DIY Who-ville Christmas Tree

A year ago I found inspiration from a craft project a friend had done. It was a cute little christmas tree that could have been plucked right out of Who-ville from a Dr. Suess book. This year I decided to recreate this absolutely adorable project. I looked to my usual inspiration spot, Pinterest, but did not find much in the way of DIY instructions. So as we set out to make our who-ville tree last night, in a sort of trial and error way, I decided I would document my approach. 

And so here it is, my attempt at the Who-ville Christmas Tree, Grinch Tree, Dr. Seuss Tree or whatever you want to call it! 

Materials Needed

Cedar Branches (available at any local green house)
Styrofoam cones
floral wire
** a base of some sort for the trees (which I will go into detail about later)
glue gun and glue
scissors
one christmas ball ornament
and any sort of crazy fun decorations you wish to decorate with 
Including but not limited to :
- pipe cleaners
- pom poms
- bows
- bells
- garland
- feathers
the sky is the limit so pick your wackiest decorations and have fun with it.

** for a base we used small christmas boxes, wrapped in yarn. You could also use jars, cans or planter pots. Again use some creativity and create a cute base for your tree. 

Step 1
Making Your Tree
Gather your materials for the tree; cedar branches, styrofoam cone & floral wire.

Trim your branches so that you are using the part with the thickest amount of leaves. At the bottom of the branch the leaves are more sparse and the branch is thicker and harder to work with so trim that part off. Cut one piece of floral wire that will fit around the base of your cone. Next wrap your branches around the cone. and secure with the floral wire. (This part is definitely a two person job)

As you can see the leaves are quite sparse at the bottom of the cone so you may want to cut a few leaves from another branch and place them on the naked spots of the cone and wrap another piece of floral wire around to secure them.  Depending on how big the base is that you are using to put your tree into, you may or may not need to add extra leaves. If the base it tall enough you won't see the bottom of your tree thus eliminating the need to add extra leaves. 

Next you will want to start wrapping your floral wire around and around the tree. Starting at the bottom of the cone and securing one end of the wire, work your way up the tree, around and around, until you get to the tip. You want the wire to flatten all of the leaves making it look like a bundled christmas tree that you would buy from the grocery store. Make sure that you have several wire wraps where you want to create the bend in your tree as the wire is what will help you to shape the tree. 

Step 2

Making Your Base

Making your base. We opted to use square christmas boxes that we covered in yarn and garnished with a bow. But like I mentioned above you can most definitely get creative and use any sort of a base. Planters pots, vases, jars, cans, you name it!
Here is a link to a blogger that created truffula trees (from The Lorax) and I absolutely LOVED the base they used. I think it would make the perfect base for our who-ville trees and fits so well with the Dr. Suess theme.

Next you need to insert your tree in your base and secure it so the tree does not tip over. DISCLAIMER, the trees are very top heavy so make sure you have something to weigh your base down with or you will have a toppling tree. We opted to use rocks but I'm sure anything would work as long as it is heavy enough. 

Step 3
Decorating your Tree
This is the most exciting part. My kids loved picking out their feathers and pom poms and gluing them on! We used a hot glue gun to attach all of our trinkets (so I guess adult supervision required). Once you are finished don't forget to add your one dangling christmas ball ornament from the tip of the tree to give it that authentic Dr. Seuss feel!

We love how our trees turned out, they were so much fun to make and they are a wonderful Christmas decoration in our house. We have no idea how long they will last but I will update you once they have "served their purpose". We watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas while we made our lovely little trees and it was a perfect holiday tradition born into our family this year!

Here's to hoping I've inspired you to attempt and little tree of your own, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment below!

Another Picnic Table Redo

Hey, remember back in August of 2012 I got the idea from Pinterest to refurb a children's picnic table?  Well it has been a staple piece of furniture in our home. We seriously use that thing everyday, all day!

As you can see it gets a lot of love. So we decided to make one for my nephew for Christmas! I have had so many ideas about how I would do another one, so I finally got to put those ideas to use! I decided I wanted to make him one that was a children's version of a real picnic table. I used white and red checkered fabric for the table top to resemble a table cloth. I then used a brown "wood grain" fabric for the seats to resemble the wood of a picnic table. The rest we did black as thats the paint we had on hand. I think it turned out great!

Now that I did the project a second time I decided to take note of the fabric measurements I used to help with the original tutorial. So for the table top purchased 1 meter of fabric and had a little left over. I also used 1 meter of fabric for the seats of the table, again with some left over. If you were using the same fabric for both I think you could get away with closer to 1.5 meters of total fabric but that also depends on the size of your table.  For the plastic vinyl covering I used 1.2 meters which also came in a taller measurement meaning I didn't need as much length. Depending how it comes at your fabric store you may need anywhere from 1.2 to 1.5 or even 2 meters to cover your table and bench seats. Idea: measure your table before you head to the fabric sore ;)

For the painting part, if you want a good quality paint job try vinyl automotive paint, sold at NAPA auto parts. It sticks much better to the plastic and doesn't chip off like a spray paint would. We have been generously using our table for over a year now and have not had any paint chip off. You might want to also consider using felt bottoms for the underside of the table depending on the type of surface your table will sit on. We push our table around a lot on our laminate flooring and haven't had any issues but always better to be safe than sorry! 

For this project I found our table on Kijiji for $15 (although Im sure you could find a used table cheaper as my first time doing this I found the table for $10). My fabric cost me $26 and then of course the vinyl paint and staples for the staple gun. All in all its a super cheap project and ends up being very useful with toddlers! 

I hope my nephew loves his table as much as my son loves his!

Halloween Projects

I haven't had time to work on many crafts lately but I did make time over the weekend to create a super cute halloween wreath. I went a bit overboard on the halloween decor last year but the one thing I didn't get was a halloween wreath. So this year I wanted to make one. Much like my Easter wreath I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. I stumbled upon many cute ideas but ultimately chose a yarn, spider wreath to create. I usually just look for an idea and then copy it, and make it up as I go. This particular wreath that I decided to recreate is actually one from an Etsy shop, so to make sure I'm not stealing any ideas and for those who are not into crafting, here is the link to whimsysworkshop, the original creator of this wreath. If you think you might want one and don't want to brave the glue gun and yarn yourself, head on over to their shop on Etsy!

Anyway like I mentioned earlier I didn't follow any blog tutorial for this, I just saw a picture and went for it! First step was supplies. I was in a bit of a rush so I went to Michaels (and for once I remembered a coupon! Go me) but hindsight it would have been much cheaper to hit up Walmart and Dollorama. Sigh, next time.

I obtained the following supplies for my wreath:

A foam wreath (is it foam? It's the stuff that floral people use, it was white)

Varying sizes of styrofoam balls (Depending on the size of wreath you are making you will either need more or less balls)

Black tape (OR black spray paint)

Varying colors and textures of yarn

I already had:

googley eyes

pipe cleaners

glue gun and glue

ribbon for hanging the wreath

You could probably get the balls, googley eyes and pipe cleaner at dollorama and everything else at walmart but again I always think of these things AFTER the fact. 

Next step, prep the wreath. So I decided to tape all the way around the wreath so that it was solid black, you could probably spray paint it instead but that was just my idea. You'll have to let me know how other attempts go! 

Following that you will need to create your spider web. Using yarn I created a star pattern with six pieces of yarn inside the wreath. Start by cutting 6 equal length pieces of yarn. Tie them all together with one single knot. Use that knot as your centre point of your web and tape (or glue) each leg of the web to the back of the wreath. Next cut a substantially long piece of yarn and tie the end of it to the centre of your web. from there continue to attach it to each leg of the web by tying a knot, gradually working your way around the circle. Continue to do this until you reach the outside of the web, AKA the wreath. Tie it and cut off any excess yarn. voila web is done. 

From there its time to yarn your balls (Ha!). I had a friend ask if they came premade. Sadly, no. I yarned each one of those dang things, spiders included. So alternating colours start wrapping those balls with yarn. Start by gluing the end of your yarn to the ball and wrap away until you can see any part of the ball, just yarn! Use a dab of hot glue to finish it off. Once you've covered all your balls you can make a few spiders as well. I used furry black yarn for the spiders, I covered the balls in the yarn and then glued on two googley eyes. To finish off the spiders I cut 6 pipe cleaner legs (your choice of length), stabbed them into the styrofoam balls and bent them into little zig zags.

Before you start adding the balls, cut a piece of ribbon to wrap around the top of the wreath (the top is wherever you choose to make it). Glue the ribbon together so it makes a nice little hook for the wreath to hang from. You can even add a bow for decoration if you want!

Lastly it's glue time! Mix and match the balls and spiders and glue them all around your wreath! As you glue, hold them in place until the glue sets so that your yarn balls don't slide all over the place! 

And thats it! There is your halloween wreath! I have a nice silver wreath hanger that sits over top of the door so that I don't have to wreck my door with a drilled or glued hook. I found that little bad boy at the Dollar store!

Busy Bags

Well what do you know, last week it was pouring rain and this week it is scorching (and I mean scorching) hot! The poor weather last week forced us inside so we decided to work on some "busy bags". As usual I found a ton of inspiration on pinterest and got to work on a few different ideas. We are working on learning colours and numbers the last little while so I decided to base my "busy bags" on those concepts.  

The first busy bag I made was rainbow pompom magnets. There is 1 red magnet 2 orange magnets 3 yellow magnets... Im sure you can finish the sequence. This will allow us to work with colors AND numbers!

The next busy bag is a number match game with ladybugs and leaves. Each ladybug has a number of dots on its back between 1 and 5. Each leaf has the number 1 through 5 written on it. The idea is to count the lady bugs dots and match it with the correct number on the leaf.

We made a few busy bags that contain busy boards, basically felt boards with felt pieces that stick to them.Our  first busy board is a pizza with numerous toppings in varied colors. The next busy board is a fish tank with different underwater animals and plants. 

We added another bag to our collection, this one containing home-made slime. Our nanny made this with Al one day and he just loves it! Great for exploring textures, plus its cheap and homemade.

And along with our slime we made rainbow rice for more color and texture play!

Lastly we made a pompom pipecleaner press to work on fine motor skills. Al loves to push all the pom poms and pipe cleaners into the different sized holes and then dump them all out again. Perfect for the toddler that loves to pack and dump!

We have a few more busy bags to finish up but for now we are enjoying the nice weather outside. I think our busy bags will come in handy for all the trips we are about to be taking too! They are quick and easy and definitely keep Al entertained!

Threading the coloured noodles onto pipe cleaners 

Hide and Seek Bag

Rock Monster eye counting

Bean Sorting

Halloween Mason Jar Lanterns

More Halloween crafts! As promised here are the instructions for the halloween mason jar lanterns. This is not my own original idea, so as usual I will post a link to the original source and you can either follow my guidelines or use theirs.

Painted Mason Jars

Supplies:

Mason Jars
Spray Paint
Black Sharpies
Ribbon
Glue Gun
Tea lights

Directions:

Step one Spray paint your mason jars and allow time to dry.
Step Two Draw your designs on each mason jar with your sharpie and fill in. I found the sharpie wasn't black enough so I ended up painting a coat of black acrylic paint over top.** 
Step Three Glue Ribbon around top of mason jar to jazz them up
Step Four Insert tea light and enjoy!

Super easy halloween craft, and super cute!

Completed Mason Jar Lanterns

*When I was finished painting over the sharpie I thought I would like to do a coat of clear finish but DO NOT do this. It will make your sharpie run and ruin your mason jar! Yes, I figured this out by trial and error :(

Halloween Crafts

Now that the weather has cooled off and we are home from Vancouver I have started working on Halloween Crafts. I just love crafting and why not make some of my own halloween decorations! My First Craft was the eyeball frame.

Supplies needed:

Cheap Frame ( I bought mine at Dollarama)
Green Paint (acrylic paint from Michaels)
Various sizes of googley eyes (Michaels)

How to Make:

Step 1  paint the outside of the frame green and allow time to dry
Step 2 Glue gun various sizes of eyes all over the frame
Step 3 print a picture or caption for inside your frame

My Inspiration 

My Halloween Frame

My inspiration came from this blog, which I of course found on pinterest. You can check out the blog for alternative instructions as well. I opted to do mine slightly differently, but I think both styles are cute!

My next craft project was potion bottles. I searched high and low for bottles that looked like potion bottles but didnt have much luck. Fortunately I remembered pinning something a long while back, about a site to order mason jars from. I decided to take a look at the site and sure enough there were all kinds of bottles you could order. I ended up getting 3 different shaped bottles and 3 viles. The total cost was $30.00 and beleive it or not 2/3 of the cost was shipping. Meaning the bottles were darn cheap! Anyway then I printed off free potion labels, again from pinterest found sites and used modge podge to adhesive them to the bottles. My last step is to fill the bottles with "potion" AKA colored water. Cute little halloween decor for super cheap! 

You can find the site to order bottles here: Potion Bottles

oh and I forgot to mention my order arrived super quick

You can find Potion labels here:

Drink labels

Harry Potter labels

My potion bottles

Harry Potter Potion labels
please visit the link above for
a free printable template

The minimal supplies you will need

The bottle with label
modge podge is dry

The completed potion bottles

Picnic table redo

Today was rather chilly august day (it's starting to feel like Fall) so we decided to work on a DIY, Pinterest inspired, project. I found this beauty a few months back but just haven't had a chance to get around to the project what with our events and summer holidays. The project is a children's Picnic table redo. Basically taking an old plastic picnic table and making it fabulous. The inspiration came from the blog Caroline's Crafty Corner. You can check out her blog or see my instructions below for a step by step guide on how to redo your old children's picnic table.  

This is Caroline's Picnic Table Redo,
and my source of inspiration

First thing I needed was a picnic table. Since Al is only a year old I don't have any old/used picnic tables hanging around. So I turned to Kijiji for a little help on this one. Upon my first search I found one 10 minutes from home and only $10.00. I paid for it with loonies (not relevant just a funny fact to show you how cheap this project was).

The picnic table BEFORE

From there we took the picnic table apart which was super easy as it was all plastic and snapped together. Maybe 10 minutes of effort.

Five pieces

After we had our five pieces we gave them a bath*. Being that it was used, it was a little worn and wearing spider webs. 

* be careful not to fully submerge the plastic pieces as they fill with water and are nearly impossible to drain. Try wiping it down or hosing it off instead. Unless of course you want to drill a hole in the underside of each piece to empty the water, but really thats an extra step. Save yourself the time. 

Next we went out to the fabric store and purchased 2 meters of a cotton fabric with a pattern of our choice as well as 1.5 meters of vinyl fabric. To my surprise your common Fabricland carries this vinyl stuff. With my membership the fabric came to $31.25 all together, however I'm sure you could do it cheaper by finding a cotton fabric that is on sale. Also as a side note, the reason I got less length of the vinyl than the cotton is that the width of the vinyl was greater than that of the cotton so in the end it all evened out. For our cotton patterned fabric we decided to go with comic book theme. I wanted something gender neutral and something that would fit in with our house (no mickey mouse or pooh bear but still kid friendly).

Now that we knew the theme of the table I was able to decide what color to spray paint the table legs. I decided to go with plain old black so as not to take away from the awesome comic book fabric. At this point I should probably explain why we didn't just spray paint the whole thing and be done with it. Well plastic does not take well to paint and once dried it will usually chip off with the scratch of a fingernail or wipe of a wet cloth. Kids are messy and wipe ups are often so we can't have a picnic table that falls apart upon first use. So that is why we opt for fabric with a vinyl covering. Makes for easy wipe ups for markers, paint and snacks. By putting a cotton fabric underneath the vinyl you get to choose fun and unique styles for your picnic table. Anyway we used just about a full can of black spray paint on the legs of our table.Probably a $5.00 value.

Next step, the last one, and probably most time consuming, stapling the fabric to the plastic pieces. First we stapled the comic book fabric to the table, and bench seats (because the seats get messy too we cant just spray paint those either) and then we followed that by stapling the vinyl to each of the three pieces. This probably took just over an hour and cost us a box of staples, again maybe a $5.00 value. It is handy if you have staples and spray paint kicking around your garage.

Stapling the fabric on. What an awesome hubby

Time for the vinyl

A finished tabletop

To recap the used table cost me $10.00, the fabric cost me $31.25 the spray paint was free (but at some point probably cost us $5.00) as well as the staples (add another $5.00). Grand total for the awesome picnic table = $51.25. Out of curiosity I looked up the cost of a new Little Tykes picnic table... $44.99.

Darn, this wasn't a money saver but on the bright side we have a very unique table that we are proud to say we made ourselves. As my husband says "we will not be making any more of these". I think he has an equal amount of disdain for Pinterest as I have love for it. I'm sure he shudders at the words "look what I found on Pinterest". Anyway here is our finished table, which by the way our son loves. He's still a little young for it but loves to climb all over it. He'll figure it out.

Tabletop and Benchtops

The finished product

Before and After

Since doing my picnic table project I have had a few friends create their very own! They shared their finished products with me so here is a little inspiration for you, if you are considering redoing a picnic table!

Brittney and Talia's Table

Krysta, Asher and Jaxon's table

Chelsey and Hudson's table before

Chelsey and Hudson's table after

Our table for Ejay

Chelsey's table for a friend

For more information on the picnic table redo, visit this updated blog page for measurements and paint  tips!