Felt Rosette Wreath

About every other year or so, I get the urge to make homeade Christmas gifts for my friends and loved ones. This year I was inspired by different magazines and pictures and of course Pinterest. I got the idea for this wreath from Women's Day magazine. It looked so pretty and not too difficult. I had grand and glorious plans to make five this Christmas season. I finished two. :-)

They turned out pretty good...they are a complete time suck! I was following the directions for the roses, and the first one I made I was so impressed with myself...the roses are really pretty. I made a template for three different sized circles and then traced that onto felt. ***FYI: Around KC Joann's has the best variety of bolts of felt***

Then I cut the circles out and cut each circle in a spiral, leaving about an inch at the center of the circle. Starting with the end, I rolled it up and then hot glued it to the base, tale thing. They're very pretty looking if I do say so myself!

Although a time suck - as mentioned before - I really like them. Best of all, my friends seemed to really appreciate them too! Yay for gifts from the heart and stuff to do while watching TV!

Now that I know this technique, the sky's the limit! You can do this for any holiday and I even saw an idea on Pinterest to do it with extra newspaper. Talk about a green gift! :-)

Advent Calendar

We didn't grow up with Advent calendars, but the church I went to in high school always lit advent candles on Sundays. I always liked the idea of marking time in anticipation of celebrating the birth of Christ. So I've tried for years to find a good calendar I liked and use it. Doing both is a challenge. So when Parent's magazine had an idea for a homeade, scratcher type calendar I jumped on it! I didn't do trinkets or prizes or anything because it doesn't seem to - to me - to have anything to do with celebrating the birth of a rebel who would change the world. So I did verses and phrases from the Christmas story. The whole story is told by Christmas day. Pretty cool, I think. It wasn't too difficult to make either. I love the scratch off idea...my kids love it too! And Clayton is pretty amazed with it...he was coming up with all kind of different ways I can use it. Maybe some special valentine's cards or something! ;-D Anyhow, here's the pictures. I'm also trying to figure out Pintrest. Maybe I can post these on there too and see what happens. We'll see.