Clove Oranges for Christmas.

Kurt didn't know what clove oranges were, so obviously I had to make some. I think I first made these in Girls' Club. (Girls' Club was a group of homeschooled girls who got together and learned important "virtuous homemaking" skills such as how to decorate a cake to look like a Barbie skirt. There was also needlepoint involved. And cookies. It was fun.)

Anyway. 

You start with some cloves and some oranges. 

(I know these are slightly green for oranges. You take what you can get in December, I guess.)

Now a very complicated tutorial is coming up so y'all better pay lots of attention.

Poke holes in the orange with a toothpick.

Then stick the cloves in the holes.

I hope you got all that.

I actually used a metal nut pick instead of a toothpick but I don't know if everyone has one of those. But you need to use something because the cloves will break if you just try to stick them in there.

This second one was supposed say say "K & L" which I guess it sort of looks like it says but not really.

 From what I've read, these will actually last for years if you put the cloves really close together all over the orange. But cloves are actually kind of expensive so I decided I can't afford that kind of ridiculous luxury.

These have been sitting on my side table for a couple of weeks now and they skin is getting a little browner but they still smell awesome. So this amount of cloves would appear to be entirely adequate if they are only supposed to last for the duration of the holiday season.

Easy Ornament Wreath.

This is a project that I started almost a month ago and just finished today. Which is exactly like the majority of my projects except for the "actually getting finished" part which is somewhat of an anomaly. I got the idea from this blog post (found on pinterest).

You start with a wire hanger, bent into a circle (which doesn't have to be perfect because it's not really going to show).

And you start just stringing on basic ball ornaments (I bought several tubes of plastic ones from Dollar Tree.)

I ran out about halfway through my wreath (you need a lot more ornaments than you would think because you can get them really close together since they stick out in all directions from the wire. If you could figure out a way to get it to lay flat against the wall once it's hung, it would use fewer ornaments, but I just used a lot (it looks good from the front and the back once it's done.)

So anyway I didn't make it out to Dollar Tree again for a couple of weeks, mostly due to Kurt's refusal to go in there with me whenever we were out Christmas shopping. And by the time I got back, I had to get different ornaments because they were out of the kind I'd originally gotten. (Excuse the background mess in this picture, the living room floor is kind of our present making and wrapping headquarters at the moment.)

 Sooooooo I took all the ornaments off the wreath and laid them out in a big circle, being more careful this time to distribute colors evenly.

And then just strung them all on there and twisted the ends back together. (As you can see they mostly fit but I have a few left over. Ideas for what to do with those? I don't want to put them on the tree because they're obviously cheap if you look closely.)

I'm really pretty excited by how this turned out. Gotta love crafts that don't require patience or precision, two skills which I conspicuously lack.

You can sort of see the wire in there if you look closely. But it's not that bad. (I know my blurry photography is probably bothering you more right now than any supposed visible wires. Sorry.)

I decided to hang it in the middle of our living room window. Please ignore the hideous apartment blinds. I've just never gotten around to buying actual curtains.

You can barely see the top of the hanger when it's up there.

 So this isn't actually the cheapest craft ever; it uses so many ornaments that even buying the cheap ones from Dollar Tree, it will still be over $10 which takes it out of "cheap craft" range in my opinion. Maybe because I read too many blogs where people make amazing holiday decorations for like $2. But it's still cheap for a wreath, and kind of fun to do.

So I made this blog.

And now I'm waiting for the pictures from my camera to load to my laptop so I can actually post projects I've done. Basically I am trying to fulfill my lifelong (aka since like six months ago) dream of being a stay at home mom blogger who miraculously actually manages to do cute crafts in between changing diapers and being sleep-deprived. And then sells them on her etsy store. While decorating her house for every holiday. And cooking healthy and delicious meals. (Problems: I have no adorable children to post photographs of, I do not stay at home, there are already 32598340534 blogs like that, I'm too lazy to do most of that stuff, etc. Oh well, my friends will read this.)

Anyway in case you don't spend your whole life on the internet like I do, the blog title was inspired by this blog post (which is also famous enough to be on know your meme which I have discovered is a useful if boring version of encyclopedia dramatica.) Because I couldn't decide if I should have a blog about decorating or cooking or crafts or clothes or what so I decided it should have ALL the things! And that way no matter what I decide to post about it will definitely be relevant.