Christmas Crafts

Time has just flown since Thanksgiving.  I don't know what happened, but I don't seem to be very organized this year!  Can you believe that I'm not done shopping yet?

I remember when I was a stay-at-home mom with two young children, and I think I was MUCH more organized and on top of things than I am now.  My shopping would be done, and all presents were wrapped and mailed (if necessary) by Thanksgiving weekend.  Today is December 17, people, and I have barely started anything except for decorating the house!  I had a party last weekend for my church group, so the decorations were a necessity, although My Man was fixing tree lights at the 11th hour!

My Christmas decorations aren't too elaborate since I was sick to death of boxing and unboxing stuff with the floor project.  I decided a simple, less-is-more approach would work fine this year.  I also decided to use some of my favorite vintage pieces which may not always have the WOW factor but certainly stir a lot of great memories for me.  And I even made a few things, just because I wanted to try some projects that I saw on someone else's blog.  I'm great about saving ideas but not so good about actually implementing them.

Here is the first project I tried:

Vintage Book Pages Tree

I saw this on the blog Keeping Up With the Times.  Barb's tutorial is fantastic, so I won't re-hash the process.  I used all of her techniques except that I wrapped the paper around a pencil instead of a skewer (worked better for me, but I think mine is less "curly" than Barb's).

I used a vintage angel ornament as a topper but the net dress had a hole in it, so I covered it with a paper rosette similar to the one I made here.

I just love the facial features on the china face.

The other project I tried was from Miss Mustard Seed:

German Glass Glittered Letters

I made a banner for my mantle:

I wove gold wired ribbon through the greenery (which I added to after this pic was taken), then used vintage blue glass balls and gold and cream candles.  I just love the angel plaque which I picked up several years ago.  The angels remind me of this Bible verse from Luke 2:13-14 and which is also why I chose the word "Rejoice" for my banner:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 

I also made some silver glittered letters and put them near the nativity scene.  This is a little blurry, but you get the idea.

I made letters for the phrase "O come let us adore him" which I was going to make into another banner, but then I decided against it since they're both in the same room.

Last, I found this cute little posie while out and about.  It just looks like pages from a phone book that were used to make tissue paper flowers.  There is a silver chenille stem with vintage-looking seam binding (?) or ribbon trailing from it.

I'm going to try to make one myself, but maybe another day.  I have some serious shopping to do!