Cookie and Ornament Exchange for the Holidays

At the church where I attend, the ladies like to get together frequently for fellowship. We enjoy the Christmas holiday because we have our cookie and ornament exchange. We always have it at the home of a lady in our church. She decorates her home beautifully!! Her and her husband like to do various crafts and Christmastime is the best time to see the crafts that they have made. Here are a few pictures from our cookie/ornament exchange and a few pictures of the decorations.

Their tree is beautiful and has a lot of homemade ornaments.

On their front porch . . .

She made this toy soldier out of flower pots!!! Incredible! I asked her if I could add this to Pinterest. Let me know if you ever make one. :o)

DIY No-Sew Scarf

I have mentioned my Pinterest kick that I've been on lately. Well, to be honest, with the holidays coming, I haven't really had a whole lot of time to be on the look out for anymore cool things on there. When I first got on it, I found out that you can make your own scarves out of old (or new) t-shirts. Now you can too!

Here's what you need:

Men's Large or Xlarge T-shirt (old or new--if it's new, make sure to wash first!)

Paper or Styrofoam Plate

Sharpie or other pen

Scissors

Fabric Glue

First, take your t-shirt and lay it out flat . . .

Second, cut the shirt along the side seems and lay out flat (You can skip this step if you want and just cut two at a time but I think the circles are harder to cut that way.) . . .

Then take your plate and trace as many circles as you can (I was able to get 6 on each side of an XL shirt) . . .

Next, cut out your circles just inside of the sharpie mark . . .

Then you cut a spiral in the circle shape . . .

Stretch your spiral cuts out until they look like this . . .

Next, take your glue and glue 2 strips together (I didn't have any glue so I tied a knot) . . .

Then you lay the glued strips together. Since I knotted the strips, I took an extra piece of the fabric and sewed it around the knots to keep it all together. That will go at the nape of the neck. If you are gluing the strips, you can get a nice embellishment such as a broach and glue onto it.

Your finished scarf should look similar to this . . .

These will make great Christmas gifts! To check out more ways to make your own no-sew t-shirt scarf (or to see a video of how to make this scarf) click here. Have fun creating!

I fell in love with Pinterest!

One of the things that I really enjoy doing is researching stuff on the Internet. I research EVERYTHING! Organizing tips, how to make your own . . . whatever, kid stuff and recipes--lots of recipes. Oh, my word! Have I found THE best solution to keeping all of that at my fingertips.

I had heard a little bit about Pinterest. I wasn't sure what it was all about. I kept seeing my Facebook friends updating about all these recipes that they found or "pinned" on Pinterest. So, of course, I did a little research on it. It's fantastic and I am hooked! Everything that you love right at your fingertips. You can pin things onto your boards that other people of pinned. So, let's say you have a board titled "Recipes." You can pin recipes that others pin or recipes that you find off the Internet. Now I just have to refer to one place for all of those things. Brilliant!

So, if you're interested, follow me on Pinterest. Just click the link in my sidebar. Go ahead and sign up for Pinterest and start pinning. I bet you can't just pin one!