News Paper Gift bags

I've been on a big recycling kick lately and am constantly on the search for was to upcycle as many items as I can. Thanks to Pinterest I have found lots of great ideas. Including this tutorial from How About Orange. I need to work on making these a bit bigger, but was impressed with how they turned out.

I used jewelry hemp and a plastic straw for the handles because that's what I had on hand. I like the added touch. The hardest part of this project was picking pictures and pretty things on the news paper that would look good on the bag. Now that I have a Cricut I can add fun embellishments to my gift bags!!

Christmas Crafts and Gifts

Happy Holidays!!! Grab a mug of cocoa and relax as you check out what this elf has been busy creating this month. In an effort to save money this year I have decided to make several of my own gifts. My friend Jen and I also had our annual Christmas craft day and made Count Down to Santa Calenders.

When A Cherry on Top did their October crop, they had a class to make a Christmas Countdown Clipboard.  This is what we used as inspiration for our projects. I wanted mine to be classic and fun and she did her's more vintage in style. Although it took all day Im very impressed with the results. We made these the week before thanks giving.

This one is mine.

This one is Jen's

On Sunday we got together again to work on some gifts. We both made chocolate covered marshmallow cocoa dippers. I also made some chocolate covered spoon dippers to go with some awesome mugs that I will show you in a bit.

Here are the Marshmallow dippers. The candy cane ones are my favorite.

I used sixlets, sprinkles, mini marshmallows and chips to decorate the spoons. Some I used the Andes mint baking chips for.

My favorite item that I crafted are the mustache mugs. I wish the was an original idea, but I saw them on Pinterest first and decided I just had to make them. Don't mind the terrible picture of me showing of the mugs.

 Here are all 6 mugs with a package of 4 dippers (2 of each) and a package of cocoa. The mugs have a mustache on both sides.

 My boyfriend gets his sister Christmas socks every year. So this is her mug. Don't you just love those cute ginger bread men bags!

I still have a lot of baking to do. In fact I should be doing that instead of blogging :) I have cookies and fudge left to do. I did manage to make these amazing Oreo truffles yesturday.  I started to run out of white chocolate so the last ones look more like dirty snowballs.

My final project are these adoreable cloth blocks for baby. I made some for T and some for the secret santa in my mommy group. I found the fabric at Joanns in a cute little bundle for $6.99. Im terrible at mesuring so they are more rectangle in shape but still fun. T tested them out for me.

Well I have more mugs and cookies waiting to be finished. Have a Merry Christmas!!