Happy December!

I was lucky enough to be staying in New York City last week for work.  They had the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Tree on Wednesday night, and while I missed the ceremony (I had to work late), I did get to see it.

December is exciting for me because it means I can finally start decorating for Christmas!  And this is the first year that we've had a house to decorate, so I'm kind of going crazy.  Plus, there are a million awesome Christmas craft ideas on Pinterest, and I want to do them all! 

I love felt ornaments.  Luckily, there are some that aren't too hard to make.  I found a very cute template for a peppermint felt ornament on Pinterest, originally from Pink Suede Shoe. 

Materials:
Red and White felt ($.29 each)
Ribbon
Needle/Thread

I started by cutting the felt using the free template that I printed from Pink Suede Shoe.

Then I sewed the swirl pattern to the circle of the peppermint. 

After both sides were done, I turned the pattern inside out, facing the front of the peppermint pieces towards each other, and sewed 80% of the way around.

I turned the peppermint inside out, added a ribbon, and finished sewing.  I completed the ornament with a ribbon.

 

Pretty cute, right?

I also saw an awesome ornament wreath on Matt & Becky, which I decided to try for myself.  Matt and I had bought a lot of plastic ornaments for our first Christmas tree last year, but this year I wanted to upgrade to glass.  I decided to use the old plastic ones for the wreath.  I don't know if I'd try this project with glass balls, just because if one of them breaks it would be annoying to replace it. 

Materials:
Plastic Ornaments (I used ones we already had, and bought some smaller ones for $4.50)
Wreath ($10, on sale for $7)
Hot Glue Gun

I started by using hot glue to attach the larger ornaments randomly on the wreath. 

I continued to fill in the wreath with the larger balls, trying to space the colors so they weren't grouped too much together.  Once I had placed most of the larger balls, I started adding the smaller ones in to fill the holes.

I'm very pleased with it.  The only problem is that it's too wide to fit between the front door and the storm door!  I'm still not sure where I'm going to hang it.  Maybe I'll try hanging it on the outside of the storm door. 

Has anyone else been working on holiday crafts?  I have some more coming up, plus my holiday decor.