DIY glittery Christmas decorations

I received a box of Christmas goodies from Dollar Tree to create this post. Opinions and ideas are all mine.

We love decorating for Christmas. The fact that it's a really short month between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year is driving us nuts. We got our Christmas tree immediately after Thanksgiving so that we could enjoy it for as long as possible. It still might not be enough time!

Phee has totally gotten into it all this year. She made some different decorations and ornaments in her last acting class and she put those on the tree as soon as it was up and lit. She has her own little pink tree in her room, too, and that has become a bit of a campfire in her games. It's also covered in ornaments she made.

It's so much fun to see her enthusiasm and excitement for the holidays and then to see the pride on her face when she has an opportunity to display her crafts and projects. I'm thinking she gets part of that from me. I love it when I have time to make fun things for the holidays. This year, after making some great Halloween decor with items from Dollar Tree, I was invited to participate in their Christmas promotion as well. A box of Christmas goodies to go crazy with? Sign me up for sure!

I got all sorts of great things- ribbon, ornaments, wreaths, glitter covered everything. We're big fans of glitter in this house. Well, maybe not Doug so much, but Phee and I will use it whenever we can. After I sorted the box, I got to work grouping, organizing, thinking, and generally just playing around with the designs and colors.

And then I made one of my favorite decorations. I have a heavy black tray I use on our dining room table to hold a plant on regular days, or decorations for holidays. But it wasn't being used for anything Christmasy. Well, no more! It's now a fabulous decoration that will be carried right into the new year. I emptied all the silver ornaments I received onto the tray and then nestled two votive holders in the center of the tray. With a LED candle in each one, it's a glittery decoration that I love to look at. It catches the light from the votives, the tree, and the living room and looks beautiful on the table.

I couldn't resist using some of the glittery items as well, so I made a wreath, too. I wrapped some candy-cane type ribbon around a wreath form and hot glued a big red bow to the bottom. After taking apart some decorative sprays, I regrouped the pieces I wanted into a smaller spray to one side of the bow. The final touch is a little gold bird happily sitting on the top of the wreath.

These both turned out so well. And you can't beat easy and inexpensive when it comes to decorating. Honestly, you could make either one of these for $5. You can check out the Dollar Tree website for more decorating ideas, too!

What projects are you working on for the holidays this year? Are you making any decorations? Or gifts for anyone? I love making gifts!

Vampires and Pumpkins

I received a box of Halloween goodies from Dollar Tree to create this post. Opinions and ideas are all mine.

We decorated for Halloween a couple weeks ago. Phee's been happily turning on the little votive lights every night in our ceramic decorations. She even took the cutest little ghost and a string of pumpkin lights to her room so she could have some festive decor in there.

We've also been doing a lot of Halloween artwork. I had a stack of foam pumpkins leftover from last year. I had a project in mind, but after drawing faces on a couple, Phee decided to decorate the entire stack, some with stickers, some with drawings, some with more faces. So, we'll save my project for another day. And lots of family and friends will be getting Halloween greetings this year!

I was trying to come up with another project we could work on when I was contacted by Dollar Tree about Halloween decorating. What fun! I got a big box of Halloween goodies and couldn't believe all the fun stuff I had to work with.

First, I made this cute little wreath. It's hanging on the closet door facing our front door so this adorable little vampire is front and center when you walk into the house. I used a wreath form, two rolls of wire edged ribbon, and the vampire to create it. Hot glue the end of one ribbon to the wreath and wrap it around the rest of the form. Fold the end over and hot glue it in place to secure it. To attach the vampire, I used a piece of wire. I wrapped it around the vampire's waist and then poked it into the wreath form on the back side of the wreath. The vampire is securely sitting on the wreath and the wire is hidden- perfect. I topped it off with the second ribbon color and a little spider.

We've never had a mantle, but I always want to create festive and seasonal decorations after seeing all the pretty projects and displays on Pinterest. It occurred to me this week that our low bookshelf could certainly double as a sort of mantle around the holidays so that I can display some decorations.

I used two different pumpkins, plus googly eyes and a set of spooky black and purple roses as embellishment. First, I used hot glue to affix googly eyes of different sizes to a black glittery pumpkin. I used a wire cutter to separate the spiders and flowers from their stems. I used hot glue again to affix the flowers to the larger orange pumpkin. The flowers were a little crunched up, so I flattened and smoothed them and then used a little bit more hot glue to stick the flowers down.

Once I got them arranged on the bookshelf with our current decorations, I added a few more Dollar Tree touches to complete the effect. The orange and purple pumpkin is my favorite out of this set. I just love the big flowers and the spooky spiders.

What's your favorite Halloween decoration? You can find more fun decorating and entertaining ideas at the Dollar Tree site iLeaveHappy.com.

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