Week 16: Christmas Pine Cone Basket

I've seen these pine cone baskets on Pinterest around the holidays (see photo at right), but my mom has been making them since I can remember. These baskets are great additional light pieces around mantles or next to trees to help decorate.

To make something like this, you need a basket, pine cones, holiday ribbon, clear lights, additional holiday decoration, newspaper (for filler). Note that there's no right or wrong ingredient for your basket. If you want to use multi-colored lights, go for it.

First, use the newspaper or cloth filler in the bottom of the basket to line it. This way, you won't have to use pine cones underneath where people won't see anyways.

Begin filling your basket with pine cones and holiday decorations. You'll use a hot glue gun to secure the pine cones, decorations, ribbon, and lights so they don't move around. I chose silver balls and red flowers with green leaves for my decorations.

You'll continue to fill up the basket until you can't see the filler (newspaper or cloth) anymore. Once your basket is full, it's time to add ribbon, securing with hot glue. You can add ribbon however you'd like to the basket. In the Pinterest example above, they laid the ribbon on the outside. I chose to cover my handle with the ribbon and make a bow on the outside.

After the bow is in place, it's time for the lights. I like a lot of light so I glued the lights in very densely and around the handle. You can see the finished product in the example on the left.

One way to add another dimension to your basket is to add smell. You can get scented pine cones, or my mom always glued cinnamon sticks into the baskets. Whatever smell reminds you of Christmas can be integrated into the basket by purchasing scented things or scenting them yourself with oils.

Week 15: Personalized Baby Poster for Nursery

My husband and I chose to not to share the name we had chosen for our son until he was born. But to
tease the masses, we did share the initials with them and told them they had to guess. I collected all of the name suggestions from when we found out we were having a boy until we revealed the name. Some of the names were real suggestions and some were funny, but we kept them all!

I listed them vertically on a page, next to a photo of our newborn, his name and stats. I chose the bright green color because it matched in with the bright color of the Angry Bird nursery. I had it printed using a Groupon for Vistaprint and received an 11x17 glossy print. What I didn't anticipate was the limited frames available with a mat and opening for 11x17. I decided to find a deal on a larger frame (about $20) and had a custom mat made for about $16 with a 60% coupon at Joann's.

All-in-all, I'm really happy with how everything turned out. Love to hear your comments or if you've done something similar.