Where Have I Been?

Hey you guys! I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been sick.  Not  just a cold and sniffle kind of sick either, but the kind where you’re in bed for long stretches of time.  

On December 22nd we had our big Christmas choir program at church, it was beautiful, but the very next day I was sick! I went to my mom and dad’s house on December the 24th for our annual Christmas eve together thinking I just had a little bug, but I laid on the sofa the whole time and didn’t get near anyone. My hubby even made me a plate of food so I didn’t have to get near the food…you know, so I didn’t contaminate anything in case I was contagious.  I am SO glad we did that, because Christmas day I was really sick….I had the flu! (no one at my mom’s got sick…shew! I’m glad!)  We had our Christmas morning with our kids, and then I went to bed…..and I have basically been there ever since! I was already out of the time zone to be able to get tamiflu so I fought it at home with mucinex, sudafed and ibuprofen.  I ended up going to the dr anyway because my ears were hurting…turns out my flu went into a double ear infection and bronchitis.  I have been one sick puppy!  I finally got to the point where I could get dressed, put on some makeup and venture outside. (after I took a short nap from getting dressed and putting on makeup..NO energy!)  My first trip was through the drive thru at the bank,  and the drive thru at Dairy Queen.  Ohh…a BIG adventure indeed! lol  My next time out was with my hubby to go grab a bite to eat at a local restaurant where we had been given a gift card for Christmas.  Those have been my two big excursions thus far.  I am still having quite a bit of sinus issues and headaches, but I’m doing a lot better than I was.  I’m on my second round of antibiotics, so hopefully we’ll have this thing wrapped up soon!  This is NOT the kind of break a blogger wants to take!  Please be patient with me as I get my energy back…don’t really feel like doing many projects….although I did make a list of things I’d like to do while I was sick! HA! 
I truly hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful start to the New Year!  The way I look at the start to my year is, it can’t really go anywhere but up from here! :0)

Blessings
Missy

Antique Sheet Music Christmas Trees…in 15 minutes or less!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to show you a very quick and easy craft project to you can make for Christmas…and it seriously takes 15 minutes or less! 
Here they are…my Antique Sheet Music Christmas Trees!

I won a HUGE stack of antique sheet music from Ebay a few weeks ago and I’ve been having a ball making different things from them!
If you don’t have access to old sheet music, Karen from The Graphics Fairy, has printable sheet music too!

You remember when I told you to save the bases from the plastic wine glasses in my last post “How to make Christmas Cloche Ornaments?” Well this is the project I was telling you to save them for!  These are the wine glasses I got from the Dollar Tree that have the bases in them I was talking about….

I literally took little dowel rods that I purchased from Walmart’s craft aisle, and wrapped some white floral tape around the bottom to make them just thick enough so they would stick down inside the wine glass bases securely…like this.  (I cut the dowels into three different lengths so the trees would be at three different levels)

I rolled my sheet music into cones, taped them into place, then trimmed off bottoms until they looked even…

Then I plopped them down onto my wooden dowel stands, and walla…..Christmas trees!  (to make it an even easier craft, you could just make the sheet music cones and set them down on some candle holders of varying heights too!)

Tada!  I told you it was fast and easy!  After looking at these pictures though, I think I need to trim the one on the right off just a wee bit more on the bottom…still not quite straight. Oh well, they are cute, and would look even sweeter with a little fake snow around the bottoms! I’ll get right on that!

Hope you all have a VERY Merry CHRISTmas!

Blessings!
Missy

Christmas Cloche Ornament…on the cheap!

Hey ya’ll! I’ve been wanting to show you these ornaments I made for a while, but I’ve been sitting in the hospital with our middle son for four days.  He was having an extended video EEG.  I’m home now, so here’s  my ornaments and how to make em’!

I saw a tutorial for these on the internet from My So Called Crafty Life…she did a great job, and I just had to make them too!
To make these stinkin’ cute ornaments you’ll need some plastic wine glasses from the Dollar Tree…(oh, and don’t throw away the bases of the glasses..I have another project I’m going to show you that uses them!)……

Here’s a pic of them outside the package.  I used my dremel tool and cut off the top of each one…you can see in some of the other pictures on down, how much I cut off, I forgot to take a picture after I cut it. If you don’t have a dremel, I suppose you could use a fine tooth hack saw or something like that.  Ya’ll are smart, I’m sure you could figure out another way to cut it off too!

You’ll also need a 3” scalloped punch, or if you have a cricut or silhouette cutting machine, you could use that to cut 3” circles or scallops too I’m sure. (or you could just do it the old fashioned way, and trace a circle and cut it out!)

I used some chip board and my punch and punched out a dozen circles. That’s how many wine glasses I bought. :0)

I went to Hobby Lobby and they had all the little items for miniature trees 1/2 off, so I loaded up!  I LOVE miniatures!
Have I ever told you guys I have five doll houses?!! (one is still not built…I’ll get on that one day) 

Next, I just hot glued my little miniatures on the chip board I had punched out, making sure the tallest thing was in the middle so the cloche would fit over it without touching.  I then put a nice bead of hot glue around the bottom of the wine glass, and stuck it down to the chip board base. (OH..and you can see how much of the wine glass I cut off with the dremel tool here too!)

I made a hanger for the top with a  styrofoam glitter ball I got at Michaels, and just stuck some wire through it and made little hooks on the bottom to keep it from coming back through. (I’m thinking if I had it to over, I would have used much thinner wire…hindsight is 20/20) :0)

I made a little funnel out of paper and used it to pour white glitter into my ornament…..

I found some tinsel at Walmart that looked like vintage tinsel…it was only $2.00 for a pretty decent sized roll. I used it to camouflage the top of the glass where I cut it off…..

Then I just hot glued the tinsel and the glitter styrofoam ball on top of the “cloche” wine glass, and it was finished!

I made several different ornaments…some with nutcrackers, some with mini Christmas trees, and some more snowmen ones. I LOVE them and they really were so easy! The hardest part was cutting the tops of the glasses off.  I made 12 of them while sitting in a hospital chair……why yes, I did take a craft bag to the hospital! Including hot glue! Ha! Did you expect any less?! lol :0)

Hope you all enjoyed the ornament! Stay tuned and I’ll show you what I did with the bases to the wine glasses. The next project literally took 15 minutes to do!

Blessings
Missy

How to Make a Drop Cloth Burlap Stocking

Hey ya’ll!! I have been busy as a bee around here decorating for Christmas!   I wanted to show you the cute little stockings I made for my dining room chairs.  They were SO easy!

First I just hand drew a stocking shape to use as a template and cut it out of some printer paper…

I laid it out on some drop cloth I had leftover from making the pillows on my window seat. I just doubled the drop cloth fabric and put the template on top. Notice I used the finished edge of the drop cloth for the top of the stocking…no hemming! (I did iron the drop cloth first…this was just a picture I took to show you how I laid it out) :0)

I cut out all of my stockings, I did eight…

Then, I sewed a straight line all around the stockings..leaving the top open of course.  I used the side of the presser foot as a guide for my seam allowance….

Turn your stockings right side out. (see that finished edge I was talking about on top…makes for a nice finished edge)

I wanted a cuff for the top of my stockings and I started to use lace, but then I found this adorable burlap at Michaels for $6.99, and then used my 40% off coupon! I LOVE coupons!

The burlap was a little wider than I wanted the cuff of my stockings to be, so I just turned the edge over about and inch and hot glued it into place.

Then I lined the turned down edge of my burlap, with the finished edge of the stocking and hot glued it all the way around….

I finished it off on the back by gluing the edges together…

Here’s all eight of my stockings with their pretty burlap cuffs. :0)

They were looking a wee bit plain, so I decided to take some extra plain burlap and make some rosettes to adorn the cuffs with….

I basically folded over some burlap and began wrapping and twisting it, tacking as I went with a needle and thread until it looked like a rose. Then I tacked it onto the stocking.   I used some ribbon and sewed it to the inside edge of the stocking so I could hang them on my dining room chairs.

I just LOVE how they turned out, and they look really cute in my dining room!

These were so inexpensive to make!  Basically the cost was just the money I spend on the burlap from Michaels, which was less than $10.00 for both kinds!

Hope you like my stockings, and I’d love to know if you make them!

Blessings to all of you!
Missy

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Happy Thanksgiving~!

Wishing you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful day filled with friends, family and of course, food!

1 Chronicles 16:34
O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.

Blessings,
Missy

How to Change Your Doorbell Button

Please tell me I’m not the only one with such a pitiful looking little doorbell button as this.  It was hanging on by one little screw.  It’s been like that since we bought the house SIX years ago!! (yes, I know…sad.)  On a whim we decided to replace it Saturday…..Yay…a very GOOD whim indeed! :0)

We took a little trip to Lowes and found a pretty Oil Rubbed Bronze doorbell button.  It was a little more than the rest, but after six years of living with the ugly one, $16.00 didn’t sound too bad.  It also lights up!

We also picked up a 1/8” masonry bit.  You have to buy a bit a little smaller around than your screws.

In the first picture, you can see my hubby is unscrewing that one little lone screw that’s held our doorbell button on for all this time. BEFORE you unscrew anything make SURE YOUR POWER IS TURNED OFF!  I had my hubby stand outside and continuously ring the bell until I found the right breaker than turned it off. I was lucky and got it on the first try!  When you take the screws out of your doorbell and take it off, you will have little wires attached to two screws on the back.

Unscrew each of the screws on the back, and remove the wires from around the screws.

You’ll be left with two wires sticking out of your wall.  We had two extra wires, I’m really not sure what they’re for, but they weren’t connected to our old button, so we didn’t worry with them. :0)

We didn’t realize until after we opened the doorbell we bought, that it had to be recessed in the wall, so my hubby chipped away the mortar with an old masonry bit and hammer until it was deep enough for the new doorbell to sit back into.

We then held the new doorbell button up and marked where the screws had to go, then drilled holes the depth of the screws that came with the button.

Loosen the screws on the back of your doorbell, and then wrap the bare part of each wire, around each of the screws and tighten them up. 

Here we are tightening the screws.  There weren’t any real clear instructions on which of the two wires went to which screw, but it said you’ll know if its right if the doorbell rings. If not, switch the wires around.  Wow…crazy instructions!

Here’s what ours looked like after we had the wires hooked up. (by the way, we got the wires right on the first try…no re-wiring!) :0)

Here is our doorbell being recessed back into the wall….

Then just screw the screws into the pre-drilled holes.

Isn’t is lovely?!  So much better!!

Here’s my honey trying out the new button!

And I bet you’ll never guess where this button is now…..yep, I trashed it! :0)

This was probably one of the easiest projects we’ve ever done….guess we should have done is SIX YEARS AGO!! ;0)

Blessings,
Missy

Disclaimer: I am in no way an electrician, this is just how we installed our doorbell, so I can’t be responsible for any differences in how yours might be hooked up. :0) Good Luck!

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