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Sunday, February 10, 2013

CRAPTASTIC's New Look!

For months now I've been thinking I wanted to pay a blog designer to update the look of CRAPTASTIC to something that I love and is custom to my taste.  The reality of it all is that I'm cheap and just couldn't justify forking over the cash since my blogging has been so sporadic lately.
 
So I turned to google to find some tutorials about blog design and was lucky enough to stumble across  Something Swanky!  She has an entire series about DIY Blog Design!  Even better, she dumbs it down enough so those folks like myself that aren't very tech savvy can customize their blog!
 
Thanks to awesome free sites like Pic Monkey and Image-Maps I finally have a new look that I LOVE!
 
Yeah, I spent all day working on it, but a lot of that is because I'm OCD and spend an absurd amount of time tweaking things.
 
Here's to hoping the new do will inspire me to blog more!
 
 
Cheers!


Sunday, January 6, 2013

Cheap and Easy DIY Christmas Ornament Storage!

We finally got around to cleaning up our Christmas decor and are starting to feel some normalcy again. Over the years we've continued to acquire more ornaments, and I've added a few DIY ones to the mix. We have finally reached the point of needing more than an old shoe box to store everything.
This is an incredibly cheap and easy way to store all your Christmas ornaments and knick-knacks. I bought the supplies last year, so I don't remember the exact amount, but it runs around $10 or less.

You can purchase the wood rod, 3/4" at Lowes or Home Depot, and find a large plastic storage bin at Target or Big Lots.

I made sure that 1/2 the length of the wood rod would be long enough to fit across the bin with some excess.  It fit perfectly, so I used my jigsaw to cut the wood rod in half.  It came to 24".

I then used my drill attachments to drill four holes in the plastic bin.  My wood rod was 3/4", so I used my 3/4" drill bit.


The two halves of the wood rod fit nice and snug into the holes.  This is perfect because I didn't want any wiggle room.


I placed my burlap tree skirt in the bottom of my bin, followed by an old wreath.  Then the hubby and I walked around the tree looping ornaments onto the two halves of the wood rod.

I got this sweet little guy from my Mom this Christmas and wanted to keep him out year round! Isn't he cute!!

Once all the ornaments are hung on the two rods just slide them back into the slots and you're all done packing!

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The bin is still very lightweight, and there is no wiggle room for the ornaments to fall off.  Any ornaments we have that don't have a loop I just hung off one of the other ornaments.


Here they are all snug and packed away for next Christmas!


You may find that my posting is sporadic for the next few months.  The hubby and I are finally moving into a home closer to where we both work!  It's being built now and our closing date is May 24th.  I won't be completing as many projects as I did last year since we need to keep our house clean and I don't have anywhere to put new stuff now!

Here is the view of our new lot!


This is the beautiful tree line behind out property.  There is a creek not too far from our house so there will never be any homeowners behind us!  We're ecstatic!


I hope you all have had a good start to the New Year!  So far 2013 is looking good for us!

Cheers!

**UPDATE 1/2015**

Just in case you were wondering how well our ornaments held up I thought I would share our unpacking experience.  I was delighted to find that the ornaments easily slid off the dowels, making it very easy to decorate our Christmas tree.  My husband and I each took a dowel out of the bin, and within about 10 minutes all of our ornaments were hung.  There were a few ornaments that either became separated from their metal hook or were torn in half (this happened to one cheaply make ornament) but these were easily put back together.  All of our fragile ornaments were safely stored in the bottom of the container with no problems.  If you have utilized this Christmas ornament storage method I hope it has worked well for you! Cheers to a great 2015!


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Monday, December 31, 2012

2012 Highlights - Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! It's so hard to believe that we are almost ready for 2013!
 
This year I did not do nearly as many DIY Christmas gifts as I did last year.  I had intended to do much more, but due to horrible planning I had to go with more store bought gifts.
 
One DIY gift I did get to do were these adorable glitter wine glasses!  I followed the tutorial from Inspire Design and Create!  I made these for Christmas at Mom's house so everyone could tell which glass was their's!  Mine is the hot pink one!
 
 
 
I bought the glasses at The Dollar Tree and use Martha Stewart glitter (used my 50% off coupon)!
 
I also followed the many tutorials online to make some glitter ornaments!  I made these for our dirty ornament swap at work, then I made some to attach to all my presents.
 
 
What type of DIY items did you make this Christmas??
 
Now I have a list of my ten favorite (not necessarily most popular) posts of 2012!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wishing you all a Happy 2013!!
 
Cheers

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Burlap Tree Skirt!

 
Can you believe Christmas is only a little over one week away?!  This gal needs about three more weeks to finish shopping, crafting and wrapping!  At least we finally got our Christmas tree up and decorated!
 
Last year I whipped up a tree skirt that was horrifying.  It served its purpose, but I threw it out once we took the tree down.  This year I decided to make a tree skirt that I actually planned out and worked hard on.  I originally wanted to make a more modern looking tree skirt. 
 
During my search I stumbled across this felt fringe tree skirt by Prudent Baby.  I had every intention of making this.  I went to the fabric store and paced the felt aisle.  I pulled colors down, put them up, and pulled more down.  Eventually I broke into a sweat, and unable to make a decision I stumbled into the burlap bin.  Burlap it was!
 
There are tons of tutorials about how to make a ruffled tree skirt.  I went the sewing route after realizing what an absurdly long time it would take to go the hot glue gun route.
 
Here she is!
 
 
I used two yards of burlap.  It's only $4/yard and it was on sale for 25% off, so the tree skirt cost me $12.
 
I left the top ruffle with a rough edge and used a contrasting colored zig-zag stitch.
 
 
I chose the layers I did due to the amount of fabric I had.  I used the lighter burlap as the base, so I had more of the darker burlap to make more layers.
 
 
I finally managed to get some presents wrapped too!
 
 
I love using the brown packaging paper from The Dollar Tree.  It allows such a simplistic but pretty look.  This year I'm using red tulle to wrap.  The tags were made using scrapbook paper and a paper cutter I got at Michaels.
 
 
Now it feels a little more like Christmas around here!
 
Cheers!
 
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