Decorate with Crochet Thread Trees

I came across a video to make these trees on Facebook and thought that they would be awesome to make for our Staff Christmas Party and also use in my own decorating.  They looked easy to do, which they were but not so easy to get off the cone forms.

Gingerbread House ~ Blogger's Christmas Series #4

Gingerbread House

Gingerbread houses originated in Germany in the 1600's.  They became even more popular after the story of Hansel and Gretel written by the Brothers Grimm.  No one knows for sure if gingerbread houses came first or if the story came first.

Building a gingerbread house is a tradition in many houses.  Although these houses are not always made of gingerbread anymore.  You can make them using graham crackers, shredded wheat and even make a house out of non-edible materials like cardboard and sticks.

There are many recipes for gingerbread that you can use, over the years that I have made my own gingerbread I have used a couple of recipes.  The recipe that I used to make the above gingerbread houses was this one - as I didn't use molasses in this recipe, the houses were lighter.

My plans for the gingerbread houses that I made this year was to make a small houses that can sit on a side of a cup but I made them too big, and I also didn't cut the door big enough so they wouldn't sit on the side of a cup.  So it is back to the drawing board for me... Hopefully next year they will work out the way I wanted them too.

I am not a decorator and I do not profess that I know what I am doing, but I do like to make these houses.  I like to use royal icing when I made my gingerbread house as I find it hardens fast.  I also do my houses in stages.  First "gluing" the pieces together and then doing the decorating.

I made this house above a couple of years ago.  I did a post and showed how I decorated it.  Do you make gingerbread houses?

This post is the last of Blogger's Christmas Series.  Along with myself there are many other awesome bloggers that have written blogs for this series.  I hope that they have given you some inspiration to help you with your Christmas preparations.

An InLinkz
Link-up

Dollar Tree Christmas Wreath

One of my favorite bloggers and friends Cynthia of Feeding Big made this wonderful Christmas wreath from using material that she bought at the Dollar Tree.  I have been obsessed with the Dollar Tree and spend a lot of time going through the aisle.  I buy dishes, crafts, some food items and my cleaning items from there.  So when I saw her wreath I knew that I had to make one too.

By the time I got to the store a lot of the Christmas decorations where gone but I did find some.  I also cheated just a little bit as I bought some of the ornaments from Walmart as they had a package with a green ornament that I wanted.  I liked them as it brought a little bit of different colour then the gold and red.  For my base I used an evergreen wreath that I twisted the evergreens to make them tight around the wire.  This I bought from the Dollar Tree too.

Dollar Tree Christmas Wreath 

I thought that I took a picture of the materials that I used but I either deleted them or put them in a file that I can't find.

Materials:
16 evergreen wreath
Assorted sizes and colour ornaments
1 sprig holly berries
ribbon to make bow - approx 1 foot in length
hot glue gun

Directions:
I twisted the evergreens around the wire wreath so that it was solid.  Don't worry if some are showing as you can see some of the every green in my wreath.
Glue large ornaments to wreath with glue gun covering 3/4 of wreath.  (I realized that I hadn't bought enough balls and decided to leave room for a bow.)
Continue to glue ornaments in random arrangement over the wreath.  Try not to leave to many holes.
Pull holly berries off sprig and glue to bottom of the wreath.  I tried to glue them all about the same distance apart.
Tie a 4 loop bow and glue to wreath where there are no ornaments.

This wreath cost me about $10.00 to make.  You can still make one before Christmas either for yourself or give as a gift.


 
Shared at these awesome parties:  Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party, Dat be Nice