Snowball Emergency Kit and Tree Skirt

Can you tell life has calmed down a bit? I finished the sprint to Christmas and now have time to post a few things. I'm also stuck in take-out boxes. For a few neighbor gifts I made more divinity, rolled it into balls and then made snowball emergency kits like this one.

The sticker label across the tops says: "Snowball Emergency Kit:

We're dreaming of a white Christmas, but in case it isn't white;

These little baby snowballs are ready for the fight!

Hope your Christmas is heavenly and that you enjoy this snowball divinity!" Then I attached a more religious message with a bow on top. Take-out boxes are so much fun.

 I also needed a tree skirt. Since we moved, we couldn't find the one my MIL made me about 10 years ago that we have used every year. We have searched every Christmas bin and still no luck. I swear, we always lose things when we move! I still can't find my silicone hot pad that I lost 5 years ago in our move to the East Coast. I'm still a little sore about that. But, anyway, I digress. Tree Skirt: We got this ginormous tree this year! (Never doing that again!)  Since we couldn't find our traditional tree skirt, we had a tarp wrapped around the base. UGLY! So, I bought a little one from Target. Now, my allegiance to Target remains steady, but the little tree skirt just wasn't big enough. It was 48" diameter and solid red, and just NOT big enough for this tower of a tree. Seriously, I think it's 17 feet tall. It touches the vault. I digress again.

So, being unhappy with the little red tree skirt that couldn't, I thought bigger. And I see potential in things beyond what they're intended for. I didn't want to spend $50 on a big tree skirt, so I found a round tablecloth instead. $15 and a pair of scissors later, this is what we have!

I cut a slit down the back and a circle in the middle, hemmed the edges and wrapped it around the trunk! Took a whole 20 minutes. And the tablecloth was 70" in diameter, so quite a bit bigger.

I must also say that I like the print of the tablecloth-turned-tree skirt. It has the 12 days of Christmas printed around the edges and a great round red border. Made it easy to cut the circle out of the middle.

So until we find the tree skirt of yore, this one will fit the bill. Happy Christmas!

Lamp shade

I hate lamp shades. They are so hard to figure out. What I've concluded about them is to never, ever buy them separately from the lamp. Or to add blue flowers. Which is the mistake that happened here. I had a perfectly good drum lamp shade. Plain, but good. Here's the problem: I always think plain is just not enough. In this case, it should have been. So, after I added the blue flowers, the shade looked a little too wedding-cake-ish. Not going to fly on the lamp. Not at all! So I had to laboriously pull (rip) each fabric flower, (which had been attached very well!), off of the shade. It left horrible pock marks of hot glue all over the shade where the flowers were attached. See here:
Poor lamp shade. It was still very useful, but I just couldn't leave the hot glue unattended. (You never should. Says so right on the hot glue label.)

So, this is how I fixed it. I know-- pretty unoriginal to just add ribbon around the edge of the shade, but I already messed it up so badly before that I just couldn't dare to hurt this poor lamp shade any more.

Nice and clean. Much better.

Hardware love

So, if you had these pieces, what would you do with them? I think I have an idea. Or two.

Fun with acorns

I wanted a really inexpensive item to fill some glass cylinders I have. We had tons on great acorns on the ground at a park, so I played 'squirrel' and gathered at least 100 of those nuts.
And of course, I couldn't leave them alone. So, silver spray paint...
Red, yellow, orange, and blue acrylic paint and glitter glue...
A 'spray booth' (box)...
And some big glitter later, we had tons of decorated acorns to hang or toss anywhere, or pretend they were little people with hats. These glittered acorns ended up on our Christmas tree. Nice sparkle.

Living room pillows

I'm in need of some major assistance for this @*#$! living room! Where are you, Mom, Holly or even Christina at Full house? Somebody help me!
I tried a quick fix: pillows.
B thinks they're too wild. I think they're a hoot!
Can you tell my living room is boring me?
Oh no! She's bored again!
That means something hairy (look on the seal-skin pillow) is about to emerge.
Any thoughts?