Merry Christmas from the Backwoods!

More Christmas Decor

The new stockings are finished.

A vignette on the dresser.

I can't remember where I first saw apothecary jars with snow globe like scenes.  I was at Walmart with a friend and she was picking up a few of the little trees that are set out with the Christmas villages to make some for her house.  They were only about $.75 each so I grabbed a few.  I already had the little town hall ornament, I used batting for the snow.  The basket is just extra ornaments mixed in with the some of the potpourri that it's usually filled with.  I wrapped a few of the balls with yarn to add a little color.  And the owls - aren't they so cute?  I got these for $3.00 each at a local thrift store!  I think they look great with my sort of modern rustic theme, I'll probably find a permanent spot for them after the holidays.

I added a few things to the tree, butterfly ornaments - the wings are made of feathers.  The past 3 years I've decorated my mother-in-law's tree; she gave them to me since they match my tree and hers is all red now.

I've not been able to get a picture of it yet this year that I'm satisfied with.  The photos are hazy in morning light and there's not enough light in the afternoon.  Then cat got in it and pulled some lights loose.  Since I would have to take everything off to fix it, it's going to just have to stay half lit at this point, so my photos are all with lights off.

This year's gift wrap.

I am so happy with how cute our gifts are this year! I picked up a roll of brown shipping paper, the green sheer ribbon, and a few brown gift bags at the Dollar Tree.  That was a whopping total of 5.00 spent.  I had the green foil paper left over from a few years ago.  I've used pine cones and twine, leftover ornaments, and extra ribbon from by scrapbook stash to jazz up a few of the packages.  I stamped names directly on the brown paper this year instead of buying tags, it's gives them a more contemporary look.  I think my biggest splurge here was buying a few packs of matching lime green tissue paper in the birthday aisle, $2.49 for 8 sheets instead of the cheaper multi-packs in the seasonal aisle.

And last but not least, even wrapping supplies can be decorative if you stick them in a pretty container.

It's a Pinterest Christmas

Every year I change up the theme of our Christmas tree.  This year I wanted to do something a bit rustic and focus on some of our cute bird decorations.  I went to Pinterest for some inspiration and was on a roll.  Please excuse the inconsistency of the following photos.  The charger is broken on my computer that has photoshop, so I am currently unable to edit.  Here's a photo of our tree, it's really grainy due to the low light, but I wanted a photo with the tree lights off and no flash so there would be less weird shadowing and you can see some of the ornaments better.

I made the birdhouse topper with reclaimed wood from when an old family home nearby was torn down.  We've used it for several larger outdoor projects, but I just used a few small scraps for this. The pin that inspired my birdhouse topper.

We made several different types of ornaments.  Babe Jr is responsible for the ones made of book pages.

Bird ornament pin.  Flower ornament pin.  If you are a facebook friend, the flower ornaments were the ones being made that led to the CATastrophe.  Smokey ran under her feet and tripped her when she was cleaning up, causing a whole jar of glitter to be spilled in the kitchen floor.  I have swept and mopped several times since then, and yes, there is still glitter stuck to the floor in places.

I made these flowers from jute twine.

Twine flower tutorial pin.

These stars are hot glued then I tied the twine and hot glued it as well to make them stable.

 

Twig star pin. 

I had to move one of the big frames on the wall when we put the tree up, so I decided to switch the art out for something a little more festive.

The pin is actually for chalk board art.  I sketched it lightly on watercolor paper with a pencil, then outlined in pen and erased all the pencil marks.  I  used a green marker to add a little color to the places that needed to completely be filled it.

I'm working on new stockings this year.  This is the first one I finished.

Ruffle stocking pin.

One of the first things I did this season was gather a ton of pine cones.  I made the garland on the tree just by wrapping beading wire around them to hold them together.  But before we even got the big tree out, I made this little tree for the kitchen.

 

Pine cone tree.   I didn't have a cone form, so I just rolled a file folder into a cone, taped it together, and stuffed it with newspaper.  I put newspaper in the pot, too, then used a wooden skewer to hold them together.  I covered the folder with black construction paper so it wouldn't show between the pine cones.  Then I just used a lot of hot glue and started attaching them in rows.  I went through at least 12 glue sticks.

Also in the kitchen, I switched "EAT" for a more seasonally appropriate "NOEL."

This was inspired by a couple of pins, yarn wrapped letters and Noel with wreath.  I used more folders and tape to make the N and the L, then hot glued and wrapped the yarn in place.   I already had the E, and I recovered an old wreath and stuck on some of my pine cones for the O.

I still have a few works in progress and some of the the gifts I'm giving are pinterest projects, so I can't post them online yet.  We've had a lot of fun crafting so far this year.

Smokey loves his pig