First Home Christmas Ornament

      In 2012, my husband and I enjoyed our first Christmas since we'd been married, and in our first home, an apartment in Mississippi.  In the months leading up to Christmas, I went a little crazy with homemade Christmas ornaments -- actually, it was mostly during the summer, when I was home from work for several weeks with a broken elbow.  One of the ornament ideas that we had a lot of fun doing was salt dough ornaments.  This pin offered the idea of saving the imprint of the key to our first home.  

       Unfortunately, it didn't have a salt dough recipe attached, so I changed the link to this blog post, which is the recipe (albeit much smaller scale) we used.

       We made a fraction of a batch, so this was all it made.  Apparently, I didn't take more photos of the one with our rings imprinted on it, so I'll just tell you that I later labeled it (on the back) "Our First Christmas as Mr & Mrs".  If you make them, don't forget to poke a few holes in unobtrusive places!  If you don't, you can get unsightly darker spots.

 My husband is obsessed with dinosaurs -- see my other post about fruit snacks. :)

We don't have kids, so we used the handprint idea (from the blog post with the recipe) on our cat!

Simple as that! I wrote our address and the year on the back of this ornament.

Christmas Stockings

      This pin links to a wonderful tutorial over at Sew Like My Mom, which I painstakingly followed to make Andrew and myself stockings for our first married Christmas. Her applique part would've been great if I had had the right materials.  Since I live in a small town where apparently no one sews, I was hard pressed to make it work.  Hers are a lot nicer than mine, but possibly because she's also quite a bit better at sewing than me!
     Here's how mine turned out:

Christmas Tree Skirt

 This pin links to Teal & Lime, which has a tutorial for how to make a Christmas tree skirt out of a round tablecloth.  This is great, because it's pretty simple but looks nice, and you could even upcycle an older or thrift store tablecloth.  I love mine, and really enjoyed having it under our tree this year!

Mine was $10 at Target (it could be cheaper if you caught them on clearance!) and a great fabric and color.  It looked lovely under our tree, nestling our gifts.

3D Paper Snowflake

       The above photo from this pin is a tutorial for these fun 3D paper snowflakes. They make fun winter or Christmas decorations, though I can't really use them since my cat will destroy anything like this. I made one with the idea of using it as a gift topper instead of a bow, but it ended up being larger than I expected. I used paper squares about 5 inches wide, and it turned out to be about 14 inches wide, point to point. Pretty straightforward, but it takes a bit of time. I used wrapping paper, but you could use construction paper or scrapbook paper if you want it to be sturdier.

Here's mine: