears and tails were the cutest.