Christmas Tree

Putting together our first Christmas tree was a lot of fun - and a lot of work too.

When we started, we only had only 10 ornaments, but the ornaments we had were pretty awesome. We were given a set of Old World Christmas ornaments from Brian's aunt Linda and uncle Ronnie for our wedding, so we decided to continue with that theme. We ended up spending about $200 more on ornaments - yeah. $200.

Seriously, though, a saxaphone and a white kitten in a basket! I had to!
Brian made our lovely popcorn garland and some friends gave me the wonderful red bows, after I gave them a pie making lesson (another post.. coming soon...).

We got our star, our old school holiday lights, and a few other choice holiday items from Stats.

All in all, I love our tree. Sure, the initial investment in our ornaments and holiday decor set us back a few hundred, but I'm glad we got some classy ornaments that we can keep forever.

Paperback Wreather

Yes. I'm a librarian and I tear books. I used discarded books, of course (see more on that, here) and luckily, I have easy access to lots of discarded books! Aside from books, I started with a styrofoam ring and some super hot glue.

The glue was hot. Super hot. I ended burning quite a few fingers in the process! I was warned... the actual idea, along with the warning came from the Living with Lindsay blog. Great idea, right? I just added a red bow to ours, to make it especially festive.

I've already got compliments from the neighbors!

More holiday crafts and baking on their way...

Our First Gingerbread House

Believe it or not, Brian and I have never decorated a gingerbread house, ever. This being our first married Christmas together, we're really getting into the holiday spirit. While I really wanted to make the entire house from scratch, we just got really busy and I ended up buying a Wilton set and some extra candies. As soon as we started decorating, we didn't stop once for pictures, we just went nuts.

Brian got one side of the house and accidentally made this really cool pac-man-like pattern.

Our true collaboration was really on this roof. Brian covered it in frosting, I added the pipping details and we both added the candies.

The roof is definitely my favorite part of our little house. I went very traditional on my side of the house.

We then frosted the base (a small box, covered with foil) and added some blue shimmery sprinkles. The last thing I did was add a red ribbon around the base.

For the rest of the month, there will be crafts, cookies, cakes, cheeses, and pies! Get ready!

Recycled Book Christmas Garland

We recently had a huge book sale over at the library. Many things were sold, many things were donated, and some things were candidates for the trash - or in my case, my craft cabinet. Lucky for me there were boxes of promotional copies of the Harlequin Romance Mystery, Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch for my crafting pleasure. The best part is that the text is available online in full pdf here, so it's free of any librarian-cutting-into-books guilt.

I started the garland with cutting multiple strips of the text, approximately 1" thick. I tried to cut off the edges which had no text, just to keep the garland visually full of text. Because my tree has a red bow on top, I decided to string the garland with red embroidery floss, just to give it that extra pop of color.

I loosely folded my strip of text in a wavy "s" pattern, then started to thread it, one wavy strip at a time.

I tried to keep the tightness of the garland somewhat random, but loose enough so that the red thread would show through.

Just a note, I am completely excited about Christmas this year. December just started, but we already have 3 trees (and we're still getting one more...)! Very festive in the Young household, so expect an array of holiday posts this month.