Dance Costume Bag

We needed something to carry around my little's costumes for her dance recital and up coming competition season. I first made a bag out of a vintage pillowcase. 

Then I remembered I had this adorable ballerina fabric and made a new one. (I put her blessing gown in the original instead).  

While I was at it I whipped up a boxy make-up bag to go along. 

Simple Christmas Project Day 6: Ugly Sweaters

Ugly Christmas sweaters are all the rage in parties. We were invited to one and so I decided to throw some home made ones together. 

Simple Christmas Project 5 Wish List

So yesterday I showed you how I simplified my present buying for my family.  Today I want to share how I know what to put in each of those categories.  The Christmas Wish List.  So my cute 6 year old started making his list before Halloween.  It looked like 2 pages of printer paper filled with wants posted to my fridge.  So cute but he wanted to add more… getting inspiration from Confetti Sunshine's Thanksgiving Poster I made wish list posters.

We used 3M's poster tabs and hung them on the wall.  After having a short lesson on why we give gifts at Christmas we handed the kids washable crayons and let them make their lists.  

They can add to it all season long.  We have explained that they will not get everything on their lists.  Mom and Dad also have veto rights with Santa and relatives too.

To share in the joy of giving I've made a generic version for you to download.  We had ours printed at Staples as engineering prints in 18X24 for $1.99 each.

Simple Christmas Project 4 Presents

 A few years ago (like 4) I gave away this free printable:

I still love it and the method.  This is what we use in our house to determine what presents to buy for Christmas.  It's made things so simple.  If you would like to use it just click on the image to open it, right click, choose save image or print… Enjoy!

A Simple Christmas Project 3 Star

               A CHRISTMAS STAR

I decided to really work on my porch this year, it's never come together well for Christmas. I needed a center piece and fell for this simple star on Pinterest. 

The site it links to no longer exists but it looked pretty self-explanatory from the picture. I went to Lowes and bought 5 of their yard sticks (found in the paint area) for $0.98 each. 

I added 2 coats of craft paint to get in the ruler grooves really well, and a coat of glitter paint. After they dried I tied the points together with twine. 

Wrap around some Christmas lights I had on hand and I have a beautiful shining star. 

It's a work in progress but the porch is coming along.

Simple Christmas Project 2 Advent

               CHRISTMAS ADVENT

So you may recall the advent calendar I made years ago to hold a mini chocolate bar. I never really liked giving my kids candy first thing in the morning, and since we moved here 3 years ago we haven't used it. Bah humbug. So this year I decided it was time to bring an advent back.  I searched Pinterest for a modern idea and came across Confetti Sunshine. Oh my gosh- her blog rocks!  I kinda got caught up on it for a couple of hours one night, yeah...so anyway. I love the advent she did, and she offers it as a free printable!

http://www.confettisunshine.com/2014/11/diy-christmas-advent-calendar-with-free-printables-poster.html

I downloaded the poster and had it printed at Staples as a 24x engineering print for $4 and threw it in my frame from ikea I already had hanging. 

Instead of mini clothes pins like she used I decided to go with envelopes. 

I printed the envelope template from miniecoco.uk. Cut out and glued 24 - I will admit it was a little tideous. I added the numbers; a free printable from simpleasthatblog.com, then stuffed them with an activity for the day. There are a million options on Pinterest for these, but I made my own that are customized to our holiday calendar. 

I used a cheap tape (so it comes off easily and leaves no residue) to tack the envelopes up.

There you go. Super simple advent calendar that my kids love.

It's Begining to Look a lot like...

CHRISTMAS!

I want a simplified Christmas this year, which is a feat in and of itself. I decided to go with white, silver and black for my family room, trying to use as much of what I already had as possible. With that said, I have had a few inexpensive projects I wanted to do… So here's to 12 days of Christmas projects.

First up is this modernized nativity from thehowtomom.com

http://www.thehowtomom.com/2013/12/spray-painted-nativity.html

For my nativity I hit the thrift store and found one if those pearlized ceramic nativities for $4. With a can of metallic silver spray paint (I already had) I went to town. It took no more than 10 minutes. Voila:

A fun modern nativity, center stage in my home. Sweet.