I’ve been meaning to post a little roundup of the crafts that I made over the holidays. Hey, it may almost be Valentine’s Day, but at least I know that no one on my gift list is going to have their Christmas surprise foiled by seeing what I made for them.

From top to bottom:

* Snow Babies project by Jenn Docherty, from  Holiday Crafts by Better Homes and Gardens. This special interest mag had a lot of great crafts this past holiday season, and as soon as I saw these snowpeople I knew I had to make them for my mum for Christmas. I turned them into ornaments so she can hang them on her tree. Next year, I definitely have to make some for myself. So cute!

* Peppermint Swirl Pincushion project, from Moda Bake Shop. I made these for all of the seamstresses in my life, and I think that they turned out really well, especially since I’m not a pro with the sewing machine. The result of my first attempt was not good, but after that I got the hang of it.

* I broke out the candle making supplies for the first time in a while and whipped up lots of candles and scent melts. Our apartment smelled fantastic, like a mix of Christmas trees, roasted chestnuts, and pumpkin bread. Yum!

I hope to be back with more recipes and crafts soon, and I’ll let you know when the new project launches!

I try to design a new set of holiday gift tags to use on my gifts every year, and this year I had a lot of fun with a wintry holiday theme. Icy blues, teal, pink, and red have been some of my favorites for the holidays over the past couple of years, and I made use of most of those in this set, which includes ten different tag designs. Print them onto cardstock and punch a hole for twine or thread, or print them onto sticker paper for festive holiday labels. Download the Wintry Holiday Tags (185Kb PDF).

You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to download and use this file. Download the reader for free here. These templates are for personal, non-commercial use only.

Have you ever started a project thinking, “This is going to be so cool! I’m totally going to finish it in a few hours, and I’ll probably end up making half a dozen more because I like it so much,” only to find yourself, weeks later, still working on the same project with not much of an end in sight? Yeah, this was one of those projects. However, I did finish, and I love, love, love the result, so it’s a very happy ending.

My ruffly wreath was inspired by a felt rosette pillow tutorial that I spotted back in September over at Etsy’s The Storque blog. It’s a beautiful felt project by Anne Kyrrö Quinn, and I was in love the moment I saw it. This wreath is actually pretty easy to make, but be warned that you’re going to need many, many felt circles. My wreath had 286, to be exact. Oh, how I wish I’d known about maya*made’s genius tutorial for making lots of felt circles quickly while I was doing this project. If you use her tutorial, then you’ll probably be able to cut the time spent on this project in half, at least. I’d say that it took me about 12-15 hours to finish the wreath, and after you have the circle patterns made it’s easy to sit and watch T.V. while you’re cutting, pinning, and attaching.

I was going for an ultra modern, neutral look that will match any décor year ’round, which is why I made mine completely white, but you can add holiday flair with red or green felt, or you can use a rainbow of felt for something bright and whimsical. I got a great deal on felt — Eco-fi, which is made from 100% post consumer recycled plastic bottles — at Jo-Ann, so I only spent five or six dollars on that part of the project, plus about four dollars for the wreath form and a few more dollars for the pins.

What you’ll need for the wreath:

- a 12 inch styrofoam wreath form
- approximately 2 1/2 yards of felt
- straight pins (enough to match the number of felt circles needed, plus two for attaching the hanger)
- scissors
- a 3 inch circle template
- a pencil
- ribbon for hanging

Using a pencil and your circle template (or that great tutorial from maya*made), trace circles onto the felt. Cut the felt circles, and fold them in half twice to form rosettes. Insert a pin near the bottom corner of the rosette, about 1/8 inch from the corner.

Attach the felt rosettes to the wreath form, making sure to group the rosettes tightly enough that no styrofoam is showing through the rosettes. After you’ve added a few, fluff and adjust the rosettes to your liking. Continue making, pinning, and attaching the rosettes until you’ve worked your way around the wreath form. If you have circles that are slightly misshapen or that have a little pencil or ink on them, place them toward the outside or inside edges, where they can’t be seen when the wreath is hanging.

This is what my wreath looked like on the back when I was finished. As you can see, I started off with ball point straight pins, but I switched to flat head pins when the rosette count started to get up there and I had to run out and buy more pins. If you use flat head pins, then I suggest using a thimble to push them into the wreath form, or your thumb will take a beating. Ask me how I know.

After you’ve finished adding the felt rosettes, cut a 5 inch length of ribbon, fold it in half, and attach it to the wreath form with two pins to form a hanger.

I love how organic the wreath looks when it’s finished. The ruffly felt rosettes, when grouped together like this, remind me a bit of a coral reef. While this is a rather ambitious project, I think it was completely worth the time spent. I’ll be using my wreath year ’round as part of my home décor!

If you bake on a regular basis — gluten free or not — then you know how quickly ingredients can fill up your cabinets and pantry. And if you bake gluten and sugar free, then you might find yourself in my situation, with over a dozen different types of flour plus several sweeteners stuffing your shelves.

Things got so confusing and unkempt looking in my cupboards that I found myself not wanting to bake as much because I knew that I’d have to sort through ziploc bags full of who knows what in order to find what I needed. Not fun!

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I finally had it with the mess, and I went out and purchased snap top containers for my ingredients. I made ingredient labels to go on the containers, and my cupboards are now full of ultra organized and labeled flours and sweeteners. For the first few days after I organized, I couldn’t stop opening the cabinet and smiling because everything was so much easier to find. I plan on keeping it this way!

The free printable ingredient labels (445 Kb PDF) include 27 different flour and sweetener labels in a rainbow of colors. For those who may not be interested in the colors that I chose, and for those of you who don’t use these types of ingredients, I’m also providing a sheet of printable blank labels (529 Kb PDF) that you can use as ingredient labels, gift tags or labels, food labels, and more. I made the blank labels a deep red for a Christmas-y feel, but if you have a graphic editing program like Illustrator or Photoshop, then you can easily change the colors to whatever you’d like. The font I used is Luna, which can be found for free at DaFont.

You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to download and use these files. Download the reader for free here. These labels are for personal, non-commercial use only.

Update: I’ve added a version of the recipe page that has editable form fields, so you can type in your recipes and send them to family and friends via email! Download this version below.

As we head into the holiday season, many of us are thinking more about food and tradition and are planning on putting together a family cookbook of our own to give as a gift or to use in our own kitchens. You can download the template and use it to help create your own cookbooks.

Download the original recipe page template (188 Kb PDF). Download the recipe page with editable form fields (165 Kb). Use File > Save As when you’re saving the editable version of the recipe page, and rename it (example: Chocolate-Chip-Cookies.pdf) so you don’t overwrite the original template. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to download and use these files. Download the reader for free here. These templates are for personal, non-commercial use only.

I first made these pom pom pumpkins last year when I did the flowers, but by the time I posted the pom pom flower tutorial I felt that it was probably too late in the season for the pumpkins, so here they are this year! They make cute little accessories for bookshelves and other nooks and crannies, and I think that they’d look nice coupled with a table place card at a fall themed wedding or Thanksgiving dinner, as well. Plus, they’re very easy to make, so you can have a whole patch full of pom pom pumpkins in no time!

What you’ll need for the pom pom pumpkins:

- orange or other pumpkin colored pom poms in various sizes (a step by step pom pom making tutorial can be found here)
- a small square of green/olive/moss colored craft felt
- a small twig (about 1/8 inch diameter)
- a hot glue gun / glue sticks
- a wire cutter
- scissors

Using the wire cutters, cut short pieces of the twig (1/2 to 1 inch) for the pumpkin stems. Cut leaf shapes from the felt. I just folded a rectangle of felt in half and cut a semi-oval shape, trimming afterward if necessary to get the shape that I wanted, but you could also make a more realistic looking pumpkin leaf.

Clear a place on the pumpkin that looks good for the stem. Look for a spot where there’s a good mass of yarn to, so you’ll be able to anchor the stem well and be able to fluff the yarn around it afterward to hide any imperfections. Add hot glue to the end of the twig and insert it into the pom pom, holding for a few seconds until the glue is set.

Take one of your leaves and add a little hot glue to one end. Place the leaf, glue side down, beside the twig stem in the cleared area of the pom pom and put light pressure on the glued end for a few seconds until the glue is set. Clean up any glue-y strings and fluff the yarn around the stem and leaf.

You now have a cute pom pom pumpkin decoration!