It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I made an advent calendar! I could have made a cute little opening, but well..the point of the post is that I made an advent calendar! I've been wanting one that would last through the years, that I could hang on my wall, and that had little canisters or boxes for each day that can hold candies or slips of paper with fun holiday activities to do!!

And now I have one! Thanks to my mom for helping me out/basically doing all of it! Haha! Here is the process:

We just bought a frame and mod-podged adorable Christmas paper into it.

The whole background!

Our cute little canisters with Christmas paper on the lids! We were so glad to find these in the wedding favor section! 

Adding fun embellishments and making each day different!

The finished product!

I should say ALMOST finished product. I'm still trying to find the right quote or title in chipboard letters to put next to the santa...perhaps I will just make my own cut out with my very special Christmas present from Ben..more to come on that later! :)

A Magical Craft Project!

I've been waiting a while to write this post! So..if you know my sister you know she is a HUGE Harry Potter fan. Seriously. And this year she turned 21 and I decided that I should finally give her a birthday present. But instead of going out and buying something lame. I wanted to make something...from the heart, ya know? I know, I'm a pretty great big sister. I knew I wanted it to be Harry Potter themed, and I had recently made some adorable wreaths so I decided a Harry Potter wreath would be AWESOME! 

This project took me a whole lot longer than I thought it would, but it was because I am a perfectionist and annoying detail-oriented when it comes to crafties. So here is the finished project

Here are some of the details:

A sweet wand that I made!

A cool green glittery snake!

The crowning glory! The Golden Snitch!

The snitch probably took me the most time, but I was really meticulous about it. I wrapped the whole wreath form in pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and other details included a background of Hogwarts castle, a picture of Harry, Ron and Hermione, Harry's glasses, broomsticks (made to look the the Nimbus 2000 and 2001), a letter form Hogwarts, the Hogwarts crest, and the symbol of the deathly hallows.

I honestly had so much fun making this and I think Mandy really liked it!

I'm thinking of posting the tutorial on making your very own wand...we shall see.