25 Days of Christmas: Day 22

For day 22 of my 25 Days of Christmas challenge, I have another fun gift idea for the holidays. You can get this really cute snowman wrapper for free from Aimee Asher of you can design your own. Wrap it around a gift of your choice to make it more festive. You also use gloves for the hat so you could use it to make the gloves more fun if they are the main gift or you can buy a cheap pair at the dollar store and include it with another main gift. I chose to wrap it around microwave popcorn which is perfect to pair with a dvd or blu-ray gift.

Supplies Needed:
Snowman wrapper
Microwave popcorn (or you could use a chocolate bar, etc)
Pair of gloves
Tape
Ribbon

Simply cut the snowman wrapper to size and tape it around your item, in my case, the microwave popcorn. Next take your gloves and put one inside the other so the person gets a pair still. Then place the gloves over the top of the snowman's head. Next tie a ribbon in a bow around the gloves and you have a cute snowman with a hat! You can add a scarf using felt if you want but I chose not to. Pair with a Christmas favorite dvd or blu-ray for an awesome gift!

On the Fifth Day of Christmas...

On the fifth day of Christmas, another fun way to do a themed gift is to make your own gift basket. My idea on the fourth day of Christmas was taking a "boring" gift and making it fun and themed. That example is when the main gift is the dvd or gift card and you're just adding a few bells and whistles to it. A gift basket is a collection of gifts where they all add up into one gift. There are so many gift basket options out there that you can buy pre-made but they're always so expensive. Plus sometimes it's just more fun to make your own. You can honestly make a gift basket out of any theme. That's the beauty of it. Since I used my Secret Santa example from last year, I'll use mine from this year as well. I heard mine really liked garlic so I decided to put together a garlic themed gift basket. I used fresh garlic cloves and a mini chopper to chop them up, garlic sea salt, garlic parmesan dressing, a bar that gets the scent of garlic off your hands and a book all about garlic that included a lot of recipes. Depending on your price range, you can do a big gift basket or a smaller one. If you have a budget, just make sure you're being resourceful in the items you get as the price can add up quickly. You also have to factor in the price of the basket. You can find affordable baskets, but you have to look for them. If you just go to a craft store and pick up the first basket you see, you'll probably spend too much!

Idea: Themed Gift Basket

Choosing the basket: Make sure you have a plan for what you're going to put in the basket before buying the basket. You don't want to get too big of a basket and then it will look empty if you don't have enough items to fill it. On the same note, you don't want a basket that is too small if some of the items you are buying are bigger. I would recommend buying the items first if you can, then searching for the right size basket to put them in. Also, that way you will know how much you have to spend on the basket after you've purchased the actual gifts. You also don't necessarily need to buy a "basket" if you can think of a more creative container that goes along with your theme. For example, if it's a drink theme, you could use an ice tub or cooler or if it's fishing themed, use a tackle box.

Filling the basket: As stated above, make sure that the items you buy fill the basket properly so it looks good. Presentation is half the fun of a gift basket. Make sure all the items are themed, don't just throw random things in unless random is your theme. Also, don't add something that doesn't go with the theme just because you have it and need a little more space to fill. You can use tissue paper or shredded colored paper as fillers for any empty space. You could also find a gift that goes with the theme that helps fill empty space. If you are making a baby themed basket, add a baby blanket to fill that space. Also make sure if you have any breakable items, that they are securely in the basket.

Putting the final touches on the basket: Cellophane, netting (similar to a veil) or shrink wrap are the best ways to "seal" up a basket. If you don't have the proper equipment for shrink wrap, just take cellophane or netting and wrap it around the basket and tie with a ribbon. If you are doing this last minute and don't have either of these choices, you can also tuck tissue paper around the items in your basket or just tie a ribbon or bow on top of the basket.

On the Second Day of Christmas...

To keep with the wine cork theme, on the second day of Christmas, I'm going to share a super easy, fun craft that also makes a great, personable gift.

Craft: Wine Cork Picture Frame

Supplies Needed:
12 Wine corks (amount needed may vary)
Cheap plastic picture frame ($1 or $2 at Walmart)
A print of a favorite photo to go in the frame

Tools Needed:
Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Step 1: Glue wine corks around frame
Step 2: Insert picture in frame

It is literally that easy. I like to use wine corks from the same winery and then put a picture from that winery in the frame. For example, in the picture above, I asked for spare corks at Keswick Vineyards and then the picture in the frame is of me and my boyfriend at the winery. I also gave my brother and his wife a picture of them together at a winery in Seattle with corks that I got from the winery on the frame. You could also mix it up with corks from wines you've tried together or different corks from a wine tour. Another variation of this would be to paint the corks to make the frame colorful. There are so many options!

On the First Day of Christmas...

As promised I am going to do a "12 Days of Christmas" affordable gift ideas blog of things that you can make, bake or put together yourself. I have a whole list of ideas but I haven't tried all of them. I only want to write about ones that I've personally made myself so I'm not just copying and pasting someone else's idea.

So on the First Day of Christmas, I'm going to share my favorite craft idea. A while ago, my boyfriend and I started becoming interested in wine. As we started to try different bottles, I decided to start collecting the corks. I thought it would be fun to figure out some wine cork crafts to do. What really jump started my cork collection was him bringing home a bag of corks from his work where they do wine tasting. That way I actually had enough to make a bunch of things since you have to drink a lot of wine to get your collection started.

So once I had corks, I needed ideas. Visiting a winery a couple years ago, we purchased the cutest reindeer ornament  I believe I paid $6 for it but decided it was a good investment so that I would have a tangible example if I wanted to try and make them myself.

Craft: Reindeer Ornament
Supplies Needed:
-5 wine corks (you can use cork or rubber corks but need at least one regular cork for the neck)
-Small red pom poms for nose
- Medium pom poms for tail, preferably in Christmas colors (red, green, white)
-Tiny black pom poms for eyes
-Brown pipe cleaners for antlers
-Brown felt for ears
-Thick decorative ribbon for saddle and thin ribbon to hang ornament
Tools Needed:
-Hot glue gun and glue sticks
-Scissors
-Knife

Step 1: Glue 4 wine corks together to make body and neck (see above picture).
Step 2: Before adding the head, shave the top of the neck using a knife so that the top is slanted.
Step 3: Glue the head on the slanted part so that it is at an angle (see above picture).
Step 4: Cut and shape pipe cleaners to make antlers and glue on head.
Step 5: Cut out 2 ears from felt and glue on back of head.
Step 6: Glue on 2 tiny black pom poms for eyes
Step 7: Glue on small red pom pom for nose
Step 8: Glue on medium pom pom for tail
Step 9: Cut a small piece of decorative ribbon and glue on for saddle
Step 10: Cut a thin piece of ribbon long enough to make a loop, tie it around neck leaving a loop to hang as an ornament.

This is one of those projects that's pretty self explanatory as long as you have an example to look at. You just need to get the basic body and then you can improvise with the add ons for the face, tail, ears, etc. I'm sure there are tons of variations. The first year I discovered these, I gave them as Christmas presents to everyone! They're super cute and fairly easy to make once you have all the supplies!