Easy Indoor Christmas Decorations

2020 Christmas wall.

Two small paintings I covered.

I have a wall in my dinning room full of family pictures. When I was decorating for Christmas last year I had a great idea to decorate my picture wall. Instead of replacing the current pictures with Christmas pictures, I decided to just wrap the current pictures like presents.

Pictures in 2021

I had some metal star ornaments, bows, wood snowflake ornaments, small pinecones and ice cycle ornaments to decorate the picture presents.  In 2020 I picked a color scheme of red, green, blue and silver. I had Merry Christmas, red and green cloth ribbon to use on the project. I kept all of the ribbon and ornaments after I used them in 2020 and used them again on my new color scheme in 2021. The new color scheme was red, black, silver and gold.

I made sure I bought quality wrapping paper so it would hold up to the sharp corners of the frames. I also used hot glue to hold the ornaments to the front of the picture presents. The ribbon is held in place on the back of the frame with blue painter's tape.

The pictures above were taken at an angle which made the pictures look like they were crooked, they are not. I hate crooked pictures, so I am barely stopping myself from deleting the pictures, lol.

When Christmas is over, you get to unwrap extra presents off the wall and enjoy the pictures that had been hiding behind the Christmas wrap all month.

I love the look of the decorated wall in front of my decorated table. It was very festive.

My large poinsettia is missing from this picture. They were very hard to find here last Christmas. I received one as a gift  (Thanks Lynn) and put it in the snowman hat. 

If you don't have a picture wall, you can wrap all the pictures in a room or even the whole house. It is an inexpensive and pretty way to decorate for the Holiday. It is also a great way to decorate at a business or office. Happy wrapping!

 

The Worst Candles Ever

Many years ago we started celebrating Hanukkah. We had an antique menorah that we acquired when we were younger and started a new tradition. I admit that we don't celebrate Hanukkah in a religious way, like we celebrate Christmas, but we always light a menorah each year. Hanukkah is a minor Jewish holiday, but the story is a great story of religious freedom. You don't have to be Jewish to celebrate the meaning of The Festival of Lights. There was a war, about 200 years before the birth of Christ, between Antiochus the ruler of the Greek Kingdom and the Jewish citizens. When Antiochus destroyed the Jewish Second Temple and imposed pagan beliefs for all his people, like worshiping statues of Zeus, or sacrificing pigs at the alter of that Temple, the Jews rebelled. The Jewish warriors were called Maccabees, led by a Jewish Priest named Mattathias and his 5 sons. They were the first Jews to defend their religious beliefs. When Mattathias was killed, his son Judah became the leader. After the War was won, Judah and the Maccabees restored the Second Temple. Because there must be a light burning in the Temple at all times, when they were rededicating the temple they only had enough olive oil to light the menorah for one day. By a miracle the oil burned for eight nights giving them time to find more oil. Great story no matter what religion you are.

This is what Hanukkah candles are not suppose to look like when they are burning.

Now that the history lesson is over, let's talk about candles. Each year I buy candles, and always late by like a day or two before I need them. Never a good plan because they are not easy to find. I usually buy them at Target, or a grocery store. In 2020 I think I bought them at a grocery store. 

This was after about 5 days and the unidentified box of terrible candles.

The tradition is to light one candle the first night, two the second night, and so on until you are up to eight on the eighth night. There is one extra candle each night, the middle candle called the Shamash,  that is lit first. You use the Shamash to light the rest of the candles from right to left like Hebrew is read. This is a lot of Jewish history from a Christian girl just to complain about candles, lol.

This was half way through night 6. Already a nice size pile of "wax"

 and the menorah is a mess.

So, in 2020  I lit the candles, and unlike every other Hanukkah night for the last 30 some years, they didn't melt correctly. Normally, the candles barely leave any wax residue anywhere. This was a crazy mess. I kept the drippings on the plastic place mat I had the menorah on just to see how much wax I would end up with. I was not disappointed. 

The end of day 8. The large pile of "wax" was bad enough, but trying to clean
 the menorah and removing all the drippings on the metal was a nightmare.
 I felt like it was its own miracle that I got all the 'wax" off. 

This was a long way to go to complain about terrible candles. But, if  y'all learned something about history, religious freedom, miracles, or just terrible candles, it was worth it. Shalom.

Our Junk Drawer Inheritance

My Dad passed away in 2010 and my Mom in 2015. They left behind a house full of stuff. My Mom kept everything! Luckily, I have six siblings which made the clean out a bit easier. We went through boxes and boxes of "treasures". Boxes of McDonalds Happy Meal toys, dishes, paintings, pictures, videos, tools, craft supplies, books, family history items, papers and papers and papers!! One thing my parents had plenty of was junk drawers. Not just in the kitchen either. 

On a visit to Florida to my sister Lynn's house, my sister Jean and I were there to do some family craft projects. We had already started on the wood project we were doing with planks from my Grandma's old house. on this day Lynn brought out boxes of our parent's junk drawer's contents. Included in the boxes were a hodgepodge of costume jewelry. There were hair curlers with picks, thimbles, stamps, pictures, pearls, keys, old credit cards from a store that had long been closed, broaches, buttons, earrings, pictures of old relatives and school pictures of cousins, coins, bowling award pins, plastic watches, board game pieces, cufflinks ...............

A few of the pieces in my inheritance jar.

We bought large mason jars, one for each sibling. We lined them up and picked one of each item for each jar. There were some items that were one, or two of a kind, that went to the sibling that it would have meant the most to. My oldest siblings got the roller skate keys, or a thimble may have gone to a sibling that sewed. All the junk that may have brought back such fond memories of their youth, or just memories of our parents. 

My decorated jar

My sisters Lynn and Jean (not their first names) and I had the best time making those jars. We laughed at the items our parents kept. We told stories about the items we remembered and tried to guess who the small pictures were of. We found old broaches or pins that my Mom left and we all wore one that afternoon when we had a day of shopping. It was so fun to see these cheap gold pins on each other as we walked through the stores. I am sure people thought we were dorks, but to us it was a fun family bonding experience. 

This was the pin I wore shopping. Not even sure what

letter it is, an L or an S.

When I got home with my treasures I decided to decorate my jar and write a poem to attach to it. I picked a fun piece of cloth and cut it into a circle with pinking shears. I put the cloth on the lid and attached a copy of the poem with ribbon. The jar is displayed in my craft room and it brings a huge smile to my face every time I look at it.

This was such a great project for our family. Who would have though that the junk my Mom and Dad saved all those years would turn into such a special inheritance?