.....that ironman came to dinner

I've discovered that my favorite sentence begins with....."Pretend....."

Last minute teacher gift

1. run to target in between cooking dinner and cleaning it up

2. park as close as possible, run to the untensils section

3. pick the cutest/cheapest combination you can find of spoon rest or spoon holder

4. type up this little message

5. print it out on your home printer because i'm sure your not as cheap as me and you actually buy ink cartridges for your home printer/fax/copier.

6. tie on some fab scraps of christmas ribbon ya got lying around

7. eat lots of christmas candy for fuel.

8. tackle the rest of your insane christmas list

and that's it! i promised homemade christmas gifts, but i've yet to make homemade christmas gifts so.......

christmas decor bailout

here is some stuff i've been working on for my christmas decor. in these times of overly rich people profitting from hardworking middle class taxes, it's time to take the spendy out of decking the halls. i'll admit it, i like to make stuff anyway, tough times or not, okay i like to.....craft. ick. i said the word, let's get a new word, "crafts" reminds me of old mustard colored, toll painted, chunky words with little dots around the edges. let's call it "extreme diy decorating for very talented and motivated people." that makes it sound more productive. so before you start feeling bad that i made all this stuff, and thinking about how much you need and want to do, i am not self-promoting, i am sharing. so take these ideas and run with 'em people. switch it up, change the color, whatever just get........ew... craftin'.


Homemade stockings. just felt, ribbon, and some stichin'

Christmas banner, pinking sheers, fabric ribbon and painted letters. i used the punch out part of a lettering scrapbooking kit. does that make sense? anyway you could use anyfont you wanted, just print it out, cut it out, voila a stencil!

the ornaments. i made the white snow flakes and aged 'em with gold paint. those berries are just a pick from the....ahem.. "craft" store. I made the stars out of brown paper bags and gold paint and glitter, when we were in dental school, i still love 'em. and my fave ornaments are the olive wood nativities. you can only get them in Israel supposedly but i'm sure they abound on ebay.

the scrawny and skirtless alaskan tree. this is as beautiful as they get.

can't find a good star topper, i've looked for years and have yet to see one that grabs me. any ideas?

got this gold garland last year on clearance, painted some wooden tags gold (paper ones'd work too) and then used rub ons for the letters, tied it with some cheapo ribbon.


now i'm not pretending to be fancy and fabulous, some of you are probably thinking, "quick get me to the nearest potterybarn.com." i think that a lot too when i'm done with making stuff. but maybe just maybe i've got your wheels turning and maybe just maybe you'll share your wonderful ideas. next time: homemade christmas gifts! (oh stop cringing)