Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 

from the Turtles and Tails household!

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday 

and we'll see you again later in the week!

This Little Tree of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine

I put up another tree today. A little guy that just oozes personality. I'm pretty sure that I bought him at Goodwill last year. I was shocked he was there at all - this was a pre-lit tree with a burlap base. And there is no way he was over $10 ('cause I know how cheap I am). Score, me.

I put him on the end of the bar in the basement TV room. We rarely use the bar and it was looking sad and neglected. Except for the jar of jellybeans that is mysteriously emptying by leaps and bounds. Or by handfuls and mouthfuls. Jelly Belly, you are an evil temptress.

Because the tree is so small I couldn't go overboard on the decorations, so I used a few glittery bells and balls, and some twisted pipe cleaners. Do you remember seeing these on my main tree last year? I first saw it done on Bower Power (her mom does it every year) and I fell in love with the idea. I call ours the Dr. Suess tree because the pipe cleaners look so crazy.

I also added some homemade stars made from toilet paper rolls. Everything can be repurposed, can't it? The edges were cut with some wavy-edged scissors and then the rings were glued together.

We're now up to 4 trees in the house - wall tree, book tree, regular tree, and this beauty. And I found a tree made of pinecones in the storage room the other day that I'd completely forgotten about. I bought it last year at a post-Christmas sale. Now where am I going to put that one?

Lacy Pinecone Ornament

Can I drop one more Christmas craft on ya? Am I really giving you a choice?

This Christmas tree ornament idea has been sitting on my Pinterest board for a while, and with only 8 days left until Christmas it was time to get on it!

It's a pinecone ornament - seriously, I have a pinecone sickness - with "leaves" made of lace edging.

Go to Bliss Bloom Blog to see the inspiration. I wish I could photograph mine so beautifully.

I made this ornament the same way as my pinecone map ornament. You'll start with a round or egg-shaped form. Mine is a papier-maché egg that I think I bought at a Restore or at Goodwill. I couldn't find styrofoam eggs anywhere and then I stumbled across these ones already in my stash. Doesn't it kind of look like an avocado pit?

The lace edging was just a small package from Walmart. I did buy two, and stained one of them with tea, but I didn't really like the look compared with the clean whiteness of the undyed lace.

I took the lace edging and cut it up into little wedge-shaped pieces. I found that I  had to make them pretty small - my first attempt yielded a huge pinecone and the leaves all turned outwards.

I used hot glue to attach the leaves to the egg, but you could use straight pins like Melanie did, or you could use white school glue if you have more patience than I do. Start by gluing a small round piece to the very bottom so that the form isn't visible through the leaves. Then one by one, attach the leaves in an overlapping pattern all the way to the top.

It's your choice whether you attach the ribbon before or after you glue on the leaves. I chose afterwards. I glued some green ribbon to the very top, and then glued a little collar of ribbon around the base of the loop to help it stand upright.

I also added a drop of glue underneath any leaf that was turned upwards.

I love these easy crafts. Start to finish it didn't take more than an hour to complete. And the lace adds the perfect amount of vintage that I was going for on the tree this year.

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I'm linking up here this week!