Christmas Crafting

Now that we have had snow that stuck around for more than 24 hours, it is taking every ounce of will power not to rip down all fall decor and get my Christmas decorations up.  Why not do it, you ask??  I would but I am hosting Thanksgiving here AND it happens to be my boy's 4th birthday that day so I would like to keep up the fall decor and add a little fun details for what Sully tells me will be his "race car birthday."

So in lieu of Christmasizing the entire house right now, I have settled for a few Christmas crafts to get us ready for my favorite holiday.

And I recruited my eager little guy to join me.  He was all for it:)

I had picked up some holiday paper a few weeks ago and knew I wanted to do something fun with it.

When you don't know what to do, make bunting banners.  I held the paper and while he cut.  Then I strung some yarn and had him lay out his pattern.

Surprisingly, he did not care about my suggestion not to have two of the same colored triangles next to each other.  I have a lot to teach him yet.

After he went to bed, I glued the triangles in place and they dried overnight.  Yes, I left the pattern he designed even though I completely disagreed with his placements.

This morning, we decorated his door.

The sign is from the Target dollar bins.  We taped the banner up with washi tape (also from the dollar bins at Target).

(I am not sure why but he now equates Santa only coming if doors are decorated. I told him that simply was not true.  He is still dubious.)

Next up, converting this standard Christmas tree candy jar into something for my mantle decor.

You have all seen these.  Your grandma probably has like 6 of them in her basement.  I picked this one up at an Agrace Thrift Store in Janesville a few months ago.  I never intended on using it for candy and still don't.  However, I do love the shape and lines.  And I am totally into gold decor right now so it was a no-brainer, it was getting painted gold.

I wanted to keep the glossiness and smoothness of the glass, so I painted the inside.  I just used some gold craft paint I had laying around.

Sully also had to help with this project so he squirted the paint in the tree base and we used a foam brush to swirl it around.  We used a generous amount of paint because I am lazy and only wanted to paint this once, not several thin coats.

I let it dry for about 5 hours and here it is.

Its perfect:)

While this was drying and the baby was still napping, I strung up some twine in the living room and we went to attaching some bobbers to it.  I was way easier for him to attach them upside down so the ones I put on were right side up and his were upside down.  I don't have an action pic of this process but here is our bobber garland, just waiting to be decked.

Its only T minus 10 days, 3 hours, 21 minutes and 6 seconds until it will start looking more like Christmas around here.