Holidays Archives - Yearning to Create

Jack O’Lanterns

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “I’m not real keen on Halloween.” But I do like to decorate for the seasons so pumpkins really work for me because they can be out for Thanksgiving early in October, and hang around for fall decor and Halloween. (Let me just add that I’m so glad our Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October, rather than the fourth Thursday in November because . . . I would just die having to have autumn decor up that long when there is all that beautiful Christmas stuff just waiting to be displayed!!!)

So let me take you on a tour of a few of the fake pumpkins hanging around my house.

My kids made these, some at YW’s and some at a craft class (thanks Shauna!)

It’s just a 2×6 cut out, painted, sanded, etched, stained.

I love how the etched lines POP after the stain is applied. The eyes are nails.

My Visiting Teachers dropped this cute pumpkin off on the last day of October because they hadn’t been able to visit me that month (thanks Shauna!).

He holds leaves and sits by my fireplace, or rather, by what will someday be my fireplace.

Check my fireplace out here.

This little pumpkin is just one of those thin little wooden things you buy and paint yourself – another thing one of my gals made.

Etching and distressing sure works wonders!

This one I made at Relief Society.

You can read more about this little candle holding pumpkin here.

And this here is my kind of pumpkin carving . . .

. . . I worked hard to light the candle and slip it in the open back of this metal Jack O’Lantern!

And there’s no stinky gooey mess to clean up!!!

And there you have it – all the effort I put into decorating for Halloween!!!

Now to find some new hiding places for all that candy that’s about to invade my house!

Jack O’Lantern Candle Jar

I made this cute little Jack O’Lantern candle jar at a Relief Society Meeting many years ago – back when we still did crafts at our monthly Homemaking night!

I guess the first step would be to choose your jar.

So, the very, very first step would be to get one of these little class candle holders from your stash, or from a dollar store. Then go back to the first step!!! You need to choose a jar thats top is the right size to hold your candle holder. Mine was some sort of food jar from the glass recycling bin. (Making a cute pumpkin from garbage is definitely good recycling!)

You’ll need a little votive candle for the stem. Green or brown look nice and stem-like.

In order to paint on a glass jar, you first need to paint the jar with something. I don’t remember what it’s called, but you can find it wherever you buy craft paints. It’s a medium that makes it so your paint will stick to the glass. You really need to do this step!!!

Then paint your jar in your choice of pumpkin colour. I added a few lines which are supposed to look like the ridges of a pumpkin – see those redish lines?

And the whole thing is toothbrush splattered with black and gold paint. Be sure all your paint is dry before you paint or stencil on the face. And don’t forget to add those gold dots in the eyes.

Embellish with rusted tin leaves, wire curled around your pencil, and jute.

And you’re done!!!

You know, I made this many years ago and bring it out every autumn, and I have still never lit the candle. Maybe this year?

The Maple Leaf Forever

I love our Canadian symbol of the maple leaf. It’s magnificent!

There is a song called “The Maple Leaf Forever”, and we really don’t hear it much. Sometime in my past I must have heard it, but the only part I remember was the title line at the end of the chorus. So I did what anybody would do these days: I googled it!

You can google it too if you want more info, but this is the chorus of the original version of the song (which was never our National Anthem, but was often played as if it was):

The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,

The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen and heaven bless
The Maple Leaf forever!

And here is the chorus of the more recent version, which was actually sung by Michael Bublé at the 2010 Olympic Closing Ceremonies:

Long may it wave, and grace our own,

Blue skies and stormy weather,
Within my heart, above my home,
The Maple Leaf forever!

Anyway . . . about ten years ago I made a quilted Maple Leaf wall hanging at a little quilting class in town.

I didn’t do too badly here in my first attempt at quilting anything, but don’t look too closely!

It’s thirteen squares across and down. I love the non-traditional flag colours.

It was easily quilted to look like veins in the leaf.

I even found little maple leaf buttons for the corners.

Long may it wave, and grace our own,
Blue skies and stormy weather,
Within my heart, above my home,
The Maple Leaf forever!

Indoor Snowballs

A Facebook friend of mine posted a picture of a bucket of snowballs she had bought for her family. (If you Google search Bucket of Snowballs, you can see what I mean!)

I saw her picture and instantly knew that my family would have a lot of fun with something like that. So of course I started thinking, “How can I make that?” The snowballs kind of had me stumped though because I wanted something light that could be thrown at anyone at no risk of injury, but I’m not much of a sewer and I didn’t know how to sew spheres and didn’t have time to learn right then, so . . . I kind of put that project in a dark recess of my brain to be recalled at some future time.

Then, one day, a few weeks before Christmas, I was in a dollar store (busy place just before Christmas!) and I saw some small plush baseballs. My mind instantly recalled the recessed snowball project and I knew that these baseballs were perfect. I emptied the shelf – all eight of them. Then I went to the isle of containers and found a suitable snowball bucket.
Then there were only two things left to do:
– spend about five minutes total snipping the red stitching off the balls so they wouldn’t look like baseballs anymore
– painting the word Snowballs on my bucket. I just free-handed it and painted it on with regular craft paint.

And this is what it ended up like . . .

Oh, I painted a few snowflakes on as well.

Doesn’t look like a baseball anymore – snowball all the way!!!

Vinyl lettering would have been perfect for labeling the bucket too.

I gave this to my family on Christmas Eve. No one needed pajamas this year so we opened this instead. I had taken Lee (my 14 year old) into my confidence and she wrapped all the snowballs individually for me. So on Christmas Eve, dad got to unwrap the bucket and the rest of us opened snowballs (except Mac – she opened her new pair of pink Princess slippers!). So we were all armed and he wasn’t!!! Dad got bombarded with snowballs and of course a big snowball fight followed. We even used the wadded up wrapping paper if we didn’t have a snowball nearby.

Here’s a Christmas morning photo – can you find the bucket? Dad seems to get pelted a lot!!!

We’re still having lots of fun with them – the novelty hasn’t worn off at all. Snowballs are always flying by. And I’m happy to report we haven’t had a single human injury – the bird did get knocked off someone’s shoulder once, but it fluttered to the ground with no problem! I’m thinking that I’m gonna have to be on the lookout for more plush baseballs – I think we need another bucket in the family room!!!

Missionary Christmas Stocking

The most exciting thing happened!!! My second daughter decided to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

She was called to serve in the Mexico Mexico City Southeast Mission for a year and a half. For the first six weeks of her mission, she was in Provo Utah at the Missionary Training Center (MTC), where she learned how to teach the gospel, and began learning how to speak Spanish. We took her to Utah on December 11, so she was going to be spending her first Christmas away from home in the MTC. It was an awesome experience for her!

Once I realized she’d be gone for Christmas, I started thinking about the first package we’d send her – a Christmas one. I wanted to make her a memorable stocking, yet a humble stocking, and this is what I came up with.

It actually turned out super cute and now I want to make one for everyone in my family, with different quotes/scriptures on them.

First step was to choose what I wanted it to say. For a missionary “Called to Serve” was a pretty good choice! But I was also debating using her favourite scripture “Trust in the Lord” (Proverbs 3:5).

I got my artistic daughter to write out the words and I copied them in pencil on to the drop cloth. Yes, the stocking is made from a drop cloth (what you throw on the ground to protect your floor while painting!). That’s pretty humble fabric!

Then it was simple embroidery in dark brown floss over the letters.

I lined my stocking with the green plaid fabric because I didn’t want the embroidery floss to get snagged when Santa stuffed the stocking.

I lined up my fabrics and sewed them together, overlapping the green over the front of the stocking at the top.

Then with the right sides together, I sewed my stocking together.

I added some gathered eyelet ribbon and a piece of jute string to hang it with.

The final touch was this light brown ribbon/lace trim.

Love how it turned out – and it didn’t cost me a cent. Made it all from stuff I already had.

Santa stuffed it full before shipping it off to her.

Our missionary unpacking her Christmas package – it got to her before Christmas!

Next Christmas her companion is going to have to fill it!

Our missionary’s first Christmas, with a Charlie Brown tree.

Perfect for one who has been Called to Serve the Lord!

Flat Missionary Advent Calendar

My daughter Min is serving as an LDS missionary in Mexico City for 18 months. I wanted to send her an advent calendar to help her enjoy the Christmas season. Shipping to Mexico isn’t the easiest thing, so I wanted an advent calendar that would fit nicely into a large envelope, rather than a package. Another brilliant missionary momma (Teri) had this great idea to make one out of baseball card holders. So I borrowed her idea of the card holder to make my version of an advent calendar.

Mac holding the finished product.

These are the three separate page protectors for baseball cards. Each page has nine slots. I just cut Christmas scrapbook paper into the right sizes and copied a scripture advent calendar on each one. This advent calendar is based on one that was printed in the New Era magazine in December 1989 called Come, Let us Adore Him: A Live Advent Calendar. I just copied the scripture reference and the hymn. If you click on the picture, it should enlarge it enough to be easily read.

This is the advent calendar we do at home every Christmas, so I thought it would be nice if our missionary was reading the same thing as us each day.

The back side isn’t looking to fancy to start with . . .

Also in each little pocket I included a gospel picture. Where possible, they correlated to the scripture of the day. So the idea is that she puts the gospel picture in the front of the pocket of each day once she’s read the scripture.

By the time Christmas arrives, she’ll have a page of lovely pictures of the Savior and other gospel items that she can have up in her apartment all year (or at least until June when she comes home!)

I tied jute string at the top. But the knots were a little bulky and made my package bigger. If I was doing it again, I’d use a smaller string, or ribbon or yarn that wouldn’t make the postal workers need to measure my envelope!

To attach the three pages to each other, I simply used clear packing tape and taped across the back side of the pages. Worked great – holds it tight and is still easy to fold up to pack into that envelope, and later, into her suitcase!!!

I also tucked a little Christmas quote or story for her to read in each day too. I was planning to put a balloon in some of them too, with Christmas messages for her to blow up and get, but forgot to do it when the family was all together. We’ll save that for another package.

And there it is. I mailed it on September 22 in hopes that she will have it by December 1st.

Simple, inexpensive, but fun for my missionary!

(Edited to add: She finally received it on January 19 – too late for Christmas this year, but it can be used forever!)

Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!!!

July 1, 1867 – Canada got its start.

Sir John A. MacDonald played a major part!

So if we do the math, today is Canada’s 144th Birthday!!!

One thing I admire about our neighbours to the south is how patriotic they are. They LOVE the Fourth of July and go all out in decorating and partying to celebrate their Independence Day. I don’t think we do half as much celebrating as they do.

I have a few Canadian decorations like this garden stake that sits in the garden all summer.

And I have this wooden flag on my porch. The other side of the board is a little house with the words Simple Life on it. I usually have that side showing all summer and then rotate it to the flag side for the holidays.

My porch animals keep moving – they’re alive!!!

But one of my favourite sights on Canada Day is this . . .

. . . our Flag!

The youth in each ward in town have an annual fundraiser. We pay $40 and they will put a flag up in our yard for every holiday from Victoria Day in May to Thanksgiving in October.

I love to see all the flags flying around the neighbourhood on all the holidays, but they look especially grand today, on Canada’s Birthday.

“God keep our land glorious and free,

O Canada we stand on guard for thee,

O Canada we stand on guard for thee.”

I LOVE YOU CANADA!

Easter Display

Easter is a wonderful holiday! What a wonderful thing to celebrate – the Atonement and Resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

But I’ve never been too thrilled about the idea of the Easter Bunny bringing things. Now don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate just as much as any other normal woman out there, and love any excuse to buy it. But, a rabbit bringing treats – I don’t get it!!!

The Easter Bunny doesn’t visit our house. On Easter Sunday my family woke up to find a display up high on the piano (away from little fingers of course!).

There were pictures of the resurrected Christ and bowls of Easter treats.

Eggs symbolize “new life” and so does “resurrection”.

Completely perfect for our family!

And now an Easter picture of my reverent daughters!!!Happy Easter!

Easter Treats

This is how Easter treats happen at my house: I provide ingredients and a recipe and inform my girls that they get to make Easter treats for the family! Isn’t that great?

And they get all excited!!!

Okay, I’m not completely lazy – I did have an important thing to do:

I was over at the new house, drawing my kitchen cabinets on the plywood, to see if what I’d designed on paper would actually fit in the space my guy provided for the kitchen.

Here’s my design on paper. It was out by about two inches on one wall. See, that’s what I needed to know before I start getting quotes! So my time was well spent!

As I walked in the door, the girls said “We just finished the nests! Come and see them!”

Great work girls – they look delicious!!!

I’m happy, they’re happy, and we have some yummy treats, so dad is definitely happy!!!

And if you want to make your own, bring the syrup and sugar to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the peanut butter and then the rice krispies. Form into nests and decorate with jellybeans.

And that’s how Easter treats are made at my house!!!

My “Word” for 2013

It’s New Years Day!!! Time for me to craft my “word” for the year onto a block of wood that will sit beside my bed.

You can read more about what this means in last years entry (find it here).

It took me longer this year than it ever has before to choose my word. Usually they just jump into my mind, weeks before New Years. But this year, I even had to ask my FB friends for suggestions, and here’s what I got:

Rest, Joy, Love, Peace, Fun, Bacon, Stand, Create, Faith, Trust, Cleave, Cherish, Chocolate, Quest, Discernment and Laugh (hmm . . . this one’s from my daughter!)

Lots of great ideas! I was leaning towards the words Cherish, Love and Treasure (although Bacon and Chocolate ranked right up there too). But I also need to have Fun and Laugh more too! So when I found this word this very morning, it was like a lightbulb going off in my head!!!

So without further delay, my “word” for 2013 is . . .

. . . Savor! (or “savour” depending on your spelling preference!)

The verb means “to appreciate fully; enjoy or relish”, and this could apply to anything – like each day, or people, or events, or life. So to me it basically means to find joy in everything and love and cherish everything.

The noun refers more to flavour, like in the scripture Matthew 5:13 “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

When I chose “savor” I was thinking more of the verb, but I love how the noun ties into the bacon and chocolate words, which are indeed some of my favourite things! And I think that when I’m eating a Lindor chocolate, I’m experiencing both the verb and the noun!

I included this quote by John Wooden on my block because I think it’s a good reminder. Whatever happened yesterday, today is a new day – make it a masterpiece; savor it all.

And to remember my past words (yes, I’m still working on them!) . . .

2010 – Patience

2011 – Delight

2013 – Courage

2013 – Savor

One other thing that I especially like about the word “savor” is that it looks a lot like the word “Savior”. When I glance at my block, it not only reminds me to savor everything and everyone each day, but also to appreciate fully, enjoy or relish my Savior, and all He has done for me.