Holiday Projects In Full Swing

Holiday preparations are in full swing. Christmas decorating is happening tonight. Yes, I was once a hard-core purist about not decorating until after Thanksgiving but this year, I'm going for it. Want the holidays to be lo-o-o-n-g and enjoyable.

I decided to see how much I could make with stuff I already had on hand. So I rummaged through my craft supplies for holiday-ish papers, lettering, ribbon, glue sticks, paper punches and I stole a glitter pen from The Little Bug. She won't ever be using them again anyway, after the glitter glue pen disasters that occurred when they were purchased. That stuff is wicked messy and takes all together too long to dry, even for me.

I'm trying to keep the holidays on a very tight financial leash. I've been saving up coupons for every store I might even remotely walk into this season. Most of all Michaels and JoAnn Fabrics. On my list of purchases for this week are some dollar store doilies, more glue sticks, glitter pens, styrofoam tree forms, more holiday paper, clothes pins, an embroidery hoop and construction paper.

So far I have been whipping up some gift tags, paper garlands with fun holiday phrases, framed decorations and some experiments with foam core scraps. My biggest inspirations so far have come from Stylizimo and from the December Issue of Martha Stewart Living.  

I will confess that I have looked through Martha three times in the past 4 days, most recently last night to sticky tab all the pages of inspiration. In the end the magazine was pretty covered with sticky tabs. There is also a great 50% off coupon for Martha products at Michael's in the magazine. I think I'm going to get the circle cutter or an edge cutter...or a stack of lovely paper. There are good coupons for some other great retailers in there too.

Tomorrow I'll show a few more details of what I'm working on this year. Hope the beginning of your holiday week is going well. Happy Monday!