A Perfect Stable for the Perfect Moment

Merry Christmas Eve!! I wanted to post one more project I've been working on before it was Christmas.  A year ago, I was given a nativity set for Christmas. I love it! But, it didn't come with a stable, so my dad and I built one together last year after Christmas.
 This makes it even more special to me.  We built a basic one and for the past year I've wanted to add details to it to make it more realistic.  So, here is the before and after picture of the project!

I was able to find some brick scrapbook in paper for the back wall, some moss for the back wall and roof, and grass for the floor.  The two pots to the right are actually wooden candle stick holders that I painted. I had to mix brown and orange paint to get that color.  I had some spare burlap that I added to the top of one of them.
I also used some spare burlap to make the sack in the back, right corner. I stuffed it with some of my extra grass and tied the top with a rubber band.  The clay pot in front of the burlap sack was bought at Joanns.  It was the perfect size for this!
Last, but not least, I hot glued some beaded lights from Walmart to the ceiling so that it could be lit at night. It turned out great! It has created the most perfect, warm glow to the scene.
Hope you enjoyed this post! This stable took a long time, but it was well worth it! I just want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!!

Sneak Peek!!

We are less than a week away from Christmas!  I can hardly believe it!  I hope that everyone is having a good Christmas season full of family, friends, and service to others.  Today I wanted to share with you a little sneak peak of a new project I am working on.  It is going to be my dad's Christmas present. It's not actually a Christmas craft, but I'm still going to post it this week.  But, there will definitely be more Christmas posts coming, even though we are really close. Enjoy the sneak peek below!

Stay tuned this week for updates on this project! See ya soon!

Clay Pot Lighted Snowman

Welcome Back!! I'm so excited to kick off this holiday season with my clay pot lighted snowman!  I originally made this snowman for my sweet grandma and so it has a special place in my heart.

The supplies I used for this project:

- 1 regular sized clay pot

- 1 round fish bowl from dollar tree

- 1 regular sized clay pot base

- 1 white cotton ball

- black felt

- small Orange pom pom or orange felt

- 2 small black buttons

- acrylic paint ( Refer to the picture, I chose dark blue)

- white acrylic paint 

- 2 types of ribbon for bow tie that coordinates with the paint  (I had 1 dark blue ribbon and 1 snowflake patterned ribbon)

- 3 strands of pipe cleaners (I chose silver) 

- glass fogger spray paint

- artificial snow spray (I hot mine at Dollar Tree)

- adhesive glue spray (I got mine at Walmart)

- sponge brush

- hot glue

More instructions to come, so stay tuned!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thank you all so much again for joining me on this countdown! I wish you all a happy thanksgiving filled with lots of food and time with loved ones!  If you've had as much fun as I have, click the blue "Follow" button in the top, left corner of the page. Christmas crafts will be coming soon!

1 DAY: Thanksgiving Leftovers recipes

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you for joining me for this countdown, its been so much fun! Today, since it is Thanksgiving Eve, I wanted to do a more simple post.

I just wanted to invite all of you to go to my Thanksgiving board on my Pinterest page and check out all the recipes I have posted for Leftover thanksgiving foods such as turkey, cranberry, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.

2 DAYS: Clay Pot Turkey

2 left! Today we are doing the clay pot turkey.  This one was also a lot of fun! I love these because they are each little, simple projects that turn out really cute!

The supplies that I used for this project:

-brown acrylic paint

-sponge paint brush 

-black sharpie

-little bit of yellow and red felt

-hot glue

-leaves from the dollar store

3 DAYS: Clay Pot Indian

Thank you for joining me today! We have 3 days left on our countdown. I think of all of my projects this far, this indian has been my favorite!

The supplies that I used:
- 1 Small clay pot
-1 wood round knob  (Joanns, pack of 4)
-tan acrylic paint
-brown and white paint (I had to mix some white in the brown to get the right pigent for their face).
-different colored sharpies
-black acrylic paint
-lots of black yarn
-a little bit of red, orange, and blue or other colors of felt-black sharpie

                            

4 DAYS: Clay Pot Pilgrim Boy

Welcome back to the blog! Sorry I am so late posting!  This project was also a lot of fun! I didn't have time to go to Joanns to get a really little clay pot for the hat, so I made do with just a piece of egg carton.  More instructions to come!

Supplies that I used for this project:

-1 really small clay pot  (Joanns) 

-1 small clay pot

-black sharpie

-1 wood round knob (Joanns, pack of 4)

-Quite a bit of yellow yarn

-white felt

-little piece of black yarn

-hot glue

-black acrylic paint

-sponge paint brush

-felt for however you want your hat to be styled

5 DAYS: Glass Block Turkey

Welcome back!! I hope you are all having an awesome weekend!  We only have 5 days left until Thanksgiving! Can you believe it?  The project that I did today was so much fun and turned out really cute!  This is a Mindy-B-Crafting original!  I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did!









Supplies that I used:
-1 yd. brown tulle
- A strand of 25 to 50 christmas lights (25 would probably be easier)
-1 glass block, either with a pre-drilled hole (like a DecoBloc) or you need a glass drill bit, too.
         > I got mine at a thrift store (DI) and just had my dad drill a hole on the side of it with his glass drill bit.
-Felt for 5-7 feathers, you get to choose your colors
         > The ecosheets at Joann's work great!  They are 8 1/2" by 11" sheets of felt.
- A small bit of red felt for gobble, if you have a red feather, the scraps will be great.
-yellow or orange felt for beak
-black and white felt for eyes
-hot glue gun
-scissors
-pkg. of pipe cleaners to hold up feathers
-Optional: Top hat (with black acrylic paint)
        > I found a Paper Mache top hat you can paint at Joann's.
         I couldn't find it online, but HERE is a link to a similar one.

More instructions will follow shortly...

Thank you so much for joining me for my countdown today!  I hope you enjoy this project as much as I did!  If you like this, click on the blue "Follow" button in the top, left corner of the blog.  Also, don't forget to follow me on Pinterest.  Look for a button in the footer that can take you to my Pinterest page.

If any of you have questions or comments, please let me know in the common section below.

TOMORROW:  Join me again for the next day of Thanksgiving fun!  It is coming so fast!  Tomorrow we will be doing another craft!

6 DAYS: Thanksgiving in the Kitchen

Welcome back my friends!  Thank you for joining me once again!  Today I decided to do a post of a few recipe ideas for Thanksgiving.  It is not too late to decide what you are making for your big family and friend dinners.  For most of the ideas, I will post a link underneath the picture for the full instructions on the author's blog.  None of these pictures or ideas are mine; however, I went through Pinterest and picked these out as some of my favorite Thanksgiving ideas.



                             
                                                1.                

This picture and idea came off of I Wash, You Dry.  I loved this idea!  I think that it is such a cute, fun Thanksgiving breakfast idea.  It's never a good idea to eat a huge meal for Thanksgiving breakfast, and so I thought this was a perfect idea.  Kids would love it!  Just cook some bacon, buy some Rhodes cinnamon rolls, a small package of candy corn, pretzels, and edible googly eyes.  They are fun and simple to build!

2.                                                                             

               

This picture and idea came off of The Life Jolie.  This is such a cute idea!  It's a very simple Thanksgiving dessert that looks like a blast to make and to break.  It also doesn't have to be very big so that you can make sure to eat up your pumpkin pies, too.

3.                                                                           

This picture and recipe are from Tastes Better from Scratch.  I loved this salad idea!  What says fall more than apples and cranberries?  It looks delicious and would be the perfect new, fun salad to share with the family.

4.                                                                       

This picture and idea came off of Carls Bad Cravings.  I liked this idea because it is a completely new combination of normal Thanksgiving food and it looks delicious!  From the cranberries and pecans to the stuffing, it all looks so good.  If nothing else, it's a new thing for the family to try and maybe make a tradition of having at Thanksgiving.

5.                                                           

Last, but not least, I found this picture and recipe from Thistlewood Farms.  It is such a fun and simple little idea to add to your Thanksgiving Dinner.  Not to mention, they look delicious!!  Just take a few extra steps with your favorite bread recipe and you can have these cute little pumpkins sitting at your dinning table.

Thank you so much for joining me here again!  Please go check out all of these bloggers' pages by clicking on all the links above.  They are all awesome!  I hope you liked this post!  If you did, hit the blue "Follow" button in the top, left corner of the page.  Also, don't forget to follow me on Pinterest by clicking HERE.

Please join with me tomorrow as we continue our Thanksgiving Countdown!!  Some more great Thanksgiving ideas are coming your way!  Thank you again!!

7 DAYS LEFT: Clay Pot Pilgrim

Let’s start this party off right with one of my newest projects!  I had so much fun making this clay pot pilgrim!  It was pretty inexpensive to make and turned out so cute!!  I will be doing a boy pilgrim later this week to join her.  So stay tuned!! J  I got the original idea for this project from THIS BLOG and put my own spin on it.  Overall, I think it is such a cute project, especially where it is hard to find Thanksgiving decor these days.





The supplies I used for this project are:

-1 small clay pot

-black and white felt
-hot glue gun
-black acrylic paint 
-yellow or brown yarn for hair ( I used quite a bit for her hair)
-black sharpie
-thin black ribbon or yarn
-1 wooden sphere knobs, (got these at Joann's in a pack of 4)
-sponge paint brush
-scissors

Here is a picture of the wooden knobs, just because they are sometimes hard to find.  I found them in the wood aisle at Joann's:

This project has a lot of detailed work that was hard to capture with photos, so just do your best!  It will give you the opportunity to experiment a little and make it your own.  The first thing I did was paint the small clay pot with the black acrylic paint.  Sometimes you have to paint two thicker layers of paint on the pot just to cover of the clay pot's orange color underneath.

After rinsing out the sponge brush, I cut out a square white piece of felt, like shown below.  I folded it in half so that I could figure out where to cut the little triangle piece out. 

After making sure the black paint had dried, I centered the felt square on the bottom of the clay pot and hot glued it down.  Then it was time for the head!

For the head, I used a sharpie to draw on the eyes, nose, and mouth.  The ink has a tendency to bleed out a little, so I might even use a marker with a smaller tip or maybe even a sharpie pen.  The nice thing about this is that you can make your pilgrim look like you want it to.  I looked up face ideas on Pinterest and tried to duplicate one that I saw.  Mine actually ended up looking a little more like Minnie Mouse than I had planned. Haha!  But, it’s okay! She’s still cute. :) After drawing the face, I started with the hair.

The hair was kind of hard.  Sometimes you just have to experiment a little.  I cut like 3-inch pieces of yarn like crazy and just started gluing them to her head like shown below.  

If you want her to have braids, you can cut the yarn in longer pieces and then braid them on the sides.  The back of the head doesn’t matter too much because you are going to cover it with a bonnet.  I wanted my pilgrim to have a bun, so I just cut all the yarn off at the neck (at the flat part of the wood sphere), gluing the ends of her hair to just above the base on her head so it doesn’t look like she has short hair.  You can make sure all the hair is positioned right.  If there are any pieces moving around, just hot glue them down.  I even hot glued the hair to the side of her face so it didn't move into her face.

I made the bun by cutting a bunch of about 3.5 inch pieces.  Then, I twisted them and wound them in a circle like you would with a normal bun.  It’s hard to explain, but maybe by the bun below you can figure out how I did it.

I hot glued all the loose ends on the back to the side of her head.  And it looked like this!

At this point, I glued her head onto the clay pot, making sure that it was centered right.  Then, it was time for the bonnet.  I’m mad because I totally forgot to take pictures while doing it, but I will do my best to explain.  I first cut a strip of white felt for the brim of the bonnet.  

I then cut a bigger square of black felt that had an equal width as the white strip.  

Make sure to keep measuring it to her head in the process to make sure that it looks and sits the way that you want it to.

After the main top part of the bonnet, I made the back part of the bonnet.  

I had to measure it to make sure that it covered the back of her head completely and then had room to glue it to the top part of the bonnet,  To glue the two pieces together.  I laid down the back piece and glued the edges of the top piece to the back piece.  I had to fold and gather them in to glue them to the back piece.

Here is the final bonnet product!

You can put the bonnet on her head to make sure that it sits on her head the way you want it.  If not, fix it up to how you want it.  For the bow in the front, I used some cross stitching thread just because that is what I had on hand.  However, I would use either thin black ribbon or black thread.  Just tie a bow and hot glue it to the front.  I just put a dot of glue on the back of the main knot part of the bow and stuck it on.  If you are having a hard time tying a good bow, just look up tutorials on YouTube or Pinterest.

You now have the final product!

I hope that you enjoyed making this pilgrim as much as I did!  Thank you so much for joining me on my first blogging adventure!  If you have any questions, please comment below!  Make sure to hit the follow button on the top, left corner of this page.  Also, follow me on Pinterest by clicking HERE.

TOMORROW:  We will be continuing our countdown to Thanksgiving!  I will be posting some fun and useful Thanksgiving kitchen ideas from multiple bloggers.  If you go to my "Crafting Fun" page, there will be a list of supplies for the next craft that we will be doing so that you can be prepared for our next project!  I hope that you are all having a wonderful day and I want to thank you all again for joining me on my page!

THANKSGIVING COUNTDOWN!

It is time to kick off our Thanksgiving Countdown!!  All the fun begins here tomorrow, November 17th! I will be posting one new post every day until Thanksgiving. Join me for a full week of Thanksgiving fun!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! I am excited to start my blogging journey here with you!  I will be posting all sorts of fun cooking and crafting fun!  Thank you for allowing me to do what I love!  Join me in the next couple of weeks as I begin my Holiday projects!