Countdown to Christmas - DIY Christmas Fireplace Mantle

 When we had to move from our house with a fireplace to an apartment in 2015, we had to adjust to a change to our traditions. One of those traditions was hanging our stocking on the mantle for Christmas Eve.  We wanted to continue our traditions as much as possible so I decided to DIY a mantle. 

Since we had just moved a few months before, we still have some moving boxes on hand. I used for small size moving boxes (16 x 12 x 12) from Lowes to make the sides of the fireplace.  I taped them shut so that the sides were even. 

** this post contains affiliate links 

I wanted to make my fireplace red, and since it was December in Michigan and I did not have enough room to paint indoors, I had to improvise again. I bought two rolls of plain red paper from the Dollar Tree.   I wrapped them individually with the paper and stacked them back together. 

There are a couple of ways to make the bricks.  One way is to use a square sponge in white paint. I was making our mantle kind of last minute, and knew waiting for paint would take longer than I had. I decided to use a roll of masking tape to make the lines.  I tried to line the tape up as straight as possible, but as you can see in the picture didn't measure between each line.  Uneven bricks give your fireplace more character, yea, let's go with that.  LOL! 

I took smaller lines of tape, and lined up bricks on all visible sides.  

Next I needed to figure out what to use as a mantel. I decided on a Dollar Tree foam board, though you could use a piece of wood if desired.  The foam board  was lightweight enough to sit on the cardboard boxes. I did have to trim them a little bit for the best fit.  One piece is a bit thin, so you can double up and use two of them.  

I used small command hooks to hang the stockings.  I put them on the top of the foam boards with the hooks close to the edge. For a more cozy feel, I covered the mantle with my favorite woodland Christmas blanket.  Buddy and Joy thought it was a nice spot to have a little Christmas snuggle. 

While it was not the big wooden fireplace that I was used to, it was an inexpensive alternative that only took a few dollars and a few hours to make. 

Have you been doing any Black Friday shopping today? 

If you shop online or in store, make sure you use Rakuten to save a lot of money.  You can currently get up to 12 % cash back on your  purchases that you are already making anyway, so some extra cash is a nice bonus.   To get back money for your in store purchases.  Open the app on your phone, find the store and pay with your linked card (like Ibotta). If shopping online, find the store you are buying from on Rakuten app or site, before making your purchase. You will receive your cash back shortly at after. 

 If you do not have Rakuten yet, you can sign up here.

Today is definitely a good time to check out Amazon  you are in the market for a new computer.  They have many great deals today.

 

 

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Easy Three Tiered Tray DIY

Tiered trays are extremely trendy right now.  You can find them at many retail stores, but if you don't want to spend a lot of money, they are actually very easy to DIY. 

*This post contains affiliate links.  I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clinking one of my links. 

Depending on what supplies you use, you can make your trays as simple or as fancy as you would like.  I decided for this tray to keep it on the simple side.  At one point, I thought I might paint it a different color, but after putting it together, I liked the silver and glass look.   

I picked out 1 silver charger plate, 1 cake pan, 1 pie pan, and 2 glass candlesticks  from the Dollar Tree.  There are several different types of glues that would work, but I decided to try E6000 this time because of it's strong seal. 

I find it easier to attach the candlesticks to the pans first, and allowing them to set, before putting the tiers all together. 

I centered the middle tier to the the center of the charger plate, and let it set for a bit.  I then centered the top tier to the middle tier, and made sure the candlesticks looked even.  This process can be used to make tiered trays of all kinds.  I have seen some really cool ones made from rectangle trays,  decorated with beads, or even clothes pins.  I already plan on making a rose gold tiered tray with some chargers I found this week for an upcoming birthday party I am planning for a friends big birthday. 

I realized when I was decorating my tiered tray, I did not have a lot of stuff to put on it for Easter.  It will be fun to decorate for all the holidays throughout the year..

What kinds of things do you put on your tiered trays?  

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How to make an inexpensive hot chocolate bar

Merry Christmas! 

I know Christmas was a couple of days ago, but I celebrated it over a couple of days.   As you may have noticed I did not post a Dare to Share party this past Friday because I was spending time with my daughter.  On Saturday I celebrated Christmas with my boyfriend, and as you can see in the picture, he bought me an actual Dollar Tree. We saw it a few days ago while out shopping for Christmas presents. He saw how much I loved it, so he decided to surprise me with it.  While he does not understand my Dollar Tree addiction, he does help enable it.  LOL!! 

Yesterday we did a little after Christmas clearance shopping at Dollar Tree and Walmart.  I have been wanting to put together a hot chocolate bar for a few weeks, and with some of my awesome clearance finds I put together one for just a few dollars. 

I don't really have a space where I can sit my hot chocolate bar long term, so I am using a tray and carry box with handles that can easily be moved.   I already had the buffalo plaid tray, which you can see more about on my buffalo plaid Christmas post from a couple of years ago.  

A couple of weeks ago, we went through the McDonalds drive through and was given this awesome cardboard cup holder.  I like this version so much better than the kind they used to use, and immediately knew I could reuse it in some kind of manner. The cocoa packets fit perfectly in it.  To make it look festive, I added a cup of cocoa vinyl cling from a cute set I bought at the Dollar Tree.  

The pails, mugs and mini paper cups were all on clearance.  Found the Santa pails for .49 each, and a packet of 12 mini cups for .84 at Walmart.  I got 4 hot cocoa themed mugs from the Dollar Tree for .50 each. I only have 3 in the picture but the 4th one already had cocoa in it.  :)  The candy canes and sticks were .50 a box, the sugar cookie and hot chocolate kisses were on sale for $1.49 a bag, the peppermint and chocolate spoons I got at the Dollar Tree. 

I found this super cut ornament for only $1.48.  I had to get it, because I know a really rambunctious puppy who would totally eat all of Santa's cookies.  She eats everything! 

While at Walmart,  I found a box of Lucky Charms hot chocolate.  Since I love Lucky Charms the cereal I decided to try it. While it is basically just regular hot chocolate with Lucky Charms marshmallows, I really liked it.  

If you are out shopping the after Christmas sales, hopefully you will find some great deals too.  

 

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5 Simple Spring Crafts to Try With Kids

If you are a long time follower of my blog, you will know that I don't share a lot of guest posts. I do from time to time though, when it is a post that I feel it is something that my readers will benefit from. During this time of uncertainty, and sheltering in place I feel this article about simple Spring crafts you can do with your kids at home is very appropriate and timely.

So with that, I hope you enjoy this guest post..

5 Simple Spring Crafts to Try With Kids

by Caitlin Parsons

As we spend more time in our homes, it can become more and more difficult to find things to do around the house, especially with kids. On top of that, you may be struggling to keep the children's spirits up amidst everything that’s going on in the world. To combat the stress they may be feeling, it can be helpful to really dive in and find out what activities will provide entertainment and help to nurture their minds during this difficult time. Thankfully, activities like crafting are a great way to combine the two. The range of projects you can do will certainly keep them busy and can become a simple way to relieve their stress as well. Many, like Sara Corwin from the eCommerce Merchandising department at Michaels, consider crafting to be a form of self-care and believe it should be used to help kids with stress as well. Corwin says:

“Crafting is a great form of self-care. We pride ourselves in providing spaces and tools for makers and encouraging others to take the time to try and learn something new. Crafting helps take the mind away from stress and the noise surrounding you, and focus on the fun of creating.”

With the stress that you or your kids may be experiencing, crafting can be a huge help. Thankfully, there are plenty of crafts that are kid-friendly too, making the activities fun for everyone. If you need new ideas of crafts to try with kids during your time at home, keep reading.

DIY Birdhouse

As spring blooms, this is the perfect time to make your own creations to display outside. A great way to do this is by having the kids make their own birdhouse to hang in the trees. There are several creative ways you can do this which gives you the opportunity to choose what works best for you and your kids. The easiest way would be to use an empty paper carton of milk. You’ll want to go for the paper cartons to make it safe for the birds and typically, the half-gallon size is perfect. All you have to do is draw a rectangle on each side of the carton and then cut it out. After that, just fill the bottom with birdseed. Use any string or ribbon to hang it from a tree and there you have it! You can also build your own birdhouse with just popsicle sticks and hot glue but if you’re not the DIY type, you can always use a birdhouse kit.

Wreath Making

A great way to make use of the items you have around your home is by implementing them into your crafts. A common theme of decorations that many have at home and only use once a year is holiday decorations. Thankfully, there are great ways you can use the decorations throughout your home and in your crafts. Standard holiday wreaths and garland are perfect to revamp and redecorate to make into a spring wreath. Most commonly, some crafters will add pastel ribbon and floral accents to the wreath to make it fit the spring season. If you want to take the project a step further, you begin working from just an embroidery loop or wreath frame to make your wreath from scratch. Instead of using all of your garland from your holiday decorations, use clippings and add them to the wreath where you see fit. Then you can add other flowers, bows, and lettering to the wreath to make it your own.

DIY Garland

Another great way for the kids to pass the time while they’re home is to create their own garland. Depending on the look you’re going for, you can use everything from construction paper to felt, ribbons, and bells. Given the wide range of options you have for creating your garland, this is another great opportunity to utilize supplies around your house. Paper, of course, is found in any household and easy to use in a garland craft as well. There are tons of paper garland crafts you can try and plenty of ways you can decorate them, too. An all-time favorite is to spell out a child’s name with the sections of the garland. This way, the child has something to be proud of and hang in their own room.

Recycled Material Crafts

Similarly to reusing decorations you have stored away, you can also recycle empty household items to use in crafts as well. An all-time favorite for crafting is the use of empty toilet paper rolls. There are hundreds of ways you can utilize them but just to name a couple, the kids can create animals from the rolls and even their favorite Disney characters. For example, to create a butterfly:

1. Paint the toilet paper roll whatever color you want your butterfly to be and decorate it with googly eyes and pipe cleaners for antennas
2. Cut out a similarly colored set of wings for your butterfly 
3. Decorate the wings with paint, glitter, stickers, buttons, etc.
4. Fold the wings in half and glue the center of them to the back of your empty toilet paper roll

After completing those quick and easy steps, you’re finished! The kids will be able to challenge their minds creatively and be proud of the work they’ve done. They may even want to display it as their own “decor” around their rooms. For a different approach, here’s another toilet paper roll craft to create everyone’s favorite Disney character, Olaf!

Collages and Vision Boards

While these other crafts may work for your younger children, you want to make sure that you keep older children in mind too when crafting this spring. Older kids may typically resort to technology for their entertainment, however, this can be a change of scenery for them to try a more hands-on craft. A great craft that allows them to have their own creative freedom is making a vision board or collage. Basically, you will need a large poster board or just a simple piece of paper to decorate. Then, you’ll want to give the kids a theme. Maybe, their favorite things to do, or what they want to be when they grow up. It’s crucial to allow them to do the rest themselves! They can search through old magazines, books, and catalogs for pictures and phrases that they like.

They’ll then place and glue their pieces wherever they’d like on their board or paper to showcase their vision. This is a great time to use your Cricut machine as well so the kids can make their own elements to add to their vision board. Of course, they’ll need some guidance with the Cricut machine but otherwise, they’ll enjoy creating their own authentic masterpiece!

These are only a few of the hundreds of crafts you can try to keep the kids busy. Start with these and then keep searching for your own ways to do fun activities at home with your kids. With the stress that you and your kids may be dealing with, crafting may be the perfect activity to help ease your minds. You’ll love the time spent with your kids and they will be excited to make their own crafting creations.

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How to make a Lapis Lazuli Cosplay (at the last minute)

Recently we had a big anime convention in our area.  My daughter and her friends decided to dress up as several of the characters from the show Steven Universe. She chose to go  as Lapis Lazuli.  She waited a bit to long before she ordered her outfit, which was the blue dress that Lapis normally wears. She found out late evening two days before the convention that there was some miscommunication on her part, and that her dress was not going to arrive in time.   She had to come up with Plan B, and put something together quickly.  Luckily her character also wears a baseball outfit on the show.  The day before the convention we went shopping, and found all of the pieces that we would need to make a Lapis Lazuli costume at the last minute.  

Disclosure: Links in this post are affiliate links.  If you decide to purchase something it does not affect your cost, but I will get a small commission from Amazon. 

We were able to find many of the items at local stores in the area.  The shorts, white tennis shoes, and white hat were at Walmart.  If you are not able to find any, here are links to the shoes, and hat on Amazon.  

We had trouble finding a white baseball shirt with blue sleeves, so we made one.  We bought our white tee from the dollar store, and blue fabric paint.  We found the paint at Michaels and used a coupon, but if you don't have one nearby, I linked the one we used.  She painted the tee shirt sleeves, the hat rim, the shoes, and the socks. (more on the socks in a minute) 

While her paint job on the shoes was not perfect, you could not tell when they were on her feet.  

You may notice in her picture above that her face and body are light blue.  For her face she used Snazaroo  in turquoise.  Instead of using the body paint on her arms and legs too,  she went with another option   We bought two pairs of white tights from Target, and a bottle of Rit Dye in Teal.  She dyed both pairs of tights, using the directions on the package.  She wore one of the tights on her legs, and made the other pair for her arms into gloves. (pictured above) They look kind of weird here, but they did look nice once her fingers were in them.  The stitches would have looked prettier if she used a sewing machine, but instead she stitched them by hand.   First she  traced her hands onto paper, and made a cardboard pattern. She made sure to leave a little bit of space between each finger to allow for the stitching once the pattern was in place.  She then turned the tights inside out, and cut the very end of the toes with fabric scissors. She placed the cardboard pattern inside the tights,and began sewing around it. When finished, she carefully removed the cardboard. Once she had a fit she liked, she trimmed the excess fabric between the fingers, and turned the tights right side out.  We had also  picked up a pack of fake fingernails at the dollar store.  She painted them with dark blue nail polish and when dry, hot glued them onto each of the glove fingers. She attached them while she was wearing the gloves to get them in the correct location. 

Now about the knee socks that were supposed to be part of the costume.  Since we still had her batch of Rit dye made up, she dyed the socks blue.  The socks of the costume are supposed to be  a darker blue than the skin color, but even with coloring them twice, they were not dark enough. It was too late to go out and buy another bottle of dye in a darker color, so she thought she would  use fabric paint and paint them.  In theory that was a good idea, in reality, it did not work out so well because the paint did not dry in time.  The socks were still too damp to wear as they were leaving for the convention.  We were very happy with how well her cosplay turned out, and even buying everything last minute it did not cost a lot to make.  

Once there, she had a great time! 

  

I still have not see the pictures with all of the gems, but I did love these two pics from the convention. 

While I was looking for the items we used, I found a few more things that any Steven Universe fan would live to have. 

 Steven's Star Tee Shirt

Funko POP Animation Lapis Lazuli Figure

Steven Universe Monopoly Game

  Steven Universe 2018 Wall Calendar

Officially Licensed Steven Universe 10" Plush

There are many more items from the show available on Amazon.   I see several things that I think I might get my own daughter this Christmas.  

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Homemade Rudolph Sugar Scrub Gift - Dare to Share Feature

Have you ever tried to make your own sugar scrub?  I have been thinking about it for awhile. I really like this Homemade Rudolph Sugar Scrub by Oh My! Creative that was shared on Dare to Share,  because it would make a great gift or stocking stuffer. It also happens to be cute, and festive, perfect for those small thoughtful gifts that you need a lot of this time of year. Stop over to Oh My! Creative get the full recipe and instructions. 

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Make Your Own Candy Themed Decorations

Today I am going to share with you how easy and inexpensive it can be to make candy decor for a candy themed party.  I picked up these items at the dollar store. neon straws, colorful balloons, a 2 pack of styrofoam circles, bright colored wrapping paper, and cellophane.  I already had the tissue paper on hand, but they have a large assortment of that as well. 

Instead of painting the styrofoam, the easiest way to make large lollipops is by wrapping them.  I found it easier to work with the tissue paper than the colored wrapping paper, but I like the thickness of the paper.  Wrap the circles as tightly as you can. All of the tape is on the backside of the circle. 

I used a toothpick to form a small hole big enough to fit in one of the straws.  Depending on were you want to use the lollipops you can also use skewers or thin dowel rods.  

To make hard candy, wrap cardboard tubes with bright colored paper. I had the candy cane striped one leftover from Christmas. 

Wrap the candy in cellophane and ribbon.  You could use plastic wrap if desired, but I think the cellophane is easier to work with.   The orange piece of candy is wrapped in cellophane as well, I just taped down the sides for a different look. 

A balloon lollipop centerpiece is a fun touch. I made a simple version with balloons, ribbon and colorful pipe cleaners. Additional embellishments like tall sprays that look like candy can be added to really make it stand out. 

I made these felt M & Ms a few years back for our Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. party.  they can be used as decor or for party games which will be shared in a later post. 

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DIY Cardboard Fireplace Mantel

As you know we moved over the summer  Where we currently live (which should only be temporary) we do not have a fireplace.  We had a yearly Christmas tradition of hanging our stockings on our mantel after reading T'was the Night Before Christmas each Christmas Eve. It was something we looked forward to every year.  This year with our official stockings in the back of the storage unit, and no place for Santa to leave goodies in our stockings, I wanted a temporary mantel for he holidays.   I did see some I could buy online like this one, but not having a lot of extra money and a lot of moving boxes, I knew I could try to make my own. 

I started with four small moving boxes. You can find these at Lowes for less than $1 each. They are 16 x 12 x12.  I taped them shut and stacked them to make the fireplace columns.  I did not put anything in them but if you could if you want to weight them down. 

I bought two rolls of plain red paper at the dollar store.  Each roll wrapped two of the boxes with just a little bit left over.  I wrapped the all separately, but if you are feeling really ambitious you could tape the together and wrap in two big pieces.  I made sure that the tapes side faced the wall, so it would not be seen. 

I almost forgot to take a picture of this stage, so I apologize that the picture if so off center. The quickest and easiest way to make bricks is with a roll of masking tape also from the dollar store. I really should have measured to have more precise lines, but I had procrastinated so long in making my mantle, I was in a hurry to get it done. Uneven bricks just gives your fireplace more character. 

I then cut smaller pieces of tape and tried line up the bricks on both columns of the fireplace. I did add a few more pieces to the top section and made bricks on all of the visible sides.  

For the mantel of the fireplace, I decided to use foam board from the dollar store.  It was pretty sturdy and light enough for the cardboard boxes. I bought two pieces, because I had planned on making it a double thickness. Since we are so close to Christmas, and I do not plan to put a lot of weight on top, one was enough.  Yes, the mantel is a little off center in this picture.  I had not secured it yet. It was just laying on top to make sure it fit. We (Kara nd I)  had to cut about 6-8 inches off lengthwise, and add a 4 inch piece widthwise. Once it fit, I secured it to the boxes with masking tape underneath the foam board. 

Somewhere in storage I have a snow blanket which I think would look good on top. Since I really don't have the time to go searching, I came up with another alternative.

I found our woodland themed blanket and laid it on top. The Santa wreath I had tried to hang above the fireplace. Since we can not drill holes and the temporary hooks do not stick well to the textured walls, it would not stay put. For now it is siting on the mantel. I also found Buddy and Joy enjoying a little snuggle. Since pretty much all my supplies to make the mantel came from the dollar store, we also hung dollar store stockings.  

While it might not be the beautiful big wooden mantel we are used to, we are happy with how it turned out. It cost only a few dollars and a few hours to make.  

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