Decking the Halls and the Living Room and the Dining Room

This year, I’ve decided our Christmas theme will be “Dollarama Chic.”  This theme goes nicely with the “Repurposing-Crap-We-Already-Have” theme that I’ve been employing around here since being on parental leave.  Pogey may suck the life out of you, but it forces you to get creative.  For example:

Canvas from the Dollar Store, wrapped in a scrap of fabric I already had.  I downloaded a silhouette of a reindeer head from the internet, traced it onto another fabric scrap, cut it out and glued it on.  Griffin insisted on the red nose.  Epsom salts make perfect fake snow in a candle holder and pine cones and real branches can be found almost anywhere.

I am a bit of a craft supply hoarder.  You know that sparkly zebra print scrapbooking paper you’ve been saving, just in case?  Well, here’s a good use for it…

For these, I used flat canvases from the Dollar Store.  They are also fun for kids to paint on, and can pop easily into frames (take out the glass).

Since I am also a picture frame hoarder, I am always looking for new uses for them.  I found an old Christmas card that I liked and popped it into a nice shiny frame.  And, again with the pinecones:

Yup, those are disco balls on the little tree.  I like shiny things.

I also took an old wreath that we’ve had forever and gave it a bit of a facelift.  Pimp my wreath:

Fake wreath + pine cones + lime green sparkly net stuff (what is that stuff called anyway?) + cheap gold ornaments I found in a box of my brother’s stuff he left in our shed (don’t worry, he will never read this) = jacked up wreath on the front door.

And last but not least, the simplest and probably the most important thing I’ve made this week, a very special key to hang on our door knob for Santa to get into our house on Christmas Eve.  We don’t have a chimney, so Santa will have to use the front door.

The keys came from Griffin’s play handcuffs (I swear) and the ribbon came from my extensive supply of someday-I’m-going-to-use-this-ribbon, ribbon collection.  Oh, and if you’re going to use this idea for your kids, please don’t use your real house key.  Sounds obvious I know, but you’d be surprised…

We’ve been working on lots more things, but these were the only ones worthy of being published.  There are lots of things piled up, half-finished on the kitchen table (Ken just loves that) that I may get around to fixing and finishing one of these days.  Stay tuned, my mind NEVER stops 🙂

Happy Thursday!