diy holiday wreath

Get your front door holiday ready with this easy diy holiday wreath!

I have this obsession with wreaths. I don’t know where it came from, except I probably do because growing up my grandmother always had the most ornate wreaths for every season. I have vivid memories of an Easter wreath that was made up of these pretty little pastel eggs the size of Cadbury Mini Eggs and I LOVED it. To this day. I should ask her where that is. Anyways, back at Easter 2014 I decided to try my hand at wreath making because all my neighbours had wreaths and I was jealous. And also they are adorable.

Of course the holidays are the next best occasion for wreath-ery (I suggested a Halloween wreath but Justin said no. Apparently it’s “disgusting” and “inappropriate” to have a wreath made out of plastic bones and fake blood. Weird.) so I was just DYING for November to come around to get my holiday wreath on.

This diy is super simple because really all you need is glue and some imagination. You can get your supplies at any craft store, and I’m a big supporter of these branch looking wreaths from Michaels. I think they’re super pretty and they’re like $3! THREE DOLLARS PEOPLE! I also snagged this glittery faux branch + pinecones there too because they were (and I think maybe still are?) having a 50% off sale on their holiday decor. But you can get this stuff at the dollar store too, so do some digging! I picked up the bells at the dollar store because I felt like adding something extra, but you can do whatever you prefer! I toyed with using ornaments but then decided it looked perfect with just the bells and greenery.

First, wrap the end of your greenery around the wreath. You’re going to glue it but it helps to secure the whole thing, and it gives it some visual interest so it doesn’t LOOK like you just glued fake greenery onto a wreath base, you know?

Once you have the end tucked in, you can start to lay out your design. When I made the Easter wreath it worked to wrap my twigs around it, but I found for this one I liked the way it looked just sort of scattered on top. You can play around with it until you like the look. Using your hot glue gun, add dabs of glue to the thickest part of your greenery and then use the tip of your gun to press the greenery to the wreath and hold it. You can experiment with different gluing techniques, but I found, given the nature of my branch-wreath-base situation, it made sense to glue the greenery rather than the other way around (there was less surface on the base then the greenery after all).

Once you have your greenery assembled, you can add any accents you’d like! I used bells because they were so sweet and inexpensive, and I thought they seemed like they had a bit of a longer relevance (compared to ornaments which I can’t really justify keeping out after Christmas, but bells are so cheerful, why can’t I keep them up through cold February days!?). You can use anything though, like woodland animal figurines or ribbon.

Easy right? And really, once you’ve made one there’s no reason why you can’t make a bunch! In my dream house we have a shelf just for wreaths. Justin doesn’t know about that one yet.

Merry holiday crafting!

christmas dinner party box

Get the insider scoop on our Christmas Dinner Party Box, available in the Shop now!

When I was growing up holiday dinners were a big thing at my grandmothers house. We had ornate Christmas displays, colourful Easter decorations, and frivolous little Halloween creatures. My grandmother’s tables are probably responsible for my party planning obsessions, actually. So it’s only fitting that following her lead, we were talking about how people entertain during the holidays. Christmas (and Thanksgiving for that matter, although some people have different traditions for the latter) is one of the primary holidays were people celebrate with family dinners. And dinner parties can seem hard to decorate. You don’t have the same “food table” that you usually have at other parties, and guests aren’t expecting much more in the way of decor other than a tree or so (or so, lol my childhood).

Luckily, no occasion (and I mean NO occasion, you should see my table right now) is celebrated without some little touch somewhere, so decorating for the seemingly-everyday is super fun for us! Creating the Christmas Dinner Party Box was a way to give people the gift of a simpler holiday. Think of what you could do with the time you’d save worrying over a centrepiece or all those dishes (that’s right, we found cute DISPOSABLE dishware for this one, my aunt’s genius trick) or how to give your guests little holiday tokens without breaking the bank?

We’ve got you covered.

After all, planning a party during the holidays can be stressful, and with all that pressure to throw Pinterest-worthy dinners, it can seem impossible! Our goal is to make your holidays seamless.

Think of the tag line as : “Make your table the belle of the Instagram-ball without lifting that manicured finger.”

We want to give you all the tools you need to host the ultimate Christmas dinner party, with the least amount of work. It’s a party delivered to your doorstep!

What you get:

– 6 chargers (3 red, 3 green)
– 6 red premium plastic dinner plates
– 6 paper appetizer/dessert plates
– 12 paper straws
– 12 cocktail stirrers
– 6 ornament wine tags
– centrepiece (2 large red trees, 2 small gold trees and 2 holiday wreaths)
– 1 gold table runner
– 1 black tablecloth
– 6 snowflake placemats
– 6 ornament place card holders
– 6 custom place cards
– 1 customized invitation (available printed or digital, perfect for last minute, get the invite today and the box delivered just before your party!)
– 1 paper dot bunting
– 6 pre-wrapped (in gold boxes) mini “grow your own” spruce tree favours
– 24 gold foil cupcake liners
– 24 ornament cupcake toppers
– plus a special surprise from The Party Girl!

We thought of a lot of little details that can make life a little easier on the average hostess (down to individually wrapped mini spruce trees for your guests) so not everything is pictured here. But we’ve got tons more, so leave us a comment if you want to see what else you get with this Party Box!

We’re here to make sure that the only thing you need to worry about this holiday season is when to bring out the bubbly. Order your Christmas Dinner party box today!

the forgotten ones

There is a particular Christmas tradition that I’m not terribly proud of that I reluctantly (and privately!) call the Forgotten Ones. It’s this horrible name for an equally horrible tradition of forgetting one or two people on my shopping list. These people are almost always people who I don’t usually see until after the holidays but I always mean to put something aside for them. It’s usually Christmas Eve (and here we are again, proving that correct!) when I realize I forgot to grab something for them. The good news: I have another week. The bad news: weirdly, after Christmas everything in store seems tacky and cheap. I hate getting Christmas themed gifts for people after Christmas because it feels like they can’t use them. But generally the Forgotten Ones are people you wouldn’t normally buy a “practical” gift for (meaning you have no idea what they would actually want for Christmas) so Christmas themed gifts are like the safe bet. This dilemma has haunted me for years.

That’s why when I was spending my Christmas Eve browsing some of my favourite blogs and came across this amazing tutorial on This Heart of Mine I realized it was the perfect project for a week off, and the perfect gift idea!

Car & Tree Ornament DIY from This Heart of Mine Blog

My favourite thing about this DIY is how the little car with a tree tied on top reminded me of years of December hunts through tree farms for the perfect Christmas tree with my family. We would always pile into all our vehicles and leave with no less than two or three trees, and often some stray branches that my grandma insisted would become wreaths (but which, as my grandfather would protest each year, would sit in the garage until they dried out and were thrown out around May). Gifts that bring back little memories are always perfect.

So first step, what materials do we need? Like all good DIYs, this one only needs a few, easy to find tools!

Materials:

• toy car
• tiny tree
• small screw eye
• drill with small bit
• twine
• ornament hook

You can find all of these things (maybe not the drill, depending on your craft store!) at a local Michaels or something similar. Depending on your family car you might want to customize it and find a Hot Wheels toy at the toy store that looks like what you drive (if you’re making it for yourself) or go for something vintage and cute if you’re giving it as a gift!

First step, use your drill to attach the screw eye into the top of the car.

P.S. – This is a screw eye, in case you weren’t sure 🙂

Next, use the twine to attach the tree to the roof of the car. The branches will disguise the hook so you won’t even know it’s there!

Once you attach your hook it’ll be perfect for hanging on the tree! If you’re giving it as a gift, pick up one of those ornament hooks that aren’t “hooks” (like the pretty plastic spirals) and you can pre attach it and give the gift ready to pack away for next Christmas, without worrying about drawing blood 🙂

I love the idea of giving christmas tree ornaments as gifts. My parents always gave my brother and I a new Christmas ornament each Christmas that we would pack up and use on the tree the next Christmas. When we grew up and moved out, my mom gave us all of the ornaments we’d collected over the year. My first Christmas in my own place I decorated a tiny Christmas tree (it was actually a mini tree for outdoor, but I counted it) in my dorm room with all these little ornaments and it felt just like home. Now that I’m a little older I’ve managed to move up in the world and purchase a full size grown up tree and some matching (woah!) ornaments, and every year I decorate my tree with my gorgeous coordinated silver and pink ornament balls and mix in all my childhood ornaments that are absolutely ridiculous. It was a really wonderful tradition that I appreciate so much more now that I reap the benefits of all those fun memories every Christmas.

I think this is the perfect gift for someone making their own traditions, like moving into a new home, starting a family, or leaving home for the first time!

Merry Christmas!