Anyway, I always do a different theme each Christmas. It's a lot of fun for me. Up until Kearyn was born I lived in a house full of boys so they didn't really much care. If I would have done my decorations in camo or something like that they probably would have sat up and taken notice.
I feel like I am a pretty good boys mom. I do the whole camping/hunting/shooting thing. I embrace it. After all, I did marry Jason. It isn't like I didn't know what I was getting into. But you have to draw the line somewhere and my line happens to occur somewhere before the Christmas decorations. So they tolerate me well.
Another aspect of the whole changing of the theme is that it has to be done on the cheap. I cannot justify spending a whole bunch of money each year on new ornaments when I have perfectly good ones already. So, that makes it an even better challenge for me because if you know me at all you know I like to do things frugal. I seriously like the challenge.
This year I am proud to report that I spent $7. $2 on the supplies to make my new ornaments and $5 on ribbon from the dollar store and I am sure I will reuse that year after year because it was in red. So, it was more like an investment ;-).
Moving on... My inspiration this year was this....
That's right. Book pages! Love them. However, this pose a huge problem in our house.... My oldest son is absolutely in love with books. He reads, reads, reads. Which we love of course. But when mama wants to do a craft out of old book pages it stirs up quite the controversy. I start seeing picket signs and he starts doing sit-ins and chanting things like, "save.the.books....save.the.books...."
For the record, I purchased ONE dictionary at the thrift store for $2 (half off of course) that was printed in the 80's and had a broken spine. It wasn't even vintage. Again... it was a dictionary AND It was from the 80's! We don't even need to talk about the 80's let alone that it was a dictionary. And this book will complete all of my book page needs probably for the rest of my life.
However, despite the above mentioned facts my son was still not happy with me. Then he continues to rat me out to all of the other book lovers he knows and then they just sit around and glare at me. Sheesh.
I also solicited his help to create the ornaments. I thought he would appreciate seeing something beautiful emerge from an old dictionary. Big mistake. He read every page before he would "authorize" me to use it. And yes, there were some that he said I couldn't use! When he got to a list of the signers of the Constitution he refused it and instead filed it away for safe keeping. I tried to explain that he could simply "Google" that information and he said it wasn't the same....
But we made it through all of that and actually got enough ornaments done to decorate the tree. Here are a few of the things we ended up making...
{The whirly-gig looking thing, the star looking thing, and the paper rose were all things I just made up. (All of that child-hood paper folding did serve a purpose after all.) The bird idea I got off of Pinterest and you can take a peek at the tutorial here. I will be doing a tutorial on that paper rose technique because it is just a lot of fun and everyone needs to know how to make a paper rose. Why? - I don't know, it is just cool and you never know when you will need to make one.}
This is a picture of the things I made to hang in front of the windows as window garland.
This is a picture of the things I made to hang in front of the windows as window garland.
I also like to do my wrapping in a coordinating theme as well. I know, I know, my husband gives me grief all of the time. But it is just a thing with me. I wish I would have taken a picture of our packages too but I did get this one of the gift bag version.
These were a lot of fun because I just took the plain brown paper bag and the brown paper for the gift wrapping. I "dressed them up" by making an extra bird ornament for them and attached it with fuzzy red yarn. I even made the gift tags from the book paper too.
Anyway, that was our Christmas theme for 2011! :-)
