Easter shape CLEARANCE Sale!
EASTER SHAPES SALE! You must Private message us on Facebook or email us at whimc@yahoo.com reserve your wood shapes. You will be responsible for payment & picking up wood by Sunday, March 24th at 6 pm at designated location.
SALE- wood only. no kits. If you buy 10 or more, we’ll cut you a bigger deal.
24″ tall Chocolate Bunny shape $12 (34 avail) (reg. $15)
24″ wide Peeps $12 (24 avail) (reg $15)
20″ wide Peeps $10 (53 avail) (reg $12)
16″ wide Peeps $8 (5 avail) (reg $10)
WhimC Christmas Sale!
These adorable frames are located in our WhimC Sale album on Facebook. Make beautiful gifts! First come, first serve- must comment on the item of your choice on Facebook order to get them.
Houndstooth with Red Stacked Frame
- Houndstooth with distressed black frame featuring Alabama Football insert.
- Hot Pink & white wash teal
Easter is on its Way!
My LOVE for Christmas has been well documented and perhaps, stated into exhaustion, but, beware fellow WhimC girls, I have found another love and it’s name?…EASTER!!! Who knew decorating with pastel eggs and little furry bunnies could leave one with warm fuzzies inside? I have just discovered how fun it is to decorate for this holiday! So, this year it isn’t EVERYWHERE, but I fear my house will be the land of Peter Cottontail given just a few more Easter seasons under my belt:o) Here are just a few ideas that anyone can accomplish to put a little “spring” into you decor!
Easter Tree!
There are so many cute Easter trees out there and they make adorable centerpieces, or a sweet addition to a child’s room. My mother in law actually bought mine for me a few years ago at Pottery Barn and I painted little wooden eggs to hang on the branches. However, if you don’t want to purchase one, they can easily be made by gathering some branches from your yard. You can spray paint them white, cover them with glitter, or just leave them natural. Hobby Lobby has some great paper mache, styrofoam, and wooden eggs that can be painted to hang from the branches. Or just buy the plastic eggs and hang with some ribbon. Gather a pretty pot and put some florist foam in the bottom of it and arrange your branches. Add some moss to the top to cover the foam . Tie a bow to the pot and you are set! So easy, and fun to do with the kiddos!
Jellybean napkin rings
I love the little touches added here and there to holiday decor! I showed these at the Easter classes, but wanted to show them again in case some of you missed them. These napkin rings turned out so cute and were super easy and super CHEAP! Now, that’s what I am talking about !! I bought 2 bags of the bigger sized jellybeans for 99 cents a bag. You will also need some 24 gauge wire that is found in the hardware section. It comes in a good-sized wrap for under $2 and you will only use a little of it, so you will have a lot left for future projects! I did enough wire on mine to wrap one good time around my napkin. You may want to wrap twice and therefore would need more jellybeans than what I am telling here. It’s all a matter of taste, so have fun with it. I cut my wire and laced it with 11 jellybeans. Now, the trick here is to keep a wet washcloth or paper towel at your side. Jellybeans are sticky and as you slide them down, the gooey mess starts sticking to the wire. So, after you lace a jellybean, you will need to wipe the stickiness off of the wire so that you can easily lace the next jellybean. This takes a little time, but they are worth it:o) After all the jellybeans are on the wire, take some needle nose pliers and twirl the ends so that they look nice. The final touch is spraying your napkin rings with acrylic sealer. Anytime you deal with candy as decorations, you want to put this finishing spray on them so they will not be sticky!
Easter Egg Garland
Did you know that those little plastic Easter eggs already have holes in the top and bottom of them?? Genius I tell you! Pure Genius! They are so easy to make garland out of just by stringing them on some fishing wire! Tie the ends with ribbon to keep them from slipping off and decorate away! Hang them from light fixtures, decorate around your door, or wind them around an existing topiary! I love these on my mantle! Now just to finish up my mantle with a spring banner! Agh, the projects I have going on!!
Candy Topiary
It always seems I have to do some sort of candy topiary for holidays! What is wrong with me?!!! HAHA! I decided to do one for the kids table as their centerpiece. If you remember the peppermint topiary we did at Christmas, this is the same idea. All you need is a florist foam ball (you can get these at walmart), some wood dowels, smarties (or candy of choice), a hot glue gun, some ribbon, and a pot with florist foam. Unwrap all your smarties and put them in a bowl (these would also be cute with those giant smarties but I couldn’t get my hands on any!) Now take your hot glue gun and make a line horizontally (put an equator on the ball:o) and start glueing. After you get your “equator done” you can use it as your line to start glueing all the others! This seems like it would take forever considering those smarties are so small, but it will actually go pretty fast. Leave a small part at the bottom with no candy and insert the wooden dowels into the candy ball. Put some more florist foam in the bottom of you pot and then stick your “topiary” into the pot! Tie some ribbon and presto! Done! Once again, you can spray this with your acrylic sealer for longer lasting decorations! These don’t require it quite as much because they aren’t sticky, but I still like to spray mine:o) Tada…easy peasy and so cute…now to just keep those little hands from picking off smarties and eating them when Mommy isn’t looking…here’s to hoping!
Another door hanger??? Seriously??
After completing our door hanger classes, I made yet another door hanger, but this time a WREATH! I love the way this turned out and it looks precious on my door:o) All I did was get a grapevine wreath and some foam pipe covers and plastic eggs. With the foam pipe cover, I made a “wreath” to fit inside the grapevine wreath (be sure to make it small enough that it will fit in the grapevine wreath once you hot glue all the plastic eggs to it.) Form the pipe into a circle and duct tape it together. Then glue glue glue!!! Whatever colors and however many eggs it takes to cover the front and sides (leave the back empty). Once done, I attached my inner egg wreath to the grapevine wreath with twine. Add a bow (of course!!! nothing is complete without a bow!) and hang!
And be sure to check out the Jackson Magazine coming out this week for a How to with WhimC on these adorable moss eggs!
Well there you have it folks! I am working on a few more projects including a spring banner to finish up my mantel, growing my own easter grass to do another type of centerpiece, and some burlap flower cones for my chairs. If all turns out, I will do another post with directions for those too!! (However, if you want to do the easter grass thing, you better get some pots and start now!) Have fun and if you get a chance, comment on here ! Let us know what you like or what you have tried! WE would love to hear from you!
Have a Hippity Hoppity Easter Everybody!
~Alli
And now it’s my turn….
Robin Eggs for your Home
Wanting robin eggs for Easter, but not wanting to pay $10 per half dozen or even waiting on them to ship to me, I set out to make my own. Surprised, aren’t ya?! Haha!
Over the years, I have collected HUNDREDS of plastic Easter eggs. Like wrapping paper and ribbons, I can’t stand to throw away a good thing that can be used again. I don’t need to be featured on Hoarders anytime soon, but I do have a nice collection of things I intend to repurpose! Enter eggs…
I dug out my eggs from my Easter box in the attic and I bought a couple of different spray paints at Home Depot, and settled on this Rustoleum Spa Blue color. Closest thing I could find to satisfy my “I want to do this NOW” mentality that strikes me when on a mission.
I took my plastic eggs to the backyard, separated tops and bottoms and set them on a board (away from the concrete & brick-I’ve learned the hard way on this, so trust me). I set them out instead of holding them so that I could get full coverage of paint on the eggs and not on my hands. After a few rounds of spraying them, they were ready for the “speckled” look
I took brown paint on a brush and from a “close enough but far enough away” distance starting splattering paint, making sure to get all sides of the eggs covered.
After they dried, I sprayed a clear glaze over them just to seal them up. When those finished drying, I connected tops and bottoms. Voila!
Now if these were to sit out in an open bowl, I would prefer the more matte, non plastic egg look for my robin eggs, but I wanted these in my apothecary jars on my mantle so no biggie that they have many imperfections.
I placed moss in the bottom of the jars to create a bit of a nest look to them and then place 9-10 eggs per jar and topped the jar off with a chocolate brown ribbon. A perfect touch for Spring! Not too shabby for half a can of $3 paint, if I must say. This is an easy “after work” project. Give it a try and I think you’ll be pleased with the results!
~Brenda
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The Taste & Smell of Christmas
Allison and I have been busy little elves the last couple of weeks with our painting parties. We want to thank you all who have participated. We’ve had over 100 people painting their burlap stockings or trees and a wonderful job you have all done. We have one last class on Monday evening, and then we’re packing up the burlap for a while!
This weekend, I took a little break from that project and dove into a few others. As a dear friend of mine defined it, “it’s therapy” (and much cheaper than the more formal kind of therapy). You know, crafting this, baking that, decorating here, pinteresting there. It’s amazing what playing around the house can do for my mind. Anybody else out there like that?
As promised, umm, two weeks ago, I finally made Christmas Crunch. Allison introduced me to it when I was at her house a while back and she said “take some home to the kids”. She made sure to clarify that it had NO peanuts, since both my little ones are allergic to peanuts, and I recently discovered I am too. (ugh, another story for another day). So I thought “great! I’ll snag a couple of bites and then they can have some when I get home.” Did you know the drive from Lake View Shores to Cimarron Drive is a reeeeaaaaallly long one? So long, that oops, I ate the whole bag of this delightful delish treat before I even got to my neighborhood. Good stuff!! So, here’s my 4th day of December present to you….
Christmas Crunch
Christmas Crunch
1 cup mini marshmallows
2-3 cups crushed pretzels
4 cups white chocolate
Cinnamon Sugar & Melted Semi-Sweet Chocolate for drizzling
1 batch Caramel Corn (recipe below)
1/8 tsp. kosher salt (optional)
Mix Marshmallows and pretzels with cooled caramel corn. Melt white chocolate. Pour over mixture mixing until completely coated. Spread on parchment covered cookie sheets. Lightly sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Cool & drizzle with semi-sweet chocolate.
Caramel Popcorn
15 cups popped popcorn
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
¼ cup corn syrup
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
Preheat oven to 200 degrees. In medium saucepan combine butter, sugar, corn syrup & salt. Heat on medium, stirring occasionally. When bubbles appear, cook for 5 more minutes without stirring. Remove from heat & stir in baking soda. Mix with popcorn until coated. Place on 2 greased cookie sheets. Cook for 1 hour turning every 15 minutes.
This really was easy peasy. I started off by popping by popcorn kernals in the microwave. I recently started popping my own kernals in a brown paper bag. uh-huh, that’s right. I scooped one cup of kernals into a large brown lunch bag, folded the top down twice and popped it in the microwave for 3 minutes and voila-it yielded 15 cups of popped popcorn. who knew? now you do!
Next, I mixed my caramel on the stove top based on the recipe given, then mixed it with the popcorn and into the oven it went and followed the directions until it was out an hour later. If you are just a caramel popcorn fanatic, then you’re done!
But if you want a super duper sweet treat, then continue on!
Just mix in the pretzels, marshmallows and white chocolate, stir and then spread out on a couple of pans lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle on cinnamon sugar and drizzle on your melted semi sweet chocolate and voila! Good luck keeping big and little kids from eating it before the chocolate hardens! If you have some left, wrap it up in a clear cellophane bag and it will make a delicious and beautiful gift.
This is a great recipe to let the kids help with. Breaking pretzals and tossing mini marshmallows into the bowl are kid friendly parts of the recipe. Then, of course licking the bowl is a must!
Now on to the SMELL of Christmas. This was sooo easy and it smells amazing. Take an orange peel. In my case a clementine peel after I ate it. Throw it in a small saucepan, add 1 Tbsp of whole cloves and a few cinnamon sticks and enough water to cover it all. Turn the eye on medium to low and it
just a few minutes you will have a warm and comforting aroma wafting through your kitchen and your whole house. Keep the eye on low to just keep it going and be sure to add water to the pot to keep it going. Turn it off after a while and the smell will continue on for hours. This batch can remain on your stovetop to use over and over for several weeks. Of course, the color is going to turn brown, but who cares when it smells this good!
Now one more cute little thing to wrap up the night. If you have a cricut or silhouette, this is a cute thing to bring a little humor into your house. AND if you have an elf, this would be a great little trick to put your mischievous elf in charge of. Although my youngest has seen the mustaches around the house today, I’m thinking “Cold”, his elf is going to get a little facial hair tonight.
Ahh, what a day is has been. This chicka is ready for nighty-nite!
~Brenda
Christmas Advent Calendar
I have always wanted to do an Advent calendar with my boys but just couldn’t find a.)one that was quick and easy to make and b.) one that didn’t take up a lot of room. I knew I wanted to do one that had “treats of time” in it instead of little presents for each day. Kids now days (wow, did I really just sound that OLD!) get so much all during the year, let alone at Christmas! And we all know that gifts of time create memories they cherish and are the most special of all! So, I found this advent calendar and when I saw it, it was PERFECT! Super easy to make and super CUTE! So here is what you will need! I am also going to give an alternate version as well that is even quicker if you don’t have an hour to put into it!
Supplies:
1 mini muffin tin with 24 muffin slots
4 to 5 different patterned scrapbook papers
ribbon of your choice
sharpie
1 package of magnetic sheets (with office supplies) or magnetic tape (I found mine in the craft section at walmart…this isn’t like scotch tape, it is just a roll of magnets that looks like a big roll of tape and you will cut it apart in the sizes you need and one side of it is sticky to apply to the back of your paper)
scissors or a cricut or silhouette
AND FOR THE ALTERNATE VERSION ALL YOU NEED IS SOME COLORFUL TISSUE PAPER AND SOME TAPE!
Now, using your cricut or silhouette (or you can do it the old fashioned way and cut them out by hand:o), cut out 24 circles (about 3 inches each) out of your magnetic paper OR regular paper. If you use the magnetic paper like I did, you will then have to cut out 24 additional circles of the same size in the different patterned papers and hot glue them to the magnetic circles. If you are using the magnetic tape, cut the 24 circles out of the patterened papers and then apply the magnetic tape to the top, bottom, and sides of the circles. Now out of a separate patterned paper that you have not used yet, cut 24 more circles that are 1 and 1/2 inches wide. Then glue those circles onto the bigger circles and write numbers 1 thru 24 onto them with your sharpie. Now they are ready to cover the little muffin slots! Glue a bow on top and viola! The shell to your advent calendar is done, so if the kids have been helping you with this project, now it’s time to send them along! You don’t want to spoil this part for them! Time to put the activity papers inside!!
Here is the file for all the activities I put into our advent calendar but you can do whatever activities you choose!
Advent Calendar Activities (click on this link and once it takes you to the next page, click on the “advent calendar activities” again and it will open up a pdf file that you can print)
If you choose to use this file, all you have to do is print it and cut it apart and put one in every slot! Now, you may want to get your calendar out before choosing where you put what so that the activities will work well with your own family schedule. There are things such as GO LOOK AT CHRISTMAS LIGHTS, MAKE HOT CHOCOLATE, WATCH A CHRISTMAS MOVIE AND HAVE POPCORN, AND GO SEE SANTA. There are some things that are so easy for busy nights and then some activities that take a little more time and effort, so use what works for you! Now, get crafting and lets go make some memories!:o)
ALTERNATE VERSION THAT WILL TAKE YOU NO LONGER THAN 10 MINUTES: After putting one activity paper in each slot, take 2 to 3 pieces of tissue paper and wrap the front of your muffin tin so all slots are covered. Secure the back with tape. It’s okay if it’s a little messy on the back, just make sure it is good and secured! Add a bow to the top. Now, everyday, your kids get to play the “punch game”, kind of like on “The Price is Right” where they punch out one of the holes and get to do the activity inside! They don’t have to go in order, or they can! Just do it whatever way you want! Just as much fun but not near the time as the above!:o)
Have fun guys!
Alli
Read MoreInside Out Frames
Good Friday evening everyone! I finally finished a little project I wanted to share with you. Shouldn’t have taken this long, but keep in mind this is the gal who left a Christmas tree up all year! I’ll call these “Inside Out” Frames. I can’t take credit for the idea, but loved the concept when I first saw it. I started off with a sheet of MDF board for a few dollars at Home Depot. Maybe cost $3 for a 2′ x 4′ piece. Then I waited until Hobby Lobby had their frames on sale for 50% (which happens quite often!). I got the 3 black frames shown for $5 each. You will need some fabric and a glue gun and you are ready to get started. I was looking for a piece of fabric to match a chair in my office, so I ventured over the Unclaimed Baggage Center Annex and found a single curtain panel that was a spot on match and bought it for $7. So…I have $25 invested and will even have leftovers! Before I cut the board, I bought my square frames so I would know what size to cut the MDF board. I bought 8 1/4″ square frames. I then had my dad cut me three 12″ square boards from the MDF. Then, I cut the fabric in 16″ squares, and wrapped the board with the fabric, securing it with hot glue on the back. I brought them to work thinking I would hang them that week, but alas it’s been MONTHS!
Finally, last night I found some pictures on my home computer, changed to black and white and printed them at the 1 hour at Walmart for less than a buck and installed them today. I took me 3 nails to get the first one up in my office because my big hammer kept bending the little nail! Finally I got the nail to go THRU the board and then I hung the frame on the face of it. So now, instead of having a mat only inside the frame, I kinda have one outside of the frame, too!
Pardon the picture quality, as my trusty iphone doesn’t always take the best pics. (AND the walls are actually tan, not this funky gold? color!) Anybody got any iphone camera tips for me? Would love to hear them! Anyway, as you decide what pictures you want to hang, consider this different way of hanging them and changing them as often as you like! I still need a lil somethin’ somethin’ on the mantle….
Until next time you WhimC folks! ~ Brenda
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