I'm dreaming of a White Christmas...

Is it before Thanksgiving?  Yes?  Is this a post all about Christmas? Yes.  My dad would heartily disapprove, but I don't care because I'm a rebel (ha), and I'm getting mightily excited for the impending arrival of my favorite holiday. P.S. Only 40 days until the big day!

I'm technically not dreaming of a white Christmas, although seeing as we are not traveling this year, I wouldn't mind!  But I have been dreaming up lots of Christmas decorations and crafts to work on.  Well, not so much dreaming, as pinning.  I want to redo the feel and theme of our Christmas decorations this year.  Now that we have Claire around, I think my old scheme is a little too subdued and sophisticated.  Think lots of icy blues, bronze, silver, etc.  This year I want to embrace the fun and go with more colorful, kid friendly decorations.  I'm thinking of using bright red and lime green as my starting point and going from there.  Actually Pier 1 had a fabulous tree decorated exactly as I'm envisioning, and if I was smart, I would have taken a picture of it.  But, I didn't.  So instead, I headed over to Pinterest (hence, the pinning).  So far I had only sort of dabbled in Pinterest.  I totally saw it's potential but I hadn't taken the time to really use it effectively.  Ha!  That has passed.  I started looking for homemade Christmas ornaments and suddenly my "Christmas" board on Pinterest had 89 pins! (Click here if you want to see what has me inspired.)

Now, there is no way I have time (or budget) to make 89 new things for our Christmas decorations, but the beauty of Pinterest is that I can save my pins for whenever I am ready for them.  I did make a list of the things that I do want to make this year.  I focused on crafts that would be most time-efficient and utilize the same basic materials, while still making a definite impact on our decor.  Here's a sample of what I want to tackle:

• Lollipop ornaments (pinned here, originally from here)
• Paper Ribbon Candy ornaments (pinned here, originally from here)
• Paper Garland (pinned here, originally from here)
• Christmas Card Holder (pinned here, originally from here)
• Christmas Pillar Candles  (pinned here, originally from here)
• Paper Tube Snowflakes (pinned here, originally from here)
• Popsicle Stick Wreath (pinned here, originally from here)
• Paper ornaments (pinned here, originally from here) 
• Felt Christmas Ornament (pinned here, originally from here)
• Owl ornaments (pinned here, originally from here)

And a few I found while cruisin' the web:

• Salt Dough Ornaments (found here)
• Starlight wreath (found here)

I'm not promising I'll make them all, nor am I promising that this is a final list, but it's a start and I'm excited!  I used the Veteran's Day sales at Michael's and JoAnn fabrics for my first round of crafty material procurement, and I'm going to try and complete at least one of these items this week.  After all, Thanksgiving is just 10 days away, and that's my official go ahead to start decorating (yay!)  My iphone is loaded with some of my Christmas music faves and I'm rarin' to go. I'll keep you posted as I start knocking these out.  Happy Crafting all!