Christmas Spirit

For me nothing says Christmas spirit like bundling up and taking a walk through my neighborhood to look at the lights. Everything is so colorful and bright, I just love it. Now some people get into the decorating spirit more than others so I thought I would share with you some of my favorite Christmas houses in Victoria. You can click on the pictures to see them in more detail. Sorry they aren't better pictures but my camera doesn't like the dark.

This house was my favorite elementary school teachers home. He always had the best Christmas celebrations and this house is classic.

This isn't a great picture of this house but I really like this display. You can see it all lit up when you come around the corner.

This house plays music and is super bright. He has a extra generator to run everything. Even their backyard has lights!

The Santa in this picture goes in and out of the chimney, it's pretty cool. We had to wait a bit to get a picture with Santa out of the chimney.

This is the home of the inflatables. They had every inflatable you could get. I couldn't get all the inflatables in this picture!

This house is just down the street from ours and it is by-far one of my very favorites. It also plays music and it so detailed. Love it!

And this house, is my house. We did the best we could with our budget and I think it looks quite nice.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Craft: Cinnamon Ornaments

Last week my mother-in-law came down to visit and do some Christmas activities. We made some delicious shortbread and we decided to make these as our Christmas craft.

The dough is a simple mixture of cinnamon, applesauce and glue. We decorated them with different glitters, sprinkles, and beads. I'm glad we decided to use different textures because it really made the ornaments more interesting. In the end the ornaments look great on the tree, I think we picked some great colors and they smell really nice.
This a craft from a Martha Stewart magazine so if you are interested in making your own ornaments the recipe can be found on her website.

Needle Felting

Needle felting is my new obession! I can't believe I didn't discover this incredibly fun activity sooner. I ordered some beginner felting kits from Fancy Tiger and watched a quick video on YouTube and that was it.

I made the Christmas Cardinal first and it is so cute the picture doesn't do it justice. Then I made the little pumpkin. I took the pictures in my hand so you got a sense of the size. They both were easy and fun to make. I've order some more roving and I'm getting really excited about all the cool things I'm going to make with my new needle felting supplies!

Our Tree

So we have put up our tree. This was the first year we went out and cut down our own tree. I wanted it to last longer so we decided this was the way to get the "freshest" tree. I had a tough time getting a good picture, so here's the best one.

Wreath Making

This was something new to me. I have never made my own "fresh" wreath. I decided I wanted to learn how to do it properly so I signed up for a class at a local nursery. I ended up enjoying the whole thing immensely so this will probably become a yearly thing for me.

We began by stuffing a metal frame with moss. The moss they use has been salvaged by a man that live up island. He goes and collects the moss ahead of logging vehicles up near Cowichan Valley. The moss doesn't look all that neat when it first goes in but it tidies up when you secure it in place with wire.

Then it was time to select our greenery. It was a tough choice because it was all so attractive but I decided to start with some cedar. We snipped the ends so they would go through the moss easier and did the entire outer edge. Then you had a choice of using some different greenery for the inside or making the whole base out of the same type.

I decided to add a little fir on the inside of my wreath and I was really lucky to find some branches that still had pinecones on them. Then I also added a few more little piece of greenery to give it a variety of textures. That was the basic wreath and all that was left to do was to embellish.

I chose to embellish mine with some winter berries and a few rosehips. I am thrilled with how it turned out. It is so natural looking and just screams Christmas! If you are in the Saanich area and you would like to try making your own wreath visit Russell Nursery for information on their classes. If you aren't interested in the classes, they do have a great selection of greenery and berries if you want to make your own at home.

Christmas Craft: Gift Bags

Many years ago I gave up gift wrap. It just seemed so wasteful and almost a little pointless to spend all this time carefully wrapping something with beautiful paper that ends up in the trash (or recycling bin). So I started making cloth bags to use instead of gift wrap. The holidays are already so busy it's taken me a while to get a decent collection going but now I'm pretty much to the point where I have a bag in every size. It turns out that they are actually quite fun to make. I love picking out the fabric and what kind of closure to use. I've got velcro, buttons, a couple different kinds of ties and some that I use painted clothes pins to seal. It's definitely saved us time and money (I haven't had to buy wrapping paper, ribbon or even fabric for years!). Try some for yourself!

Christmas Crafting: Candles

For gifts this year I have decided to make homemade candles. I got the idea to use old tea cups from an issue of Martha Stewart. It's actually quite brilliant since tea cups are already meant to have hot liquid in them so they won't crack when you pour the wax in and the handles make it easy to move the candle while it's burning.
For these candles I used lead-free pre-waxed wicks from a craft store but you can use natural cotton wicks too (I didn't because they don't stand up on their own in the cup so it's an extra step to secure them). I got the tea cups at thrift store. The prices ranged from 49 cents to $1.99, so it was a good deal. I bought some natural beeswax from the craft store to use but found that I could melt down the leftovers from some soy-wax candles I got for Christmas last to make new candles. The wax was already pre-dyed and scented (eliminating yet another step). The only other thing I bought for this craft was an old cheap pot from the thrift store to melt the wax in (no matter how hard you try you can never get all the wax out of the pot).
All-in-all this was a really fun craft and really cost-effective. For each candle I believe the cost is between $5-$8 depending on the size, which is great considering some of the beeswax candles in my house now were purchased for $12 or more. I have decided that will definitely be making all my candles from now on. Not only is it fun to make the candle but I must say I really enjoyed hunting for those adorable cups.