The Home Depot and My Coke Rewards have teamed up to offer a bonus for attending one of The Home Depot’s Do It Herself Workshops. I’m actually excited about it, and like the workshops that they offer. The next Do It Herself Workshop will be offered January 14th, and not only will you receive the benefit of attending the workshop, you will also receive 20 Bonus points from My Coke Rewards.

Never heard of My Coke Rewards, check my previous post for a little more information. Check The Home Depot’s site to sign up for the next Do It Herself Workshop. It should be a good one. They will be focusing on bathroom updates and two of the main topics will cover installing a faucet, and installing a toilet. Sounds like fun to me!

I was informed last night, as my husband walked in the door, that he was responsible for decorating a wreath for his office area. Instinctively I knew immediately that it meant I would be doing the decorating. Luckily I’m the person that purchases the odds and ends leftover after Christmas. I had a few things in my Christmas box to decorate the wreath with. It reminded me of the times when my kids have told me at 9:30pm that they need a certain school supply or some other crazy item for school. Be prepared, you never know what you might need at a moments notice.

I turned what should be a simple project into an art project. These wreaths arrive just like the Christmas trees that come out of a box. They have to be fluffed by separating all of the branches, so that’s the first step. Then, I had a can of snow, and immediately sprayed the wreath so that it would dry before I decorated it. Spray snow takes a really long time to dry. It wasn’t dry when I started decorating, but I didn’t have time to worry about messy projects. I had some leftover red decorating wire (with stars on it), and some bulbs that hadn’t been used. I wired everything on and poof instant decorated wreath. I then tied a ribbon on to match the bulbs, which could be shortened or removed if it wasn’t needed. It took less than an hour for the whole project.

I am really not very good at crafts and art projects. I can do them, but they don’t look like the projects created by the professionals at Michael’s or some other craft store. I’ve learned to live with my end projects though because in the beginning I don’t like them much, but over time they grow on you.

If there is ever an opportunity for my kids and I to make something together, we try to do the craft together. Last year we attempted to make three dimensional snow flakes that didn’t turn out so well. We tried, but no matter what we did to connect the snowflakes in the middle, all you could see was the pipe cleaner from every stem of the snowflake. This year we opted for something a little simpler, and it actually turned out better than I thought it would. These were constructed using the same materials as last year, we recycled them.

Our project consisted of white pipe cleaners and clear beads that would fit on the pipe cleaner. This year I had a clear idea about how we could keep the snowflakes together. A hot glue gun. I’m not sure why this thought never crossed my mind last year, but I’m sure that every crafter out there has a hot glue gun hidden somewhere. I actually found mine at Dollar Tree, and it still works after several years.

First we hot glued three strips of beaded pipe cleaner together at different angles, which made for a very pretty and simple snowflake.

We could have actually stopped right there, but then as I was laying two of the snowflakes together, I thought that it looked even better, and decided to hot glue to snowflakes together as well. The end result is the picture at the very top, and then these can be hung by fishing line (I’ll have to buy some of this), or by some other means, like a pretty ribbon. I think that the large snowflake could actually take one more layer of snowflake hot glued together, but we were willing to stop with what we had and experiment in other ways with out leftover beads and pipe cleaner. The kids enjoyed this project immensely for about the first five minutes, and then of course it became like a job threading the beads onto the pipe cleaner. Don’t forget to unplug the hot glue gun. I did.

I’ve posted a few times about my plans on making Christmas candies and cookies for gifts this year, and while I was excited about making it all, I knew that I didn’t have enough containers to put all of my goods in. I wasn’t worried, because I figured I could pick up a few containers at the dollar store, or some Glad containers which the recipient could use again. My trip to the thrift store this week allowed me to pick up a few great Christmas tins that will work great for my gifts. I’m sure that people get these tins every year with Christmas candies or cookies, and I am so glad that my thrift store had some available.

These will work really nicely because I can cut parchment paper out in the shape of the tin and separate all of the layers this way. The tins were priced at a $.25 each, so I grabbed six of them. My son has taken claim to one of them, so I’ll make do with the five that are left in addition to what I already had here at the house.  Now all I have left to do is make the cookies and candies, fill the tins, and put either a pretty bow or ribbon on the tin.