Nine days until Christmas!! Can you believe it?! I only have one more post for my Christmas Gift Idea series after this one. We have gone through several Christmas gift ideas for the holidays. I hope that you were able to find one, or a couple, that you were able to use this Christmas. Today's gift is another easy one to put together. But, as always, we'll watch a Christmas movie clip first.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Don't be a Scrooge this Christmas! Be of good heart and cheer. I really enjoyed this version of A Christmas Carol. Maybe it's the songs, maybe it's my fondness of the Muppets, or maybe it's my love of Michael Caine (I love the movies he is in), but I really love The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Christmas Gift Idea #14: Movie/Popcorn Bucket
Here's another fairly easy gift for you this Christmas. This is what I like to call the Movie/Popcorn Bucket.
For this one, I bought a pre-made popcorn bucket at Target for $7.99. It came with the bucket, two bags of popcorn, two boxes of M&Ms, and a box of Skittles. All I need now is a movie to go along with the gift, some cute ribbon to tie it all together, and then I'm good to go!
If you don't like this mix of candy and popcorn, you can also put your own bucket together. Bed, Bath & Beyond sells some fun popcorn buckets by themselves. And Walmart did at one time. You can buy a popcorn bucket, pick out some candy you know your family member or friend would enjoy, grab a couple of popcorn bags from your box of popcorn in the pantry, buy a movie, and give the gift to a friend!
It's that simple and easy!
Join me next week for my LAST Christmas gift idea for this holiday season. And if you missed any of my posts for this series, please go back through and see all of the gift ideas I've laid out for you all. I hope they are a help to you this Christmas! I know I have used several of these ideas for this year alone.
Safe travels! And I will be back next week with my last Christmas gift idea. :)
Only sixteen days until Christmas, can you believe it? It seems like November and December have just flown by! It doesn't really seem fair. This year I felt like we were cheated in a way. Thanksgiving came so late this year that it has felt like a mad dash to get everything ready for Christmas as soon as Thanksgiving came to an end. As a result, I don't really feel like I've been able to enjoy all of the Christmas festivities I so enjoy doing. (The ice storm that just hit Texas and kept everyone inside for days on end didn't really help either, but I did enjoy looking at the snow! So pretty!). This weekend, I've already told Aaron that we need to go ice skating and look at Christmas lights. :) It should be a fun-filled Christmas weekend before we head off the following weekend for Christmas in Oklahoma!
If you're in a rush to get those Christmas presents picked out and wrapped like I've been doing for the past few days, I hope I can be of some help. We are about to look at Christmas Gift Idea #13, but first, as always, here is another Christmas movie clip. (Disclaimer: I don't know if most of you consider this a Christmas movie, but for some reason I watch this movie every year at Christmas.)
The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Christmas Gift Idea #13: Bath & Body Works Gift Bundle
Here is another easy gift idea for the holidays. The great thing about this gift is that it is already put together for you. All you have to do is pick out which one you want, add a tag or put it in a gift bag, and then give it to the person you have in mind!
In the gifts' section on their website under $20 gifts and under, you can see several Bath and Body Works gift sets they have put together. (And if you celebrate Christmas after December 25th, that's even better. Whatever they have left gets marked down quite a lot so you can go back and get it after Christmas if need be!)
Another idea for buying a gift from Bath and Body Works is to go during the Buy 3 Get 3 sale. You can buy 3 lotions or shower gels from their signature section and get 3 of the same ones or different ones for free! It usually costs about $32 to do this, but then you can give a lotion or shower gel to each of your friends, or use them as stocking stuffers. That's about five dollars a person. I've done this on several occasions for the holidays. And if you are on their email list, you may even find a coupon you can use on top of that to get those lotions or shower gels for even less!
I'm a huge fan of Bath and Body Works and highly recommend their products. I have been so busy lately though that I haven't been able to go in several months--although that is probably a good thing since I usually spend too much of my money on lotions and shower gels when I do go!
If you don't think lotions or shower gels are really what the people on your list would like, they also have kitchen and bathroom soaps that are almost always on sale, cute wallflowers that would make great gifts, and Aromatherapy lotions and soaps that are great for dry hands during the winter season!
I hope this has been a help to you. There are only two weeks left in the Christmas Gift Idea series. Be sure to share these posts with your friends if you have found them helpful! I know many people are scurrying around right now trying to come up with inexpensive but personal gifts to give their friends and family and could really use some ideas.
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Above all though, don't forget the reason for the season. It's easy to get wrapped up in buying gifts for our friends and family--which can be a great encouragement and loving thing to do for them--but don't sacrifice the time you should be spending with your family and reflecting on the meaning of the season to obsess over the gifts you are going to get for your loved ones. I've been guilty of this for sure. I love the joy receiving the gifts I've crafted or bought brings to my friends and family, but I have to remind myself that gifts aren't everything. They are only temporary things, mere objects that will one day pass away, but the time we spend with people and the encouraging words and love we offer them goes so much further and makes a lasting difference.
And for me, Christmas is a time that I celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and what that means for all mankind. I am lucky to be able to celebrate this with much of my family and many of my friends. If you don't have friends and family around you you can celebrate with, take heart in knowing that you are not really alone. Your brothers and sisters around the world are rejoicing the birth of our Savior with you. That's such a cool thing for me to reflect on. Even though I haven't met all of the people who believe and have chosen to follow Christ around the world, we are all still one family, one body, waiting for our Savior to return again for us. Rejoice in knowing that our Savior has come, has conquered death, and has made a way for us!
The Birth of Jesus Foretold
In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever; his kingdom will never end."
"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail."
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May your word to me be fulfilled." Then the angel left her.
Luke 1: 26-38 (New International Version)
Until next time...
Tell me what you like to do to celebrate the holidays!
I'm a huge fan of The Santa Clause movie that I've already shared a clip from, but I also enjoyed the sequel to this film. Here's a clip from the movie. I love the setting of this scene. It's so pretty!
Christmas Gift Idea #12: Tin of Cookies
This is another quick and easy gift for you to put together for your friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors. Just get one of these cute Christmas tins:
Then fill them up with some yummy cookies! Here are some good recipes for you:
No-Bake Cookies (or Dog Piles as my family calls them) Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons cocoa (baking)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 cups oatmeal
waxed paper
Directions
Melt butter, sugar, milk and cocoa. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add peanut butter, vanilla and oats. Stir well until it starts to cool a bit. Then drop on waxed paper.
There are also Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, whichcan be found at Sally's Baking Addiction. These are very delicious!
Thanksgiving is only days away! Although I am going through the Christmas Gift Idea series, I don't want to skip over Thanksgiving. So today I decided to post a video clip that features Thanksgiving.
This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for my wonderful family, God who loves us all and sent His Son to die for us and then rise again so that we may have new life with Him, my church, my job, and my home. I'm also thankful for the time I get to spend with my family this week. My husband won't have to work on Thanksgiving or Black Friday this year, which is a huge blessing! And my family and part of his family are going to come spend Thanksgiving with us this year. What fun!
Now if I can just figure out how to make this turkey...
What are you thankful for?
Christmas Gift Idea #11: Soda Pop and Candy
For those of you less crafty readers out there, you're going to love these next posts leading up to Christmas. They are extremely easy to put together! No crafting required--unless cutting a ribbon is too much, but lets hope not!
The soda pop and candy gift is a great one! Here's one variation of what this could look like:
My mom told me about this idea when I was in high school and I thought it was a great gift idea for my friends. I was recently reminded about this idea and realized that this might be something I could do for my friends or coworkers now!
You will need to buy either a six-pack or four-pack of bottled soda. For this one, I went with cream soda because that's my husband's favorite so I knew he would help me drink them! :) You want to drink half of the sodas in the pack and then wash out the bottles and let them dry. When they are completely dry, you can fill them with the candy of your choice! I went with the Christmas-colored dark chocolate M&M's because I thought those looked the most festive, but feel free to choose whatever soda and candy you want!
You can either give one pair (one soda and one bottle of candy) to your friend as a gift--just add ribbon!--or you can give them the whole four-pack or six-pack. You'll fill half of the bottles with candy and leave the other half as sodas. Then you'll want to decorate the little pack holder with a ribbon of some sort. If you decide to go this route, especially for Christmas, I would recommend getting Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper bottles because the cardboard pack it comes in will be red! Then you would just need to add some red or green ribbon!
That's all there is to it! This gift is super easy and very delicious! It's also a great way to create several gifts at once! For this one, I bought a six-pack of cream sodas for $4.49 I believe and then the bag of candy for a couple of dollars. You might need another bag of candy, but you have three gifts right there! Just add ribbon.
I hope you found this blog post helpful! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Until next time...
Don't forget to share in the comment section what you are thankful for this Thanksgiving! :)
Last week Aaron and I got to go to Harry Potter World in Orlando, Florida! It was so great. If you didn't know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan!! :D And in light of my recent vacation, I thought this clip was only fitting for this week's post:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
If you haven't been to Harry Potter World, I highly recommend it! However, I would suggest going after next summer when they complete the expansion. From what I have read, in addition to Hogwarts and Hogsmeade that already exist in Harry Potter world, Universal Studios will be adding Diagon Alley, King's Cross with platform 9 and 3/4, and the Hogwarts Express that can be ridden from the current Harry Potter world to these new additions! It's going to be SWEET! :)
Another tip for you anxious travelers: the fall is the best time to go! DO NOT try to go in the summer or during prime holiday seasons. If possible, avoid these times at all cost or you may not enjoy the parks as much as you should!
Here are some of my favorite pictures from this last week:
Aaron and I standing in front of Hogwarts!
Aaron and I hanging out in Hogsmeade.
Can you tell I'm excited?!
Hogwarts!
Cool shot of Hogsmeade
Fish and Chips & Butterbeer!
I got a wand!
Excited for what's to come!
Christmas Gift Idea #10: Wall Decorations
These wall decorations were a gift to me from my bridesmaids a little over a year and a half ago. They made these for my bridal shower. These decorations would make great Christmas gifts for your friends/family.
All you need is either a canvas or cork board. The flat canvas is pictured in the photo to the left and the cork board is pictured to the right. Personally, I would recommend the cork board. You can get a package of these square cork boards from Walmart or Hobby Lobby. You can use push pins to tack on the pictures. If you get the canvas, you have to use double-sided tape/nails to get the pictures and paper to stay.
Then you will need some nice looking fabric, buttons, letters for the name, and some dimensional stickers like you see in the pictures (the hearts and flowers).
Step One: Wrap the fabric around the cork board or canvas. Staple the fabric on the back of the cork board or canvas so it stays.
Step Two: Order the pictures you want to put on the cork board or canvas. Use push pins (for the cork board) or small nails (for the flat canvas) to make the pictures stay on the board.
Step Three: Add the lettering/sticker dimensions onto the boards.
Step Four: Hot glue the buttons onto the board wherever you think they look best.
Christmas is drawing ever closer! I've actually already seen Christmas lights up on houses in town. I'm not one of those people that gets up in arms about that kind of thing because I love Christmas so much, but I was still surprised to see the decorations up at the beginning of November. This Christmas gift idea I'm about to show you will make a great Christmas gift, but it will also make a great Christmas decoration for your own home that you can make for the holidays!
I'm very excited about Christmas! Last weekend I had a Christmas card-making class at my house that was a lot of fun. We listened to Christmas music, had Christmas cookies and apple cider, and made Christmas cards! What a day! These are the cards we made at my card-making class. I'm planning to post a couple of these sets on my Etsy shop either this week or next if you or any of your friends and family are in search for some cute Christmas cards!
It's time for another Christmas movie clip. I have to say that it has been a lot of fun watching different clips from my favorite Christmas movies to find just the right clip to post here.
Home Alone 2 is the one sequel that I prefer over the original movie. Don't get me wrong, I still really like the first Home Alone movie, but Home Alone 2 is my favorite of the two.
Christmas Gift Idea #9: Felt Wreath
I'm sure by this time of year you have started thinking about Christmas gifts, but hopefully that's not a stressful thing for you. Christmas gifts don't have to be a stressful thing, especially if you are a crafter or want to craft. In that case, it can be a lot of fun! You get to take your craftiness and make some really great gifts for your friends and families. This week's gift idea I'm going to show you is a felt wreath. My friend Aaryn showed me how to make one of these. She made one for me that I really love! I did mine a little differently but the concept was the same. This gift is fun, cheap, easy, and a lot of fun to make!
Your felt wreath will look like this at the end:
I had someone in mind when I made this so I used the blue felt. You can choose whatever colors you want for yours! Here's what you will need:
Felt Sheets and Pins
Felt Sheets and Pins. You can find the felt sheets and pins at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. You can also find the push pins there, but I also found some at Target when I went to pick up a few groceries.
I needed two packages of pins. At target they cost $2.00 for a package. I didn't use all of the pins in both packages, but I did run out of the first package and needed another one.
For the felt sheets, I had just enough. I got ten felt sheets (5 of each color). They cost 29 cents per sheet.
Foam Ring
Foam Ring. A large foam ring. I found this one at Michaels. I believe it was priced at six or seven dollars, but I used a 40 percent off coupon, which you can find in the free Michaels app at the app store.
Once you have your products then you are ready to begin! I dunno how you will feel when you are putting it together, but midway through I was ready to go get another wreath so I would have another wreath to make when I finished this one. It was a lot of fun and was really pretty in the end! You could also add a letter to your wreath at the end if you want to. When you are getting these items from the store, make sure you remember to think about getting a letter while you're there.
Step 1: Cutting Your Felt Sheets
There are a few different methods I used to make this wreath. You'll want to cut big squares for your flowers like I did in the picture to the left and small circles like I did in the picture to the right for your petals.
There's not a strict size you have to cut these, just use your best judgment. Cut one square and one circle out and then use those to make your flowers and petals like I'll show you in the following steps. Once you test that out, you can see if you need to make these smaller or bigger.
Step 2: Making Flowers from Felt Squares
Once you have cut out a few of your squares, cut a spiral into the square like I did in the picture to the left. This is going to allow you to twist your square into a cute flower for your wreath. You'll just start in the middle of the square and then wrap the rest of the square around the middle to form a rose. You can get an idea of what I mean by seeing the picture to the right.
After you have done a couple of these, see if you like the look of them. If not, cut your next squares smaller or bigger depending on what size of flower you are hoping to make. The end result of this square should look like the picture to the right.
Step 3: Making Petals from Felt Circles
Fold your circles in half twice so it looks like what I did in the picture to the left. It may not look like much by itself, but once you have decorated your wreath with these, they look great! I especially like the looks of these along with the flowers I made in the previous step.
Step 4: Pin Flowers and Petals Onto Wreath
This is where the push pins come in. After each flower or petal you make, pin it onto your wreath so it stays. For the flowers, you will be able to put the pins in the center to pin them to the wreath. For the petals, you will need to pin toward the bottom of your petal and play around with it until it sits how you want it to on the wreath.
You are going to decorate the face of the entire wreath with your flowers and petal so in the end you get the wreath I posted in the beginning.
And that's all there is to it! You'll make some great wreaths for $10 and under.
One of my favorite Christmas movies growing up! I could only find the trailer for it. If anyone finds a clip from this movie, please post in the comment section below! If not, then I guess you will all have to just watch the whole movie! :)
Christmas Gift Idea #8: Picture Box
This is a great little gift I received from a friend of mine one Christmas. It's a neat, personal gift you can make for your friends and family.
You'll need:
A cute cardboard box (You can find these at Hobby Lobby. They have different shapes like this star.)
Paint
Paint brushes
Double-sided tape
Mod Podge
Jewels/gems
A few select pictures
First, paint the box whatever colors you or the recipient of the gift would like. Let it dry.
Second, tape the pictures you want to use on the box. (Use double-sided tape!)
Third, glue or stick the jewels or gems onto the box for added effect.
Fourth, mod podge the entire box and let it dry.
Then you're done!
It's pretty simple, but it makes really cute gifts! You can also use it as a gift box you can fill with other gifts you have for your friend.
