SPARKLY ORNAMENTS WITH NO MESS

I love Christmas ornaments.  My ornaments are probably the most organized part of my life (sad or awesome, you choose), and I have quite a few.  I especially love what I call Christmas balls.  I am sure that is not what I should be saying, but you know what I mean (the round ones).  My goal is to add a couple of new ones each year, so that I can vary my color scheme each year without spending a lot of money.  And I can get pretty particular as to exactly which color I have my eye on.  (Like yellow...but not gold...)
So two years ago, which translates to THREE Christmas seasons ago, I pinned this image of some ornaments I wanted to try to make.  I liked this for several reasons:
a) they are Christmas balls
b) they are glittery
c) they promise to be no mess
d) they can be customized to ANY color I want
Finally, this year would be the year.  I made the fantastic discovery that I had extra vacation days that I had to use before the end of the year, so I did what I have done very little of before.  I dropped Mason off at the babysitter and got a ton of stuff done, including making myself some new ornaments.
I had picked up fillable ornaments at Michael's a few weeks back, and I had extra fine glitter on hand (left over from my wedding almost 6 years ago - ha!), so this project was very inexpensive for me.  I wanted to use what I had to see how I liked it before buying new glitter.  I basically followed the tutorial from Pinterest (here), and it was so easy!  I'm definitely going to make more.

I have a few comments that I will share though.  First, the packaging has changed in the past few years and the Pledge stuff does not say Future Shine.  The bottle looks the same though, and the lid is still blue, if that helps.  Second, I actually did these two different ways.  The first way I did a whole ornament at a time - wax, glitter, done, repeat.  The second way I did all the wax, all the glitter, done.  And although an untrained eye probably couldn't tell the difference, I preferred the result of the first way better.  The second was faster though, so if you are not a perfectionist or don't plan to spend a lot of time examining your finished project, then the second way is fine.
As you can see, I did green (which I have wanted for a long time - yay!) and copper.  Now though, I CAN NOT WAIT to do more.  And the color possibilities are endless.  Pink!  Yellow!  Black!  (But not all on the same tree...I'm not that crazy.)
What have you been doing to prepare your house for Christmas?

SOMETHING QUICK

It seems like holiday weekends always kick start my blogging after a break, but this time I ran into a little snag.  We have a mac and I use iphoto to store all my pictures.  And I noticed on Friday when I went to import some pictures that it was gone. How an application just disappears is surely beyond me, but it did.  After a couple of days of trying to figure out how to fix it ourselves online, we resorted to making an appointment at our local Apple store.  30 minutes later, they had us fixed up and back in business.  I tell you that only because that is the reason I don't have anything good to share today.  But I do have something quick that I whipped up for the boy to play with. You may have seen it on Pinterest, since that is where I stole it from found my inspiration.

It's basically a matching game for him to practice his colors, but the clothes pin also help him work on his fine motor skills as well.  It keeps him busy for a few minutes, which is pretty much an hour in toddler time.  At least with my toddler!
Hopefully my computer woes are over and I can get back to sharing more of our summer as it comes to a close.

Wreath the Third

My friend Sara came over and we got our craft on and made...duh duh daaaa...a wreath!

All of the supplies except for the wreath form came from my stash, and I was very thankful that we were able to find some good colors!  It is funny how different types of projects require different types of color combinations.  And then sometimes I feel like I'm left with some odd choices.  But I digress...
I will say, for this wreath I used a form from a cheap fall wreath that was made of branches.  It definitely left our finished project looking a bit more rustic - you can see some of the original wreath sticking out (although you could probably remedy that by wrapping an additional layer of yarn), and it is not a perfectly uniform circle.  My personal choice is to use the wreath form made of green foam, but they all worked fine.

I am a little obsessed with these wreaths, but I'm pretty sure this was my last for the season.  Has anyone else made any wreaths?  Am I the only one?  Hmmm...probably.