Blogmas: Nolan & Meghan’s DIY Christmas Project

Hello!

I think my time of creating Christmas ornaments are done for now at least. Technically, I’m not done, I’m just not doing them by myself anymore. This year my nephew decided to accompany me on this conquest.

---

What you will need for this project:

• Unfinished wooden ornaments – Gnomes & Reindeer
• Super Tip Crayola Markers
• Decorative String (optional as many packs of ornaments come with them)
• Baby Wipes
• Full of creativity (and energy!)

---

For my birthday, I got a huge box that was full of two large bags of Christmas ornaments. I had plans to do gnomes and gingerbread men this year, but I couldn’t find an even number of both characters, so I looked for reindeer and they were so cute on the site, and I knew everybody would enjoy them just as much and once my nephew saw the ornaments, h immediately wanted in on everything that had to do with them.

Honestly, it was amazing to see how much excitement he had for these gnomes, because I feared he wouldn’t like them, but I was very wrong with that assumption.

He comes over for a slumber party every Friday (unless his mom or dad have other plans with him) and he looks for the massive box they’re stored in and arranges one from each baggy on the opposite side of my little table. We have five gnomes in a different ensemble while one reindeer head or face, and it doesn’t matter how many times I tell Nolan they don’t have to be Rudolph, because it’ll go in one ear and out the other, so there are many Rudolph on his side.

I’ve done some kind of ornament since 2014. I worked on them with my nana first and she was fine with using paint to decorate anything, including glitter (although there were years, she tried to cut me off!) but even after she moved up north, I still used acrylic paint for everything. I never thought to use markers before. My little nephew literally grabbed my box of markers and went to town on his stack, and I was speechless!

After I recovered from this epiphany, the ideas didn’t stop coming to neither one of us. Since he is in kindergarten now, he has learned how to stay in the lines, but for these ornaments he is able to scribble or use a LOT of black on his characters. He is definitely a fun of darker colors mixed in with some neon here and there. And since he loves these coloring so much, he usually has the sides of his hands smeared with fresh markings. He wears them like they are his tattoos or something!

We actually have one gnome we call the “Pawpaw Gnome” because I told Nolan he reminded me of my dad/his papaw. This one has a full and long bread with deer antlers poking out of his hood. I tend to go with my favorite colors that actually look great on my dad. I know dad enjoys the fact that he has a gnome dedicated to him, even though he no longer wears his bread/hair long anymore.

My second favorite is the girl gnome or has a feminine touch as it has pig tails in a bow standing out of the hood. The hat itself has medium and small size circles throughout and I like to add shadows on them to make them pop out a little more. This is the only gnome I’ll use a bright pink shade because it reminds me of the girly aspect.

I liked this one so much that I kept it back for myself as a little gift. The color scheme is made up of the Frozen films and The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, I used on this year’s reading journal. I never had the perfect moment to publish what I was doing in the journal at the beginning of 2023, but I wanted to give you an idea of how everything turned out inside my journal. So, this gnome has my main colors: pink and green for Princess Anna and light blue and purple for Queen Elsa. Unfortunately, I didn’t refer to any other characters in my journal, but I added a bright orange to mimic Olaf’s carrot nose for the gnome’s pigtails and gave her brown boots to represent Kristoff and Sven.

I’m hoping by the time this post goes out, Nolan and I are finished with them and have been sent to their owners. If not, I hope you enjoy reading about my nephew and I’s new tradition. I think it will be probably three more years before my niece Kimber will join us. It’ll be interesting to see if Nolan wants to continue doing them with me once that time comes, but I’m focusing on the “now” rather than the future.

• 

• 

What kind of holiday craft(s) were you working on this holiday season? For those who include young kids, how do you help convince them to continue the traditions you’ve built with them?

What I Got For Christmas 2016

Hello!

I know I’m late and instead of repeating myself, I’m just going to move on and talk about what I got for Christmas anyways!

We celebrated a day early which is something we never do, but some of us had to work on the actual holiday so we had our fun the day before! Honestly, the whole weekend was a bit of a blur! I wouldn’t be surprised if I miss one or two things!

Last year, my dad was really sad that Blondie wasn’t at home Christmas morning opening her presents with the rest of us. So after Brandon got off work that Saturday afternoon, they came to the house before making their way to nana’s house. We opened our presents from each other there. Chipper and ChiChi went first, ChiChi got her favorite bag of treats and a brand new bed, while Chipper just got a huge stocking of chew toys! He wasn’t there maybe five minutes and he had broken into one of the toys!

We were forced to open our big presents first. Blondie and Brandon got a Keruig and I got a printer, which I’m amazed by it because that was definitely not on my list, nor have ever mentioned to anyone that I wanted one! Later, my mom told me that it was dad’s idea. I understand why he wanted to get it for me, mostly for my project but… it was a bit of a shock for me to say the least!

Moving on to what my sister got me, she had called nana’s house earlier in the week. I told both nana and mom, “well, I know it’s not for me because she never wants to talk to me” and it actually was for me! She was asking about nail polishes and she was going to buy the set I had included in my Christmas wishlist but she found another one instead! What was so interesting though was what she had put on top of the bucket they all came in, she used three rubber bands to attach Beauty and the Beast DVD!

After seeing these which pepped me back up a bit, I went back to the ones “Santa” got me! I went to the DVD and CD shaped presents first and I discovered I got my first Asking Alexandria album “From Destiny To Death” and then I found out how I only received one CD, but that’s okay because I’ll be buying more here soon! Anyways, I unwrapped a DVD that made me scream and no, I’m not joking! Chipper even freaked out and almost knocked me down as he came over to check on me! My mom and I can’t find Bad Boys on TV anymore (where it has the cuss words included) and it sucks! Well, I got them now! I actually still have the second on my part of the DVR.

The next thing I opened was a stack of different things. I got my fourth or fifth Five Finger Death Punch shirt, two different candies, and the third DVD I received was Olympus Has Fallen that my mom had tricked me the day before! She had asked in the car driving back home which one we already had and she said they bought London Has Fallen again! And then while I was unwrapping this I kind of sat and thought to myself like, “she tricked me!” One of the last things I got were two packages of candies! I got some sour gummi worms – I’m a happy camper!

Now when we went to my nana’s house! The first thing I remember opening was the present I remembering spotting while we were making the chocolate bark. You never grow out of looking at what’s underneath the Christmas tree! And even though I sort of found out what my nana got me was a book, I had to connect the dots and I realized she got me this dream book that we saw in one of her holiday magazines. I didn’t think she needed to get me anything because she’s been giving me money from all of the chores I do for her whenever I come over, but she saw this and thought I needed it. Everybody is in love with it!

After going through hers, I moved on to what Laurie and Mike got me and I got another set of pretty nail polishes, except these were smaller and had glittery shades! I’m going to publish a haul tomorrow of all of the polishes I got so keep an eye out for that! I also got some nice Christmas tree socks that have aloe inside them! They’re very cozy! Lastly, they got me a white fuzzy blanket that has “Let It Snow” and baby blue snowflakes all around! It’s very warm, I now have 3 blankets on my bed now but I don’t care!

I also got some gift cards but I decided not to show those off, sorry! It was a pretty good Christmas. Very different and maybe bittersweet but still fairly good all things considered!

What did you get for Christmas? What was your number one favorite gift?

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Bloglovin

How To Wrap Presents!

Howdy!

You’re probably wondering how I have a post about wrapping presents up this early? Well for starters, I have been blogging about my cousin’s pregnancy for the past year now and since my nana and I couldn’t make it to her baby shower back in October, she and I had come up with a plan to get some things for the baby. So my nana and I order two different sets of baby books so she and boyfriend Joe will be able to read to him at night once he’s born.

When it came time to wrap up these items, I really wanted to wrap the books that I had specificly picked out for the baby and I will mention right now that I have never wrapped a gift in my life! Somebody has always done it for me, which back then was fine because I have a slight phobia of tape. I’ve been doing pretty good at handling it recently, but I still can’t stand the sound of duct tape!

We were probably four presents in before she said “you know this would make a good blog post” and I grabbed my camera from my bag and we started taking pictures since I’ve never been properly taught how to wrap a present with my toes, we both figured it was time to learn! Of course, everybody has their own ways, they either do it all pretty or they half ass it. It’s whatever works for you I guess!

My nana gets sent small sections of festive wrapping paper every year and since we literally have a box full of paper we decided to put them into good use! If the item is small, you could cut the paper in half so you could save it for something else. So first, we unfolded a section of the paper and put the book in the middle of the paper, and then once it was in the right area we folded the sides of the paper into one another, we folded both sides inward and put tape on top to secure it in place.

After that, we moved onto the bottom and top parts of the package. We folded one side and each of the corners into the book itself, putting enough pressure to get out the creases before putting another slice of tape on top of that. We then moved onto the other side and repeated the same method.

When we finished those steps, we folded the left overs into the actual gift and taped that as well as that will secure that side completely. Once we were done, we moved onto the other side where we used the same techniques again.

All that’s left to do now is to put on your tags and bows if you so desire. My nana didn’t have her bows out yet so we only had the tags, but I thought it would be too much to have the bows on them!

I thought we did a pretty good job getting all of the gifts wrapped for when Kristi came down for Thanksgiving (yes, we did these six days before Thanksgiving!) and I tried to wrap the pacifiers and they were a disaster! I could only get one half, it was just a smaller area of wrapping paper and once I tried going for the top of it I realized why people just half ass wrapping gifts because I was really confused on how to make it look pretty like the rest!

I’m usually not that bad as a perfectionist, years ago when I was drawing in school, I was really hard on myself which is why I don’t draw now, but doing this was really testing my patience and I was really worried that I’d just give up on it! I still got through it though! I really love learning what else I can do with my toes. One thing that I was really happy about was the fact that I got both of my feet to corporate and work together nicely! Since I write with one foot and now type on my keyboard with the other, they’re finally understanding the word “teamwork” a little bit now!

How do you wrap your Christmas presents? What are your methods? Any tips?

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Bloglovin

A Very Festive Day!

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s been some breaking news! It’s only been December for two weeks and I’ve spend more time on Twitter and YouTube making sure I don’t miss a single Vlogmas. Now that’s dedication right there! And now we get back to our regular scheduled post!

Hey guys! 😀

On Tuesday, I decided to get up earlier than anyone in our house and stay sitting up for about four hours just keeping to myself aka watching YouTube videos and listening to music on the lowest volume ever! I went over to my nana’s at 3pm, which in a way isn’t so strange but since the skies get dark so fast that it feels later than it is. My nana had been telling me a little bit of what she wanted to do while I was over, one of which was trim the tree. Normally we have family from up north put it up, but since things were cut short this Thanksgiving, she was going to have Blondie and Brandon put it up, but she basically gave up on them and asked me instead.

In our house, my parents do basically all of the trimming. Dad unfolds the branches of the topper and my mom, Blondie and I unfold the smaller ones. I always manage to prick my toes with the pines every single time. I don’t know why, but helping nana put up her tree and I mean, I did a lot of it with her I didn’t get as hurt as I usually do. We put the top branches up first because I thought we were going to be too short in our wheelchairs to put up the tinsel and lights so we did everything kind of backwards. My poor nana had to put the stand together, which thankfully wasn’t that hard and plug the two sections together and at one point we did have the angel up. I got to put her up. It’s been YEARS since I’ve put the angel up on a Christmas tree. When we were kids, we had to remember who put it up the year before, now dad just does and it saves us a lot of time and arguing. Just before we were to put the small branches into the little holes in the stand, she looked like she was going to fall off so nana just removed it. Once everything was shoved in, like literally! The tree was up but with no angel!

The next thing on our list were the lights of course! She had extra lights out on her front porch and somebody had brought them in and she decided to see if those would work, she knew one side lit up but the other didn’t so imagine this for a second. We had this long strand of lights dragging across the floor, I’ve got one end and she’s got the other to be plugged into the socket right? I don’t know why I continued to hold it in my toes but I did. She had to go into the kitchen to find an empty socket and I was trailing behind her on my end. I felt like the caboose of a freaking train! In the end, both sets of lights that she had only worked halfway. After that, we didn’t think it was best to do anything else since it’s always best to do lights, tinsel, ornaments, rug, and nativity scene around it at last. At least that’s how we’ve always done it!

It took us maybe an hour to get everything up. The next time I go over there I’m taking pictures of the empty tree and some of the ornaments that she has, as I can create another blog post out of them too! We figured out that we are indeed doing Christmas cookies again. This time not as many, but I’m slightly worried because last year the sugar cookies were so hard, like rocks to chew. Is there something we can do about this? We just get the premade cookies from the store, is there a better alternative then to making them by scratch? I also have an idea for our last DIY of the year, but like always I can’t tell you much about it! Because you know, I have family reading this post. I can’t spill the goods! My grandparent’s entire house is so festive, I think it’s as decorated at Zoella’s house, I mean that’s how good it looks!

When my parents came back after two hours, not only was it super dark but I forgot to tell you that my mom told me just before we went over that since it’ll be dark when they get back that she’ll take me out to see the Christmas lights in the park. I am almost in my mid-20s and I got a little too excited about it. When we dropped dad and the food off at the house, I was so excited that I was seriously flapping my feet together like a seal! Driving up to the park was even cool! Some of the houses had little displays and then there was one that had its entire yard covered with lights and aired up Santa Clause and snowmen. When we got into the grounds, I was happy but a bit shocked. There wasn’t a lot as much as a couple of years ago. There were bigger ones which made me awesome! This was like the Christmas markets I’ve been hearing and seeing on Facebook for the past two years! This was as close as I’m going to get to ever seeing one of those I think! I’m pretty my mom’s favorite was the Santa riding a Harley, the lights on the tires moving like it was moving really fast! Mine was the big arches over by the lake. While she was busy trying to take pictures (and not driving off the road!) we kept hearing the ducks outside the window.

Just before it ended, we came over a hill and there was an electrical tower but a tree was blocking it as you were coming over the hill and we both swear up and down that the bell on that tower looked like a bikini! As we got closer, it definitely looked like a festive bell but far away it looked like a high waist 50-60’s style bikini! When it was over and we were at the main road to go home, we got stopped at the longest light ever! So my mom thought she would see how her pictures turned out, most of them were bury but she got quite a few good ones that I had to edit a little, but I was keeping an eye out on the light and once I said “green” she looked over and grabbed the wheel and realized there was a cop on my side of the car. Oops! We didn’t get a ticket or anything, I don’t think he even noticed us!

Do you put up your Christmas tree? Do you go by what we do or do you do something different? 

Christmas Wishlist 2015

Hey guys!

So I’m doing this Christmas wishlist thingy again. As you can see I’m mainly asking for clothes this year even though my closet looks like it’s about to explode right now! We have no spring or winter cleaning in our house. We also don’t know if some of my shirts fit me anymore! What’s sad is that I have two drawers for my pants/leggings and neither one are full. My mom recently threw away a lot of pants because I can no longer wear them. 😦 I mainly want more plaid/flannel shirts and pajama bottoms.

Clothes:

Green Flannel Top
Navy Blue Plaid Top
Gray Plaid Top

In This Moment T-Shirt
Butcher Babies T-Shirt
Jack Ü T-Shirt

Body Candy Juniors Sleep Pants (Only in Zebra, Multi Cheetah, & Atzec)

If there are any family members that are unsure of my size in clothes, just ask my mother! If you want some more suggestions to what else I think besides a darker shade of purple and skulls. I do like leopard print, graphic tees, superheroes (Marvel), Harry Potter, solid colors, rhinestone. Try to stay away from actual glitter on shirts, my hands are really sensitive to different textures: glitter is one of my worst enemies! And don’t fuss about the sleeves on both shirts and pants, if it’s too long we can always roll them up!

Music:

For my birthday, I originally wanted to get a new (small) CD player. An ode to the first one I ever got as a kid. I’ve went through seven big ones in about 11 years. The small one always worked up until a couple of years ago and it just kind of crapped out completely. That was a sad day for me! Anyways, my mom got me the speaker tower as a present for my birthday last month. As much as I like it, my original plan kind of fell apart. I really miss playing my CDs. It’s a simple thing that I still enjoy and so after thinking about it out loud with my nana. She told me about an old small boombox that my papaw doesn’t use, because it wasn’t loud enough! That’s where I got it from!

Now that we know it works, I want to add to my collection! For a girl who’s had not only a broke stereo system, but also broken iTunes since the start of 2015, I’ve still managed to consume a LOT of music through Spotify! You’ll know more about that once I start on my Best Of posts at the end of the year! I’m only including like five CDs to this list as I think that’s all I think I’ll be able to handle considering this little boombox only plays one CD at a time. My bigger one could store five at a time. The plus side to this is that this guy has to stay on the floor so I can switch CDs in and out of it. That’s another thing I like about it too!

**Only including links to show the cover art!**

Loved Me Back To Life by Celine Dion
Run by Alison Wonderland
Skrillex and Diplo Presents Jack U by Jack U
Goddess by Banks
Peace Is The Mission by Major Lazer

Other:

Last Christmas, well actually like a week before, we found a couple in town selling pillows. Ironically enough, pillows were on that wishlist and this was the only thing I got to have early! That pillow only lasted like three months! I’ve switched my pillows like five times this year… I have a big head, I can’t help it. So I would like a new pillow for Christmas! I definitely don’t need any more blankets. I literally have two on my bed right now! Another item I’m asking for that was on my last wishlist is a curtain rod. No, I didn’t get one last year even though quite a few people thought it was a good idea!

I honestly don’t know what else I want. I definitely don’t need anymore socks or coloring books. My nana and I are kinda of obsessed with nail polishes. She’s running out of room in her cabinet for them, but I think we need more! She likes the nude, pinks, and berry shades, whereas I’m into both darker and bright colors! Neither one of us like glitter because it takes forever to remove.

This might be a little strange, but what I really want for Christmas isn’t something that you can give in the sense of a regular present. My ultimate Christmas present is to be able to do more things, which is a little more harder to accomplish since it’s getting colder and with out snow blizzards we tend to get towards mid-January to the end of April. I want to learn to do more things, I know I say that a lot lately but it’s true. I do want to learn more about my family history, figure out what else I can do with my toes, etc. When it gets colder outside I tend to get more stiff in my body. I have a little bit more pain in different areas, so I want to be fully distracted whenever those times come. I’m basically asking for more strength and energy. I’m also saying I’d like to explore a little more too!

Yeah, this is my little Christmas list for the year! If you’re still struggling to figure something out for me, cash works too! Is it just me but as we get older and older our lists gets more complicated and clothes wise than it used to be when we were kids? Maybe that’s why everybody thinks I’m difficult to shop for nowadays!