25 Days of Christmas Crafting

Happy December everyone!  I am so excited that Christmas is just 24 days away.  I love this time of year, and I am especially excited to share it this year with our little girl.  She's reached such a fun age and I know she's going to get a kick out of all the decorations and festivities.  We have already begun two daily activities to countdown to the big day, and boy was Claire excited.  More on that later.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I want to make our Christmas decorations more child-like (and kid-friendly), and that's going to require a whole lot of crafting.  So, I decided to do 25 days of Christmas Crafting.  Color me excited!

I outlined some of my crafty plans in this post, here.  I decided to start with the paper garland because it was quick, easy, and would make a big colorful impact.  All that was required was Christmas scrapbook paper and mono-adhesive.  I cut out 1.5 in. x 6 in. strips from several printed sheets.  I think I cut out about 45 strips.  About 30 TV-watching-minutes later, I had a garland.  I love it!  Here it is on my newly decorated Christmas mantel:

 

(Kindly ignore the cardboard fireplace barrier.  It'll be prettified shortly.)

And this was Claire's reaction this morning:

 

She went straight to it when she woke up and kept pointing at it, saying "pretty". (Well, ok, she said pretty after I said it first, but I was still excited!)  And I was pleased as punch that she didn't try to pull it off after only a couple of reminders. :)

I felt like the top of the mantel needed some color, too, so I also gave my white candles some love.  I wrapped 3 in. x 9 in. strips of coordinating scrapbook paper around each candle, and then tied a pretty red bow.  What do you think?

 

 

And here's a shot of the whole kit-n-caboodle. 

I'm happy.  Now to make the rest of the living room equally cheery and ready for Christmas... I'll post info on my next project tomorrow.  Until then! 

PS Although paper garlands are quite common, I got my idea for this garland from Pinterest (pinned here, originally from here). The Christmas pillar candles idea was pinned here, originally from here.