Christmas Cheer #12: Christmas Menu

We're finally here! The last Christmas post! And it's about one of my favorite topics: Food! I really wanted our Christmas menu to be perfect. We don't do dinner like a lot of people do, we do more of a lunch with lots of appetizer-ish foods. The idea is to eat all day long. I spent a LOT of time on Pinterest and kraftfoods.com to come up with the best menu and (with Madre's help), I think it was awesome. We had 7 people to feed:

1. Ham & Cheese Sliders

2. Mini Lasagnas

3. Homemade Chips & Salsa

4. Caprese Skewers

5. Poinsettia Mimosas

Check out the recipes after the jump!

Christmas Cheer #11: Lights and Stockings

Since this was our first Christmas in our house, we really wanted to make sure we got some lights up. Turns out, it's a lot harder without a ladder. Cory kept climbing out of our bathroom window and jumping onto the roof to get all the lights clipped up. It scared me every time. Since we put them up really late (and lacked hardware), we only put a few up. I was very happy with them though!

The multicolored ones blink. Pretty :)

We also put the same multicolored lights about our kitchen cabinets and along the back of our living room. Yay, lights!

Stockings! Since we were hosting Christmas, we wanted to fill stockings for everyone. We don't have a fireplace, or any sort of shelving/mantle in our front room yet, so we got some of those 3m hooks at the hardware store. They had pretty brushed silver ones, so they fit in really well and didn't look awkward. I hung them on the wall, and they were definitely strong enough to hold the stockings! I think they looked really good, and it was much better than laying the stockings out on the floor or windowsill.

Ho Ho Ho!

Christmas Cheer #10: Christmas Critters!

My critters like to get into the holiday spirit as well, so I thought I'd post some photos of them. Here we go!

When I was making the Rein-Beers, Sinatra kept playing with the antlers. I told him if he didn't leave them alone, I would put some on him. Guess what happened.

After awhile, he forgot they were there, and fell asleep. 

Kira and Jovie were very excited about their stocking. 

Kira would not let it out of her sight. 

Squeaky ball for Christmas! Yay!!

Bucky was so handsome with his Christmas bow.

He even went outside to show it off to the neighbors.

Merry Christmas from all of us to you!

Christmas Cheer #9: Rein-Beers!

This is one of my favorite posts because I LOVED my rein-beers- they're so cute! I got the idea from LifeOfAModernMom (check out her post here). I decided to make them for a couple of Cory's friends and our brothers.

It was as simple as wrapping brown pipe cleaners around the tops (I cuts some up and wrapped them around the bigger ones to create the antler look), and then gluing on googly eyes and red pom-poms to make the faces. I didn't have a hot glue gun (I do now-Thanks, Babe!), so I used tacky glue and then let them sit on their backs overnight.

We got 6 packs of Leinenkugel's and mixed them up so everyone would get a variety (we also got a 6 pack of Woodchuck's Hard Cider for our gluten free amigos). We put them under the tree and everyone loved them!

This was my first attempt. I ended up changing the antlers a little bit.

Rein-Beers!

Sinatra wanted antlers, too. He was very "helpful".

Deer in the headlights with Rein-Beers!

Christmas Cheer #8: Gifts from the Kitchen

Like I said earlier, I wanted to do all homemade gifts this year. I figured that one "craft" was enough (those hand warmers took a really long time), so I decided that my other gifts should come from the kitchen. I get bored with making cookies, so I wanted to do something a little different. After scouring Pinterest, as per usual, I came up with some really good ideas and narrowed it down to

1. Peppermint Hot Fudge

2. Cinnamon Honey Butter

3. Cinnamon Sugar Almonds

4. White Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Check out the recipes after the jump!

Christmas Cheer #7: Hand Warmers

I saw a link on Pinterest (Follow Me!) for these really cute heart shaped hand warmers. I thought it was a tutorial, but alas, it was not. It took me to someone's Etsy shop so I could BUY these cute little suckers. As much as I would love to support someone else's Etsy shop, I vowed to make my gifts, and my budget wouldn't have allowed me to buy them anyways. My only choice was to make them myself!

I started with just some basic pieces of felt from Michael's. I got the $0.30 sheets in dark red and off white. All I did was cut out hearts from the felt (just like in grade school- fold the page in half so both sides are symmetrical!). I matched them up and made sure they were the same size (and did any necessary trimming). 

Since these were going to my family, I wanted to personalize them a little bit. I posted a couple of weeks ago about losing my grandma. She was known for her love of cardinals. I wanted to bring them into the gift, so that people would think of her when they held the hearts in their hands. I looked up a picture of a cardinal, and sketched it out on the red felt (it was very rough, not detailed at all). It worked out pretty well to just hand sketch and cut them out- most of them actually resembled cardinals! To attach them to the hearts, I just sewed them on- sort of like I would've sewn a button.

Once I had matching hearts, I started to hand sew them. I got thread and needles for Walgreens because I didn't have any, and it was the only place that was open (seriously, it was pretty classy.). Once I got most of the way around, I stopped, and filled them 2/3 of the way up with rice (regular cheap rice from the store-just don't use instant!). Once they had rice, I continued sewing all the way around the heart until it was completely shut. Ta-da! Hard warmers!

After making 10 with cardinals, I was pretty sick of trying to cut out a bunch of tiny birds and I was running low on white felt, so I ended up making 10 hearts out of the red felt and matching them up with the other hearts as pairs. They looked really cute! I tied them up with string and put a note on that said "Put me in the microwave for 30 seconds, and I'll keep your hands warm for 30 minutes to one hour!"

Christmas Cheer #6: Homemade Tree Skirt

It took us a long time to get our tree up, and since it was our first tree ever, we didn't have a skirt for it. I got some inspiration from Pinterest (Follow Me!), as usual, and then tried to figure out how it would best work for me.

The two tutorials I looked at (HGTV's here and MyCrazyLife's here) were pretty much the same, both for a no sew ruffled tree skirt. I knew that any sort of ruffles would not only repel Cory, but attract the kittens. I have enough trouble keeping the critters away from the tree, so I opted for a simpler option.

We went to JoAnn's and found the most amazing burlap!

We loved it because it looks like it has Santa Keys all over it! For those of you who don't know the story of the Santa key, here's a brief explanation: If you don't have a fireplace, Santa has no way to get into your house unless he has a Santa Key. You take an old key with ribbons around it and hang it on the door so Santa can use the key to get into the house to deliver his presents. 

Since we don't have a fireplace, I thought this would be perfect!

We got 2 yards of fabric, which cost about $12.00. Sweet. I cut a 48"x48" square out of the fabric, and saved the rest for later:

Next, I folded it into quarters like the tutorials told me to, then folded the smaller square into a triangle.

I flipped it over so I could cut more comfortably, and cut the top corner off to make a circular-ish shaped skirt. Now, before I did this, I practiced on paper, and it was REALLY hard for me to get a perfect circle. Since I couldn't even do it would computer paper, and I only had a certain amount of fabric, I decided not to go for the perfect circular shape, but to try for a scalloped edge instead.

Next, I cut the middle. Most tree skirts obviously have a circular center, but I wanted to see if I could make it work with a star-shaped center. I might go back and edit this next year because it honestly was a little annoying to try and put around the tree, but it looks really cool on the ground. I just cut a V shape at the bottom of the triangle:

and Viola! Skirt!

I did spend a little time rounding out my scallops a little more and making them more symmetrical. It's not perfect, but it was good enough for me. All that was left was to cut a slit in one side so it could be wrapped around the tree. Unfortunately, we have a GIANT tree stand (seriously...it's huge), and the skirt barely covered it:

I didn't like how it looked at all, so I ended up putting the skirt completely under the tree and tree stand, and then wrapping the extra fabric around the tree stand itself. It looked SO much better!

Before:

After:

The edges did fray a little bit, but that could be easily fixed by using fray-blocking glue. It didn't look too bad with the burlap, though- it kind of fit the look.