Girls Craft Night!

Happy Monday!  I can hardly believe we are so close to Christmas.  It's such a crazy time of year for our schedules, but we were able to squeeze in a some crafting fun a few weeks ago.  You know all of those Pinterest projects that you always see and want to make, but never take the time to do?!?  Well, we decided to finally make it happen!

We crafted, ate snacks, drank wine, laughed, and had the best time!  Want to host a craft night of your own?  Here is what we did. Each person picks one craft to be in charge of for the evening. They buy enough supplies for everyone who will be attending the craft night and come with the knowledge of how to complete the project. You can have picture examples, step-by-step directions, or even just a "wing it" mentality...whatever works best for you.  Then you take turns completing each craft and end up going home with several different projects from the evening!

For our projects we painted mason jars with chalk paint and then distressed them and added embellishments, we hand-stamped books, and we made wooded bead garland.  I LOVED all three of our projects and how they could each be personalized and unique.

Today I'm going to share how we made the wooden bead garland and later this week I will share details about the stamped books! First I bought these wooden beads and needed to paint them.  You can paint them any color, but I wanted them to be neutral so I went with an off-white color.  I liked the idea of them not being a solid color and just looking more like a stain so I mixed about 1/2 paint and 1/2 water in a bowl. I just made sure each of the beads was covered and put them out on an old towel and patted them to take the excess paint off before letting them sit to dry.  I would recommend doing this step at least a day in advance. 

They ended up looking like this with sort of a whitewash look to them which I loved. For this project you will also need some jute twine.

These aren't the best pictures because we did our craft night late and it was so dark, but wanted to show you how to make the tassel for the end of the garland. First you wrap the twine around your hand about 10 times.  Then you will cut all of the pieces on one end and string another longer piece of twine through the other end. Lastly, you take a small piece and wrap it around the top to create the tassel.

These beaded garlands can be made any length you like!  I found that wrapping a small piece of tape around the end of the jute twine made it easier to string the beads before making another tassel and attaching it to the opposite end.  

There are a ton of YouTube tutorials that show each step, but this was a simple project and these beads can be put over books, put around a vase, laid on an entry table or used just about anywhere in your home!  I love the idea of making different colored ones for each holiday, so that might be my next project! 

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Frozen Mason Jar Snowman {plus a printable}

It is so funny how similar Carrie Beth and I are some days. Earlier in the week when we were talking about gifts we were making this week when we realized we both came up with an idea to give gifts in a mason jar. 

I shouldn't have been shocked. This is the South and mason jars are our love language. We eat out of them. We drink out of them. We store random things in them. We use them as a vase. You better believe we give gifts in them. 

Where we differed slightly in our thinking though is Carrie Beth put at least a baking effort into her gifts, and I straight up went store bought. 

I'm ashamed. The mailman totally deserves better. I've ordered a lot of packages this holiday season. A lot. Hernia worthy packages. And here in the South nothing gets you through a hernia better than baked goods in a mason jar.

I'm super ashamed. 

My goal is to distract you from my lack of baking by dazzling you with my glue gun and ribbon tying skills.

Dazzled? 

I thought so. 

And if that by some chance wasn't enough to impress you, at the end of this post I break into song and give you a free Frozen themed printable. 

Okay, okay. Only one part of that is true. No one needs to hear me sing "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?". 

If you hear me sing anything from the Frozen sound track it should totally be "Let It Go." I rock that. After listening to it approximately 1,345,982,290 times I could totally be Idina Menzel's vocal twin. 

Have I totally distracted you now?

Good. :)

When planning out my holiday treats and looking at my calendar I knew I didn't have a whole lot of free time in my schedule to do anything extravagant. So I thought of a few easy things I could do that looked pretty, but had minimal effort.

I remember months ago seeing a cute snowman mason jar idea on Pinterest, but I forgot to actually pin it. Rather than try to scour through pins, I just came up with a quick version of my own. I bought large and small mason jars, black buttons, and red ribbon.

I filled the large jars with white chocolate covered pretzels (I actually found snowflake ones at the grocery store already pre-done), and the smaller jars I filled with Hershey's Hugs.

Then I broke out my handy glue gun and glued three black buttons onto each jar. If you don't have a glue gun you can probably either forgo this part or use double sided tape.

I am usually super picky about even the small details, but I had about six minutes of free time before The Cutes realized candy and treats were out. So I just glued and placed the buttons without too much precision behind it. Oops. 

Once I had the buttons on, I measured and tied my ribbon selections onto the jar so it would look like a scarf. Once I had the first set of each finished, I measured out the ribbon for the rest of the jars and finished them out all together. I think it runs a little faster than cutting the ribbon separately each time. 

I designated the smaller filled jars of Hugs for Cute's classmates and friends. I made some fun Frozen inspired gift tags featuring Olaf, and he was thrilled.  

I hole punched the tag and just slipped it through the ribbon "scarf".

To print and enjoy a generic version of this printable see below for a free download. 

 For the larger snowman jars, I simply just wrapped them in a gift bag and included a gift card with our holiday card for his teachers. For our mailman and other adult recipients I did the same. 

Super easy and it only took a few minutes of my time!

While I haven't had much time to do holiday baking, hopefully these will still bring a smile to everyone this holiday season. 

Now off to do a quick run, and then to head to Cute's Christmas program. While I haven't had enough time to do any holiday baking, I have definitely managed to find time for some holiday eating. :)

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Frozen Olaf Holiday Gift Treat Tag