Family Traditions

it's me again....hope you aren't getting too sick of me posting

Christmas time is a time where I feel family traditions come out. My nephew recently had to do a school project on a family tradition and the only thing my sister could really think of was Christmas Family Traditions. By the way he ended up doing a report on getting Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve like a lot of families do. I think family traditions are an important part of what makes this holiday so great.

I decided to start a new family tradition. 

I stole got the idea from my good friend Rachel...(hi Rach)

What it is, is The Best Christmas House Lights Award

We went around looking at people's displays of  Christmas Lights 

We decided on a few that we thought were pretty good and 

then voted amongst those which one we like the best and gave them an award

Here is our Winner

 and here is the award we left for them
(in case you were wondering I just whipped up this little award in Picnik)

We had fun doing this and plan to do it again next year.

But next time we will head to a different part of town because the part that we drove 

around last night didn't seem to have too many wonderful and exciting light displays.

Do you have any fun family traditions you do??

2x4 Snowman

When I first ran across these on Pinterest I thought "hey those are cute and look pretty simple to make"

Well they were simple to make but when you decide to make 12 of them it becomes a little overwhelming

I followed instructions from THIS GREAT TUTORIAL from Under My Umbrella

I think hers turned out cuter than mine....oh well!

Hope the people I give them to like them.

I want to give a big  SHOUT OUT to my wonderful hubby who cut and sanded 

all the wood for me in the freezing cold.

I've got lots of wood left over and have plans to make something Valentine's Day-ish out of it!!

Starlite Wreath

I have not been in a crafty mood lets say for the last 3 months or so but when I saw THIS cute wreath on Pinterst I decided that that was going to be my Christmas Wreath this year.

Here is how mine turned out....not too shabby, huh???

I am not good at writing tutorials (I always forget to take pictures as I go along...oops) so if you would like to make one click HERE and it will take to the site I used.

I did however shellac mine because when I walked into the room and found my 4 year old licking it I just knew that it needed to be shellaced or else it would probably end up being a sticky mess.

It's super easy...if I can do it anyone can!!!

Baby Food Jar Christmas Tree

There he is my 5 yr old.  He ate what used to be in these jars.

 My husband's grandma has one of these and when I first got married (7 1/2 yrs ago)  I thought I should make one.  So when I had my first child (5 yrs ago) I saved all my jars. 

So I stored them of course year after year.  But we are moving after Christmas this year and I thought I have to do this now or just chuck the jars.  So here it is.

 I cleaned the jars and then hot glued some silver ribbon I had on hand around each jar.  

Then I glued them all together.  It was quite an adventure.

Then I filled them with this.

My husband's Grandma gave it to me from when she did hers so it is probably from 1970.
I cut is about 6 in long and shoved it in the jars.

Then I filled the jars with green lights.  Grandma's is filled with multi color lights.  But I had green on hand.

Then I got crazy with the ric-rac.  Have fun and hope you enjoy!

Merry CHRISTmas!!!