12 Beers of Christmas Advent

The past few weeks I've been trying to figure out something fun to do for Bryan this holiday season. I thought about doing 12 Dates of Christmas or some type of homemade chocolate advent calendar for each day of December. Then, I came up with the best solution yet: 12 Beers of Christmas Advent.

 

With advent calendars, you normally open up a gift each day of December. And we all know that in the song the 12 Days of Christmas you end up with 24 gifts at the end.  I made up my own rules to form a 12 Beers of Christmas Advent.

 

I went to the liquor store and picked out twelve different beers. Some were Bryan's favorites and some he hadn't tried before. Ideally I would have loved to have gotten just holiday ales or winter lagers, but there wasn't a huge selection of those.

 

 

Next, all you need is Christmas paper and a hot glue gun. I have gobs and gobs of Christmas stickers, paper and embellishments all in storage, so I made a quick run to Michael's and purchased a 12x12 stack of Christmas paper. {The paper had a sheet with the dates of December!} With my handy Cutter Bee I quickly and easily cut strips of paper to wrap around the beer so that each night the brand and type would be a surprise. I tried a couple of different ways trying to get the paper to stay on the bottles and figure out that using a hot glue gun was the best.

 

 

To semi-disguise the bottle caps I used a snowflake punch with some of the paper and adhered them to the top with 3D pop dots.

 

 

Time is precious to me right now, so I didn't have a lot of time to put a lot of effort into this. I think I spent about an hour and a half total. It is a little something extra special for my hubby to enjoy each day this season so that he knows how much I love him.

 

 

And it is nice to have a festive and happy fridge full of beers to enjoy.

 

 

Do you have an advent calendar that you are opening each day this month? Or are you doing any form of gift giving for the 12 days of Christmas? If so, please share!



DIY Moss Floral

Welcome to another week! How has yours started? I should have gone back to bed. First of all, it was incredibly hard waking up to an alarm (that last week would have been 4am)...I went to put in my contacts to find that when I took them out last night I failed to add solution...since I did not have a clock with me upstairs it was 7:38 when I rolled out of the driveway (I am supposed to be at school at 7:40, it starts at 8:00 and it takes me 30 min to get there)...the Internet at school did not work...I thought something at school stank so awful until I realized it was my jeans that I had hung to dry and were put away still damp...I had a kid spit on me and then lie about it...needless to say I was ready to leave at 11:00 for my yearly eye appointment. Happy Monday, right!?!?

So many of you have wondered how the macaroons turned out. Um, they have not been made yet. Lil' Bit, who is 14-going-on-15-in-a-month, was here for the weekend while Bryan went on his boys' bi-annual mountain biking trip. She is by far the best girl at that age that I have ever encountered. We had such a wonderful time together. I was the great older cousin/sister who let her pig out on junk food (which was fine by me since I didn't want to cook and she said she had to eat her mom's good food every night), watch the whole sixth season of The Hills and I even taught her how to drive a standard vehicle (took her to a large hayfield in the farm truck)! I really wish that I had written down so many things that she said. Here is a picture of her with Pumpkin. She announced, "I don't really like cats and cat's really don't like me. That all started after I watched my mom run over my cat."


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DIY Moss Floral

styrofoam

moss

floral pins

duct tape

pipe cleaners/chenille sticks

glue gun

x-acto knife

On to the DIY floral. I originally got the cross idea from here, but keep in mind this is not the first moss floral project like this that I have tackled. When I got married I made a 5 foot "H" that hung at our reception. I am the kind of person that sees and idea and figures out a way to make it for a lot less.

I knew that I wanted my moss cross to hang over the fireplace. First took the fireplace measurements and from that I decided my cross's dimensions. Then I measured and drew the cross onto foam. The foam that I used I already had at home. I normally prefer to use something like this from Hobby Lobby or Michael's. (The kind that I used this time is not the best since it is harder to get pins to stay in place.)

Once the cross was completely drawn, I cute it out with an x-acto knife.

There are lots of different kinds and colors of mosses. I normally buy moss like this at a craft store, but I recently was in the Dollar Tree and saw some there. I purchased 8-2oz. bags for $8 and used all of them for this project. It is much better to have more than not enough. You will also need floral pins. Green are the best to use since they camouflage well. (I had silver already so that is what I used.)

Begin at one side, slightly pulling and forming your moss into the shape and thickness that you desire, then attach with multiple pins. Continue in small batches until your project is covered--make sure to do the sides.

If you are going to hang your cross or other moss project, the most difficult part is figuring out how to attach something on the back in order for it to hang. I have tried numerous ways, and I'm sure if you do a google search something will pop up that is far better than what I have done. Like I have said, I used things that I already had at home. This time I took two pipe cleaners/chenille sticks and wound them together for strength. I attached them onto the back with hot glue. WARNING-glue will melt your foam, so do not use much and do it as soon as the glue has warmed up enough to be pushed out. It actually worked well since the glue clung to the chenille. I also covered the ends with duct tape to give it more stability. The hot glue alone will not work. Whatever tape you use, make sure that it will stick to your type of foam. I am very pleased at how the backing on this cross worked.

I hope all of this has made sense! If you have any questions be sure to let me know!