Holiday Crafting

A quick craft I made today*

A few weeks ago I decided that for next Christmas (yes, that would be in 2016), I wanted to try to have completely handmade decorations.

I know. I know.

I can buy stuff at lots of stores. I can even get a lot of it discounted. It's not that we need more things. It's that I like making things. And to be surrounded by lots of decorations during the holidays that I or the kids made? That would be a wonderful treat!

Even though I want this next year - after all I do need to sleep between now and December 25 of this year, I wanted to start making things this year as I was able to.

So. Early this morning (which is code for not really even that early for most of the rest of the world but early for me!) I woke up, got my daughter, got my not-daughter-who-is-here-so-often-she's-like-another-child and we headed over to Jo-Ann's.

I'll admit, I was kind of scared. I didn't know what sort of crowd we'd be facing. I wasn't sure how many people there would be. And I didn't know how well the store would handle all the millions of people I envisioned would be there.

Thankfully, it wasn't as busy as I thought it would be - thought definitely a lot busier than normal! And apparently, the store has done this before, because they were ready.

Before we went in the store, we joked around and made a "game plan". Our game plan was basically grab a ticket for the fabric cutting counter pretty quickly to walking in, then shop. That way if the line was really long, we wouldn't wait as long! Then we did a team hand stack and we were ready to head into the store. Right when the doors opened.

But it wasn't that bad. People seemed to be in good moods. Most everyone seemed to expect there would be lines and waiting and lots of people, so no one was getting upset that it wasn't going faster. Most people seemed to know exactly what they want and there didn't seem to be a lot of just wandering around and seeing what there was (which is how I usually spend half my time in any craft store!). Despite lots of people, it seemed good to me. None of those images I've seen on tv of crazy crowds pushing and shoving and running and grabbing things out of people's carts!

I saved quite a bit of money between coupons and sales. And I've come home with many, many items so I can (hopefully) make lots and lots of fun things to decorate the house with. 

I'm excited about this. I don't know how far I'll get or how much I'll actually make. Or what I'll do with the things we already own.

But I do like making things. And I don't make hardly anything for our home, so I'm glad I will finally get a chance to do something crafty for our house!

*I saw this on pinterest. It was made slightly differently because they cut the letters out of vinyl and put it on the glass. I printed the words on a white paper ( a script font at size 100). I taped that to the back of a shadow box and put in three different sized silver bells inside the shadow box. It literally took me about 5 minutes! If I did it again, I'd move the words up higher so I could get more bells in. I'm also looking at that black frame and wondering if there's some way I can jazz it up. But I think what I will do is try to layer in decorations around it and leave the frame alone!