Christmas Craft Tour: Homemade Gift Tags/Ornaments

I read A Beautiful Mess pretty religiously. And while some of the projects those girls do stem from their natural artistic ability (which I do not have) some set the bar low enough that I can feasibly achieve some success. Such are these gift tags! Here is the original post for the project. You'll notice that I've copied it very closely, right down to the designs themselves. I'm a wonderful copy cat and a piss poor artist. Anyway, here's the process!

Sculpey Clay is available at Walmart for about $6. My package made about 30 small gift tags. If you want bigger ornaments or have more tags to make- go for two. 

I don't actually have any round cookie cutters so I used the cap from a plastic martini shaker and a small, square hors d'oeuvres bowl. 

Here's my drawing process. You'll notice that most of my tags turned out brown, not white like the original project. This is because once again, I failed to properly read directions. (Noticing a pattern here?) I really over-baked them because I expected for them to harden while baking. In reality, they harden as they cool and I didn't realize that until the last 6 or so that I baked. However, my wrapping this year is just some brown kraft paper and string and so it goes quite well.

The original post recommends using a paint pen, but I found a sharpie worked just fine. See? 

The crop of them: 

I rounded them up, took them upstairs, and started wrapping away! I'm still not finished wrapping the gifts I've purchased! 

I'm really happy with how these turned out! They make the plain packages look special and personalized. The tags are tied up with gold ribbon and can be used as ornaments later! A definite success in my book. Inexpensive, easy, and impressive. 

Recipe Review- Muffin Pizzas

Time for another recipe review! I don't really count these sorts of posts as presenting any new information to you, because let's be honest- NONE of these recipes are original. In fact, they've already been blogged, reblogged, and redid. So at the risk of sounding like I'm trying to pry blog content right off of someone else's site, I refer to these as reviews. Just my take on the whole shindig! 

I made these delicious muffin pizza cups for dinner and I just can't even tell you how delicious they are. You must go out right now, spend like $2 and take like 5 minutes of your time and make them yourself. 

The first time I made them, I just grabbed pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and the crust and it was so good. I added a sausage this time and made my own sauce and of course, it was great again. Turns out, just like regular pizza- the possibilities are endless.. 

Browning up sausage (Does this gross you out? Should it gross me out? It doesn't.)

I used the premade pizza crust that comes in a biscuit can- which totally exists. I also increased this recipe from 8 servings to 12 by not reading the recipe all the way through and making enough to fill my entire muffin pan. If you make these, don't worry about your dough not filling up each cup. It will rise as it bakes and everything will work perfectly. And deliciously. 

Here's the story about making my own sauce. Again, I ignored the recipe and didn't even realize it includes making your own sauce. I thought I was being originally creative here. At any rate, it mostly came from the place of me shopping at Aldi, them not stocking pizza sauce but having tomato sauce available for $.38 and me thinking that sounds a heckuva lot better than spending $3 on a big jar I'll never use up. So I just dumped it into a bowl, tossed in some Italian seasoning, some oregano, and salt and pepper. Seemed okay to me! 

Filling up the adorably delicious muffins (You should have extra sausage left. You can eat this for breakfast later.)

Fill with cheese and put a little pepperoni hat on it! 

If you are in my kitchen, using my oven, and I am- then bake these at 400 degrees for 17 minutes. 

THEN EAT THEM LIKE THE PIZZA MONSTER YOU ARE. NOMNOMNOM. 

So good and you're welcome.

A Heart Attack

I spotted this idea on Pinterest earlier in the summer and KNEW I wanted to use it. I love sending mail and most of all, I like letting the people I love know how important they are to me.

What better way to say I love you than sending a Heart Attack? I picked up a gift box that I didn't end up needing at Hobby Lobby so I decided a Heart Attack would be the perfect use for it. This one went to Brett's mama and papa. We don't see them as much as we would like and parents are pretty important people. You shouldn't wait for Valentine's Day or any other holiday to let them know how much you love them.

 The best part of this project is that you almost certainly have the supplies on hand. I just used several pages of scrapbook paper. 

 Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. I didn't use a pattern. I just free-handed it. It took most of an evening, but I just snipped away while Brett and I watched Beverly Hills Cop. 

 Definitely write a love note at the bottom of your box! Dumping out the box really drives home the "attack" in my opinion. 

I wrote some simple instructions, closed the box, and sent it on its way! 

We hope they loved it as much as we love them! Don't wait until Christmas- surprise somebody you care about with a heart attack! 

Day 3 and 4: Treats! Plus BBQ Beer Chicken

Days 3 and 4 were all about the treats. A Christmas coffee and donut one day, followed by s'mores the next. Yum. (PS, can you spot the sneak peek for my next Christmas Craft post?)

Very effective cooking method

This delicious treat was made complete with yummy hot cocoa. 

I also made something wonderful for dinner. Something truly amazing and fantastic. If there are three things I love in this world it is barbecue, beer, and my crockpot. This brought them all together. 

Here's the recipe for Barbecue Beer Crockpot Chicken. 

We had Schlafly Christmas Ale on hand so that's what I used. Folks, I drank a beer at 10 am. I'm serious. You don't just throw out perfectly good, unused Schlafly Christmas Ale. It doesn't matter WHAT time it is! (Don't worry, it was my day off.)

Sauce + Chicken. Simmer baby simmer.

 Shredded up and deliciously sauced.

I served it up the way the recipe recommended, with a serving of slaw on top! 

We demolished it. Exhibit A: 

I SERIOUSLY recommend this recipe. It's pitched as a summertime recipe in the original post, and I know its December but it is like 70 degrees. Close enough.

Christmas Craft Tour: Tree Skirt

In my quest to find projects to use up my wedding burlap, I searched Pinterest for "burlap crafts." What I came up with was a wealth of adorable DIYs that were totally doable with my hefty stash! When I found this tree skirt project, I knew it would be on my list of Christmas Craft "to-dos." I've only been celebrating an "Amanda" style Christmas for about 5 or 6 years now and in that time, I haven't found a tree skirt that I really treasured. I really love this one and I was able to use an old skirt that my grandma gave me last year. The only material I had to purchase was the linen fabric and LOTS of hot glue sticks! In terms of time, it was a Rio + Sunday afternoon length! (I measure my projects in terms of how many movies I can watch while working!) 

I cut up my burlap and fabric into 3 inch strips. The cutting and first row of gluing took most of one evening. 

The first row of ruffles. The ruffle technique took me a while to get used to. I wasn't sure if I was doing it right or not!

As with any project done in my house, it's pretty critical to have the squirt bottle on stand by. Fatty is sort of a trouble maker.

Here he is, keeping a safe distance under the skirt-less tree. 

I will say, it does help to have a cuddly doggie near by!

One row done! I was pretty exhausted at this point. Bed time!

I picked back up with my row of linen fabric (and a brand new crafty work space! More on that later.) More folding and gluing!

Ta-da! I just trimmed my edges and fluffed. No tricks for finishing.

Here it is under the tree! It looks so at home. 

Here's the tree and skirt in all its glory! I even had Christmas presents on hand for staging!

Merry Christmas and Happy Tree Skirt!

Day 2: Holiday House/Home Tour and a Sneak Peak!

Day 2 of our advent calendar activities took us to the Kirksville Arts Association to see their Holiday House Display. This event is a silent auction where wreaths and trees are raffled off as a fundraiser for the Arts Association.  The building is beautiful year-round but I'm partial to the Christmasy flair of this event. Here are some of my favorite wreaths!

Brett and my boss Debi and I also went on the Holiday Home Tour hosted by the Rotary Club. I love, LOVE fancy houses and the voyeuristic side of me was totally satisfied to wander around people's homes. Look at these gorgeous trees.

This house had a loft style second floor that had their 3 daughter's bedrooms and it was a princess paradise. I was beside myself with envy.

Their master bathroom suite had statues by the tub. Statues.

Just for fun, I thought I'd give you a sneak peak of what I've been up to craft-wise. You'll see the full project in tomorrow's post!

Day 1: Reindeer Romp

After a slightly rocky start (I accidentally put the slips of paper into the envelopes backward) Brett and I opened up our first advent envelope today! This one wasn't too much of a surprise, since we've been registered for the 1.5 mile walk/4 mile run for about a week and a half. But since it fell on the first day of December, it was a good fit for the calendar anyway. My boss Debi and I registered for the walk. Debi even wore a Christmas sweater. So on theme. 

Brett is a super athlete and ran the 4 miles, even though he did virtually no training. He's just awesome that way. Each participant got a pair of jingle bells to wear too!

I couldn't exactly justify a 10 am beer since I only did the walk, but Brett definitely enjoyed his! It actually started raining a bit during the event which made for some strange weather. It was cold/humid. A weird combo. I opted for hot chocolate instead.

We decided to make it an impromptu date-day and went out for lunch. We also picked up ingredients to make these delicious cookies (a favorite we tried for the first time last year!) so we are having a practically perfect start to our First Annual Comfy, Cozy Moser Family Christmas!