Pin Wreath.

Back in September, I was perusing Martha's site and I came across this wreath. At first I thought I could make this for free - I had clothespins and I knew my mom had some embroidery hoops that she wasn't using any more. After a first dismal attempt {Martha's guide says to use mini clothespins and I thought I could use regular ones - turns out there isn't room for very many that way and they were too heavy to stay on the hoop with wood glue and hot glue wasn't a long lasting solution}, I splurged on $2.24 worth of mini clothes pins and set out to remake it.

The result:

All in all, this project probably took me 20 minutes (and half of that was struggling with the bows - I suck at tying pretty bows) and it was practically free.

I'm planning to leave this up all year and just switch out the ribbon for the appropriate season to display birthday cards and other mailed pretties (Susan & I have a pretty steady card exchange we do at least once a month, more often when the mood strikes us).

What sorts of methods do you use to display your holiday cards?

Personalized.

Hey bloggy friends! It's been awhile since we've posted, but I promise we haven't forgotten about our crafts! I actually have several projects either finished, in progress or planned for the upcoming weeks that I'll be sharing with you.

First is a simple 5 minute craft. I adore personalized anything. Put my name on it, and tiny hearts light up in my eyes. Every year I tell my husband that this is the last time I'm going to buy new stockings and every year I see a new one to fall in love with and promise yet again that this is the last time. Last year I hearted the classic red & white stockings with silver initial pins. This year I'm back to loving my favorite motif - country clutter. I found some pretty great stockings {polka dots! swoon!} from Ballard Designs that you could have embroidered with your name {double swoon!} but the price tag was pretty panic-attack inducing. Since I suck at embroidery but I really wanted to do something that put our names on our stockings and I wasn't about to shell out $30 a piece for stockings, I had to get crafty.

Enter Target. Oh Target, how I love thee and thy awesome dollar bins. In a recent stroll through my Mecca, I found these super cute wooden star ornaments with a simple hook to hang. Picture a light bulb going off over my head. I grabbed up three {one for me, the hubs and the bubs} and then went off to the scrapbooking aisle for some glittery funness by way of lettering. Side note: I could have used my Cricut to cut out the letters and embellished with glitter myself - however, I'm still in my infancy of collecting cartridges and I only have one font cart and it's not my favorite. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. $4 later and I have my personalized plaques for our stockings {and the BEST part is that if I change my mind in the future, these tags go with!}

Here's your incredibly easy how-to:

1. Gather blank ornaments
2. Gather embellishments {as fancy or as plain as ya wanna get - I kept mine to just the name as the surface I was working on is quite small}
3. Adhere your letters and embellishments to the ornaments {in the picture below I show ModPodge as part of the items used - I didn't end up using it at all}
4. Hang on stockings.