Festive Ideas

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 Dollar Tree ornaments

The birdbath idea would work even in a warm climate. Just float flowers in the water, and place it on your porch. It is a way to decorate without spending. If you need a front porch decoration and do not want to spend money or have  no time to do any thing elaborate, just fill your birdbath in winter and add greenery and shiny balls or bells. Let it freeze overnight or snow on top of it. The next day its a lovely greeting for your guest.

The ornaments on this tree came in packages of 3 for a dollar. They are glittered styrofoam shapes, and can be used in a bowl or basket, if you dont use a tree. (The flowers are hand made, from a friend). The butterfly topper also came from the dollar store, and comes in other colors.

I am currently working on some cardstock ornaments that anyone can make with the simplest materials.    I want to tell how we used to make glitter, when we didn't have any. Has anyone else done this?  We would take aluminum foil,  and clip it into tiny pieces. Then we would use hand made glue from flour and water or flour and cornstarch, and paint it thickly on an area and sprinkle the chopped up foil. It was not as convenient , but we did not have the dollar stores where you could get it so easily.  It just shows you that where there is a will, there is a way. We could find foil papers from the linings of boxes or wrappers around sticks of chewing gum. Just about any kind of packaging was scoured for signs of useful artsy materials.  Sometimes the most interesting art comes from people who had to "make-do."

Hopefully I will have a page of templates for an ornament, a card, and a tag, and maybe more.

I wanted to tell a little bit about cannisters, because I have noticed that in most decorating magazines and kitchen decor sites, the decorators are not displaying cannisters anymore. I think the graduated sizes of storage containers like this, give a kitchen a look of order. When you have a set of them, you can use  them like a theme for your kitchen. There have been some cottage shaped cannisters out there, too, but they were quite expensive. In spite of the fact that cannisters are not on display in pictures of kitchens like they used to be, you can still find sets all over the place, and they are quite pretty and in all imaginable themes. 

To see what might be available at your local Dollar Tree, go here http://www.dollartree.com/home.jsp   This site also shows some creative ideas of things you can do with cheap stuff. I made a wreath, using one of their styrofoam circles, and two of their pink  scarves.

                                                                 

From the dollar store, You will need two scarves and a styrofoam wreath in white, and a roll of pink wired ribbon, with a silver edge. The total cost is three dollars. You can add ornaments to this, also. I used it for a little girl's room. Total cost: two dollars and fifty cents.

close-ups of the pink wired ribbon from the dollar store