Crevices, halls and Dr. Offices are all decked...

We have been having such a merry time!

This year when the snow began falling (back in October) I suddenly got such an overwhelming urge to create and work on some Christmas projects! Kami was feeling the same way, so first we began making some village houses.  My sister, Heidi got into these a couple of years ago-she makes them out of cardstock- and she makes them SO cute.  I just wanted something for the shelf over my front door, so I had to blow them up 400%, making the church about 2 feet tall and the houses about 1 foot:

The village - still needing some more trees and stuff.

Kami made the houses the small size and decorated a shelf:

Hmm...Her black church steeple isn't showing up against the black bookcase. But it's cute, trust me.  Good thing I got this documented, because today the little boys already rearranged everything and snapped one of the figures in half...

Let's just look at the little village - I know that bottom shelf needs to be deleted...

The little girls even got excited and made a few houses of their own:

Very fun project.  If you are interested, google something like "Martha Stewart Christmas Village" and you can print off a pattern. (The little girls made up their own patterns, though, and my sisters claim that once you've made one you can create anything - that's a claim that I can't make.  A little lacking in imagination, I guess.)

I needed some trees for my village houses, so I decided to make some of those Alpine trees that you find in the craft stores for $25-$70 dollars when they're half price.  I made them for FIVE DOLLARS!!  And it was so incredibly easy!!

It's all in how you hold your mouth when you're drilling!:)

5', 4' and 3' - just to give some perspective.  Now they just need something to cover their bases, some lights, whatever.

Shawn cut me some branches while we were at my parents for Thanksgiving, but it would be so easy to recycle a live Christmas tree after Christmas and make some of these.  I bought some $5.00 garlands and cut them up for the branches, drilled holes and hot glued them in place.

I actually ended up sending these trees off to Boise with Shawn because he said that one of his Dr. offices was looking a little bare and was in need of some Christmas decor.

My favorite things that I just put together are these elegant/cute things:

I bought these candle sticks at Wal-mart for $15.00:

Then I went grocery shopping and found all of the jars that are in the picture - an Adam's PB jar, a pickle jar and one of those dips for chips jars. When we finished eating the contents, I spray painted the lids black to match.  Then while I was in Oregon, I had my dad turn, on his lathe, a few more pieces to go underneath and above the candlesticks: (I turned the candlesticks over)

Thanks dad! ( I'm actually posting all of this because my mom asked me to when I was talking to her this morning, since they had invested some time into these projects and want to see the outcome.)
Next I gave them a coat of red spray paint and lightly sanded down to the black.  The final product:

The great thing about these, is that you can change out the stuff in the jars to match the season of the year.  Wow, I am so happy with how it all turned out!  They will be great on my entry way table...now if I can only find the table runner that I made a couple of years ago, it will be perfect.

It's been fun, but I think I'm ready to focus on other things for awhile