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If you’ve ever bought any plants for you yard then you probably have a few of these not so attractive black pots stored somewhere in your home.  (You may also have an adorable, although very loud, stubborn and moody toddler, if you do, this post will not help you with that.)

But, if you’re like me, then you have dozens of them (the pots, not toddlers) floating around your garage, shed, basement and attic just waiting to be used because they’re pots and they must be useful for something.  Right?  So you keep them, indefinitely, and you accept more of them from friends and family, who know you like plants, because they can’t bear to throw them out either, but unlike you and me, they don’t want them cluttering up their house. 

Meanwhile you go out and buy similar pots because they’re prettier colors.

Enter the always useful can of spray paint.  You have your choice of any color, and one $4 can will cover a dozen or more pots depending on their size. 

We’ve previously done pink and blue pots for the twins to each have their own flowers, but this year I went bland and got a terra cotta color to match my other pots.

Oh, and one last thought, as far as paint durablity goes, we’ve found that most of our pots look nice for about 3 years before we have to repaint them.

Ever since Jarod made this neat Tin Punched Car at church last month I’ve been working on ideas for making some punched things for Christmas.

Frozen orange juice lids (the cross design), those round metal ends that come off the package of crescent rolls (the star design), and canning lids (the snowman) made for some fun ornaments of different sizes.   And for kids, they all have smooth edges that won’t cut fingers.  

We started by drawing a design on the lid in pencil and then we tapped a nail 2 to 3 imes for each hole, along the drawing.

After the design was punched we spray paint the lids in gold or silver and then added embellishments with a glue gun, color with permanent markers and acrylic paint and on some we had to add glitter, of course.

The kids loved making these, and are already working on more designs for our tree.   As soon as our tree is up (I have two weeks yet), I’m sure they’ll look beautiful hanging with lights glittering through the holes. 

As I sit here thinking that it’s early for me to start our Christmas packaging, but in the dark recesses of my mind, I also know that every year I think it’s early and then all of a sudden it’s a day or two before Christmas and I’m in frantic mode .  

So we started our Christmas boxes this week, and since we give lots of food we thought these boxes would be perfect.  There’s a little window to show through the mixed nuts or candies or cookies that are tucked inside in a sealed plastic bag.

Trying to be green (and frugal) we used all recycled stuff. 

Pasta Boxes (ours had the window on the bottom but many have the window at the top or middle which I think would be cuter)

Old Wrapping Paper, Construction Paper, Tissue Paper, and Magazine Pages in the color that we needed.  Some ribbon and Mod Podge.

Oh… And a stapler to attach the ribbon handle at the top sides.

For bigger recycled gift boxes ideas check out this post.

This was this morning’s newspaper (that thin thing on the left).  The pack of 24 store advertisement is on the right.

For all the talk of going green and conserving you would think that having a pack of ads that is three times thicker than the actual newspaper seems a bit, well, not green.

How much paper and energy is wasted to print 24 seperate store ads (3 of them being 1/4 inch thick magazines).  And half of them just had a seperate ad in the Sunday paper just two days ago. 

I’m done venting.  Now I guess I need to go do a few newspaper crafts.

Since we were going to be on vacation for the twins 8th birthday I had to get some gifts done quickly before we left (because I couldn’t have possible planned ahead and made things weeks before we left.)

I think this skirt is my absolute favorite thing I’ve made ever. 

II wanted fancy and pink (is there any other color), and Makenna just loves a ruffled skirt she got from Dabaw and Poppi last year.   So using that skirt as a template I went out of my comfort zone and made a skirt with ruffles for the first time. 

 It was really quite easy and didn’t take long.   Although I admit that after sewing each ruffle on I was scared to look at the skirt for fear I somehow did it wrong.

I will be making LOTS more of these, as well as adding a single wide ruffle to some plain skirts that I made her the past two years that are now too short. 

I will get a tutorial up in time for making these for Christmas.  I promise.

Jarod’s homemade gift was a little more mundane.  He’s a boy…so other than a quilt (which I really will make one day), I can’t think of too much that I could make him that would excite me.  

So he needed a rug for his room and I quick knit up one of my favorite easy to make rugs from recycled sheets.   The directions are here. 

This particular rug I made a little more narrow (cast on 21 stitches) and long, because it’s for beside his bed.  Now he wants a matching colored one for in front of his dresser.

And here is a picture of them on their birthday.  And look at that, the magic of photographs makes it look as though they actually like each other.