Raising Memories: Making & Documenting Family Memories

5 Cute Ornaments You Can Make!

Today I have Ginger visiting to share some of her awesome Christmas Ornament ideas that you will want to try with your kids this week (or pin for next year!) Also, you'll want to visit her blog because it is full of fun and creative ideas all the time, for every time of year! Thanks so much for being here, Ginger!

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Hi Raising Memories readers! I am so excited to be here. My name is Ginger, and I blog over at Ginger Snap Crafts! I'm married to an amazing husband, & we have 5 wild & crazy kiddos! Here's a picture of us at Thanksgiving. :) My oldest is 16 & our youngest is 4. (Yes, we have a new driver in the house! Yikes!) ;) We have so much fun as a family. I really love this crazy bunch! ha! :)

I've been blogging for almost 3 years, and I'm loving it so far! I love sharing easy & quick tutorials, recipes, organization ideas, featuring others, hosting a link party, sharing Silhouette tutorials & more. (I LOVE my Silhouette! You can check out all my Silhouette tutorials HERE.). So if you get a chance to pop over to my blog I'd be so glad to have you!

One of our family's favorite things about Christmas is decorating our Christmas tree. Our tree is full of homemade ornaments! I love it! My kiddos love making ornaments. So today I am so excited to be sharing some of my favorite homemade ornament tutorials with all of YOU! :)

easy Christmas tree ornament

light bulb snowman ornament

how to make chalkboard ornaments

mason jar lid ornaments

jumbo tag ornaments

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!
Thank you so much for having me over, Heather. :)

Remember you can always find me on my blog & at these fun places:

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Thoughts: Babies & Bathrooms

This week, a niece of mine was born! I was on the road, hoping to make it in time to photograph the birth when I got the call that the baby was born. Sad that I didn't make it in time for the birth, but it was so nice to drive down yesterday as a family, to see her!

My sister in law grabbed my camera and got a photo of me holding baby Lydia. It is rare that I get photos of myself, so I was happy to have these!

It was lovely to visit with their family and to meet their adorable baby girl. I am always amazed when I hold an average sized baby because mine were so big! (That and my baby is now 40 lbs ;) This little girl felt sooo tiny!

Today is Katrina's last day of school and tomorrow is Talia's. We are getting ready for the holidays. Just to throw things off a little though, tomorrow and Friday we'll be having our bathroom ripped apart. I look forward to how it will be when it's all over, but I expect the next couple of days to be a bit crazy with guys going in and out of our bathroom and being unable to use the tub/shower.

Oh, and in other baby news, I am so excited to have booked a flight to go and see my sister in Utah just after her baby is expected to arrive in February! I cannot wait to see her, my brother in law, and their 2 (then 3) girls!

One more piece of news that's kind of crazy- on Monday morning I'm going to be interviewed by several radio stations across Canada! How crazy is that? So, exciting things are happening!

I hope you're all having a great week!

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Tutorial Tuesday: DIY Dollar Store Hurricane Vases

Please join me today in welcoming the fabulous Kim! You might remember her from this feature I did on her and her blog last year. Well, today she's back with a fabulous holiday tutorial for you!

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Hi Everyone! My name is Kim and I blog over at The Kim Six Fix. I mostly write about DIY home improvement and home decorating projects, but I also have 3 kids so I frequently throw in my favorite kid-friendly recipes and craft projects.

In my spare time I'm addicted to iced coffee, Pinterest and bad reality TV (which I don't blog about but do talk about on Facebook and Twitter.) You can also find me on Instagram and Google+.

I want to thank Heather so much for giving me this chance to share a super fast, easy and inexpensive project tutorial for the holidays!

I LOVE decorating for holidays and I am always trying to find vases and candlesticks that can add height

and interest to vignettes and mantle arrangements. I came across

these candlesticks during a google search and I thought they would be

perfect:

Image Source

I love how they are tall and thin, (perfect for a mantle), they vary in height, and the silver stems anchor them and add interest (instead of a regular hurricane vase which is completely transparent.)

See? Perfect! Right?

Wellllll...

The problem was that (1) they were only available in Europe and (2) they were 68 Euros (or about $90!) There goes that idea. Now I was on a mission to knock them off.

First stop? The dollar store where I picked up these two candlesticks and tall vases for $4.

The shape was right, but now I needed to make the stems look like they were silverplate. Enter metallic spray paint:

A couple coats later and things were looking really promising:

To attach the stems to the vases, I inverted them and used super glue to stick them together.

And once they were dry, they were good to go!

For a Christmas display I decided to add some cheap plastic ornaments:

I love how the finish came out:

Not bad for $2 each:

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Thanks so, so much for visiting the blog today & sharing this creative tutorial with us, Kim! I'm so happy to have had you here! I hope everyone visits your blog to check out some of your other great posts!
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Tutorial- DIY Felt Christmas Tree Toy

Hey Everyone, please welcome Trisha from Naptime Rumination!
This is her first visit to the blog, and I'm excited to have her! She's sharing an adorable craft that you can make for your kids- a fun toy & decoration in one! :)

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Hi! I'm Trisha Millward and my blog is called Naptime Rumination.
I'm a stay-at-home mom with one little rambunctious boy who will soon be two. I use the power of naptime to get things done!
This might be trying a new recipe, painting or crafting, or teaching myself to sew. I love sharing the projects and ideas I have with others.

I've seen several different ideas for felt Christmas trees for toddlers on Pinterest. Some were flat and hang on the wall and some were cone-shaped. I decided to make a small cone-shaped felt tree for my son. He is all about 'kima tees' right now, so I thought he would really enjoy having his small tree to play with and decorate as many times as he wants. Hopefully, it will help him keep his fiddle-fingers off the real Christmas tree. We'll see whether that theory holds up!


Cut 6 pieces of cardboard in this shape.

Using a hot glue gun, glue the six triangles together by placing glue on the edges marked in green.

Using the base of the tree, trace a hexagon on a piece of cardboard and cut it out. Cover it with green felt.

Now you need to cut a piece of green felt to the size of your tree. I simply grabbed the felt and wrapped it around the tree and cut off the excess. My next step was to sew buttons and velcro to the felt in random spots. This is how the ornaments will be attached. After you have completed this step, hot glue the felt to the tree and glue the tree to the hexagon base. Tada! A 'kima tee'!