Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!

As most of you know...I spent a good amount of time at home from August to mid-October this year. Another fact most of you are aware of is my need to continuously doing something (that is - in between my "oh-so-necessary" nap breaks). I have been following several "do-it-yourself" blogs and spending time browsing through local stores for the next ultimate project. If you remember, I successfully refurbished my "tag-sale" trunk earlier this summer - so I was looking for a similar project.

Christmas time is quickly approaching, if you don't believe me - take a stroll down to your local Hobby Lobby where you can find 12 aisles of Christmas decorations seasonally and appropriately priced at 50% every-other week. In these aisles is where I found the makings of the biggest craft under-taking I've worked on since the corsages and groom's flowers from my wedding. My goal - create personal, inexpensive Christmas ornaments for our 1st ever tree (yes, alothough we've been together for more than 4 years - we have yet to buy a Christmas tree).

While I respect traditional Christmas trees, and may revert to one once we have a family to adorn such ornaments as "Baby's 1st Christmas" - my favorite tree is my mom's, hands down. Her's is trimmed in raffia bows, matching country Christmas ornaments and it very much feels like a country Christmas cottage when we go to their place for the holidays.

For my version:
I found plain, wooden Christmas craft ornaments in the DIY section and continued on to the scrapbooking section. There I found, what I considered, country-inspired prints that slightly complemented one another and matched the already established color-scheme in our humble abode. Finally, I picked up some cranberry, gold and copper paint and headed home.

This picture is a sampling of the prints I found to use. The back side is painted one of the three coordinating colors, along with the side edges. If you have questions about this project, let me know. I decided not to bore you with the details.
I had left-over wire, mod-podge and various other supplies from the wedding and used those to create stars, christmas gifts and little "W" for our tree. I hammered the holes for the hooks in with a hammer (probably a better way to do this is available - I was using tools I had already). Also, from the wedding I have enough raffia to to create the world's largest ball of raffia - from which I constructed 20 bows (shown below). Finally, left-over burlap from a Christmas gift project from Mom last year - I made a tree-topper in the shape of a heart and out-lined with some braided cord I picked up at Walmart in the craft section.

In this picture you can see a hint of a heart in the corner. This is double braided wire with rustic heart cutouts that were also leftover wedding decorations. I'll probably use this as my substitute to garland - or I have lots of ribbon that needs a project. In my most recent trip to Hobby Lobby, I picked up 28- 1'' rustic jungle bells that I'm planning on using as Christmas bulbs.

I was anticipating this project taking at least a few days, working in shifts. However, I got in the zone and finished 30 ornaments in about 4 1/2 hours. Very do-able on a Saturday afternoon.

If I'm to be considered in true Godsey holiday tradition, my Christmas tree will be up the day after Halloween. However, I have yet to receive any inticing offers from my craigslist request for a "cheap and in good condition" used 6-7 ft Christmas tree. Here's to another day with my fingers crossed!