From me to you

May your day be Merry & Bright

Love Jessa

Again, totally not dead.

I'm in that slump.  Not the "I'm sorta sad" slump, but the slump that says "My new job makes me not want to see a computer when I get home."

The only motivation I try for is to get my jiggles to the gym.  And that takes all of my will power because it's so cold out and wouldn't it be so much nicer to cuddle up in a blanket next to my twinkling tree and read?

I do sometimes check pinterest from my phone and occasionally go to google reader on the phone too, but it's not very often, I'm sorry to admit.  There are some blogs that are 100+ posts that I'm behind on.

Boo.

But I promise to do better.

So I decided to share what I've been up to since the Great Slump of 2011. (Yes, that is what it shall be named.)

All were inspired by Pinterest and therefore I don't feel like posting them individually as crafts because really I'm just a big copy cat.

We'll begin with the wrapping paper bows, as shown here: 

Via Pinterest

And now: I shall show you mine:

I seriously love this so much I may never go back to conventional curling ribbon again.  (Aside from the kind I already have on there of course, but that's beside the point.)

And it's WRAPPING PAPER!  Creative, and thrifty and all around awesome.

Hooray for smart people whom I love to copy!

Next up, we have the Candy Cane Wreath, originally inspired by Whipperberry:

Via Pinterest.

Gorgeous right?  Well mine is a little sad compared to this but I'm still keeping it:

It's skinnier and obviously I should have used bigger squares, but I still like it even though it's not as thick and hearty as Whipperberry's. 

My Christmas Mantle.  And yes, my TV is off center, I just noticed that as well.  And the white stocking will NOT hang the way its supposed to.  It's my husband's stocking, and well, it's being difficult.

Last up, we have the cascading ornament centerpiece from Pinterest:

Via Pinterest

These are cute, clumped perfectly, alternating in size and classy.  I still like mine but I executed it differently.  I'm using ornaments I didn't use on the tree and I'm using festive ribbon - also - there's much less ornaments:

See, less, but I still like it.

I think they're pretty.

My husband likes it too.  He came home one evening after I had finished and I made the poor choice in asking the 29 year old man "How do you like my dangling balls?"

Still not living that one down.

They're "Cascading Ornaments!"

Inappropriate share for this time of year?  Too bad.

Speaking of this time of year I'm looking for the right opportunity to gift a stranger in a drive thru.  I've heard of such things before and it just recently happened to my Mom.  She rolled up to McDonald's one morning and the guy at the window said, "The woman in front of you paid for your oatmeal and said to tell you 'Merry Christmas'."

She got to pay it forward last week in the Arctic Circle drive thru,  (If you're not from Utah, Arctic Circle is a Utah staple that's slowly going out of business, but is the supposed inventor of "fry sauce" back in the early fifties.  That too, is a Utah thing.)  Although she had a hard time explaining her intentions to the teller at the drive thru, he got it eventually though.  She said it was so much fun that she hopes she gets to do it again.

So I'm looking for my Drive Thru Christmas Spirit opportunity.  I invite everyone who reads to join me, it's suppose to make you feel like a million bucks.  (They say service often does that.)

And to those who have had this happen, I invite you to pay it forward!  It's the season of giving, right?

For fun, I'll include my tree this year:

Just kidding.  This is from Pinterest.  I wish it were my tree though.

It's probably loaded with no less than 40 strands of white twinkle lights.  It's beautiful though.

No, this is my humble little tree:

It works for us.  It's been doing it's thing for the last 3 years and you've got to respect that.  It holds our "memory" ornaments, ones from our childhood, ones that we've picked up from our travels and milestone ornaments.  Alright, there's one milestone ornament, it's not like they sell a "We made it 3 years" ornament!  

Which by the way, our 3 year anniversary was last Tuesday.  I might as well remind you that it was freezing:

My coat covered my dress!  The dress is not to be downplayed!  Don't you ask me where my coat is on my wedding day!  If I had this thing on in subarctic temperatures, I still would have gone without a coat!

Sorry, but some things just shouldn't have to be explained.

Anyway, that's all I have for today.  I hope you all have a lovely "last weekend to really get it done" weekend.  I too will be looking for presents as well.

Bead Trees!

A week ago I guest posted for Newlyweds on a Budget and this is what I threw together.  Here is the tutorial:

Today I'm going to tell you about a project that was sort of a bad idea...originally.  Today I'm going to tell you how to make a Bead Tree.  The reason I say it was sort of a bad idea was because I made this last year, and the learning curve nearly killed me.  I'll explain along the way.

To begin you will need the following:

1.  A Styrofoam cone.  Now I used a smaller cone.  It says its 98 mm x 225 mm, or 3- 7/8 x 8 - 7/8 in. cone.  Last year I used the biggest on Hobby Lobby provided.  (Mistake #1 - if you're trying a new idea that just cropped up there one day, no tutorial on the matter to be found - start small.)

2.  Glue gun and glue sticks.  Lots of glue sticks.  I went through about 8 or 9 of them for this little cone.  So be prepared.  Also - don't get burned.

3.  Scissors.  These are used a little bit, but you will need to cut the beads at some point.

4.  A background color.  I used a close color to the beads I was using but you could honestly use whatever color you want.  I just didn't want white Styrofoam showing through.  You could use a spray paint to cut your painting time in half, its just the $.99 paint was more appealing than the $7.99 spray paint.

5.  A paint brush.  You'll need something to get the color on there.

6.  Christmas Bead Garlands.  **I used 2 of these!!**  If you think since it says there's 18 feet of garland that you'd have more than enough, well - you'd be wrong.  If you're going bigger with the cone - get another garland.  Luckily since Hobby Lobby has 50% off Christmas stuff, these babies were $1 each.  So it won't break the bank.

To begin:

Slap some paint on that sucker.  Yes, it is a pain to paint on Styrofoam with a paint brush, but it doesn't need to be perfect or even pretty, just remember it only shows through the beading a little bit.

Also:

Once the paint has dried, it's time to begin gluing the beads on.  Now, - mistake #2 - last year I wanted the beading to be really close together so the background didn't show through at all.  What I did was cut each bead off individually, cut down the little rope so it didn't poke out and glue on each bead individually.  This took roughly...a week.  Don't do this.  

This is what you want to do:

If you want the background to show through a lot because you, I don't know, spray painted gold glitter and want it to really pop (that would be pretty), you would keep the beads where they are and just glue and wrap.  No squishing required.  I wanted the beads close together - so:

I glued a small line and placed the beads on the glue, then I squished them next to each other and held them there until the glue started drying enough that I could take my the pressure off.  Yes, I did get a couple burns, but that's because I wasn't careful.  If you want the beads close, just keep gluing and squishing.

Eventually you'll come to the end of the first garland around here:

You really only use 1 and a half strands, and luckily the second part goes faster than the first since the cone is getting smaller in diameter.

Once you get to the top, what I did was wrap until it didn't cooperate anymore and cut one bead individually to glue in the holes left over.

And then it's done!!

Now, compared to my first attempt, this took the length of the movie Elf to wrap.  So nothing too extreme.

And it looks just as good as the first one:

**If you want the tops of the trees to be pointy: you will want to get a piece of card stock that's the same color as the background you're using, wrap it in a cone and glue the cone to the top of the Styrofoam.  You can bead over that to achieve a pointy tree.  As you can see, it wasn't my first priority...

Or maybe I didn't think about that until later.

But there you have it - Bead Trees that don't take a week to make.  

Check it out!

I'm guest posting over at Newlyweds on a Budget today!  I'm showing off my Bead Trees so make sure to pop over and say hi!