Tissue Paper Pom Pom Ornament Tutorial

I fell in love with these feather ball ornaments from West Elm, but I'm sure not going to pay $9 for a Christmas ornament, especially when I want a bajillion of them. Then I realized that they looked kind of like the Martha Stewart tissue paper pom poms that are so popular right now.  I decided to make a mini version to hang on my Christmas tree.

I had some white tissue paper with silver glitter specs (who doesn't like glitter specs?) leftover from last Christmas. I also used some string, a ruler, and twist ties. You could also use ribbon or wire or whatever else you can tie with in place of the twist ties and string.

I cut 5 pieces of tissue paper into 4 inch by 10 inch rectangles, stacked them up, and began folding them accordion-style. I made each fold about half an inch wide.

Once the accordion is finished, secure in the middle. Make sure your knot is along the folded edge, not the flat edge. It will make for easier hanging. Then cut the edges so that they are pointy. You could also do a rounded edge.

Then begin unfolding, poofing it a little. This is a great tutorial with a video better explaining how to "poof."

 

I tied a loop with string to hang it up with. You can use anything, ribbon, string . . . or just stick an ornament hook right on your twist tie (or wire, or ribbon).

 

I've only made three, (four if you count the purple, blue, and pink striped one I made for my daughter), but I plan to make a whole set to hang sporadically around the tree.

 Merry Christmas!

amanda

Oh Micah.

Micah was headed to a playdate this morning. He was excited. I was supposed to leave the house at 9:40 to drop him off. At 9:20 he asked me how long until we left. I told him 20 minutes. He asked how many seconds that was. I told him one thousand, two hundred seconds. To simplify I told him that its just counting to 100 twelve times. He left the room.

Later I hear him yelling at Caleb, "Stop singing Caleb! I have really good ears and I can still hear you. I am trying to count to 100 twelve times!"

That boy.

Yoshi Elise

The last time Elise wore these pajamas, Micah started calling her a Yoshi egg! 

What do you think? Does she look like a Yoshi egg?

Just A Day

Today was a good day. Today I chose to take it easy and enjoy it. I normally spend Mondays cleaning and doing laundry. Not today. This  morning we were artsy. Eva started out the day making a picture with stickers and markers, then we got out all the paints and she painted two more works of art, then she cut up tissue paper and glued it to make a rainbow, then we printed out a rainbow coloring page and she colored that. THEN, we had to paint her fingernails all different colors!

We spent a little time doing work. I vacuumed and steam cleaned the living room carpet while she cleaned up the enormous pile of clothes on her floor. She's back to wearing 15 different outfits every day. That's fine with me, as long as she cleans it all up.

Then, I did something a little different. Instead of saying, GO OUTSIDE! I went outside with her. We played on the swings and jumped on the trampoline together. The boys came home from school and joined us on the trampoline. A friend or two popped up in the backyard and we told them that we were having family time.

Eventually Elise woke up from a hugely long nap and enjoyed her first outside swing! 

Caleb, where'd you go! 

I also got to cook up a deliciously unhealthy meal of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes . . . (with salad; romaine, carrots, grape tomatoes, avocado, croutons, and sunflower seeds) and I finally nailed the cream gravy! I was so excited! Thanks Pioneer Woman!

Andrew got home from work not too late and was able to help me get all the food finished and on the table in time for Caleb to head to karate.

He had his belt test tonight and moved up from yellow to orange! Yay!

It was a good day and I'm glad I got to spend some sweet time enjoying those little guys. They're my favorite.

Sisters

Eva is obsessed with Baby Elise. She is always in the baby's face; trying to hug, kiss, squeeze, pick up, carry, whatever her. It's super sweet, she LOVES her new baby sister. Every time I try to take a picture of the baby, if Eva is around, she's in the picture with her:

These are all unedited snapshots; Eva loves to make strange faces and gestures for the camera . . .

 

and this is her squeeeeeeze face

she loves to squeeeeeze those she loves!

Creating

Here's a little recap of stuff I've made in the past year. I know there's a lot of banter in blog-land about comparing ourselves to each other and about bloggers only posting the best of their lives leaving others feeling inadequate and such. I'm guilty of such comparing (blogged about it here) and was hesitant to post this at all. But here goes. 

You might have read this post about having a hard time picking out a paint color for Eva's room. I finally settled on a Benjamin Moore color called Turquoise Haze. I love it. Eva really loves it. Turns out my pink girl has fallen for blue and its her favorite color these days.

I finally Andrew got her room painted up in one day! I got her bed all set up and eventually hung up these tissue paper pom poms I made as decoration for her birthday party. Tutorials for these are here and here.

 I also got crazy with making button monograms! I posted how I made the capital E on another blog post.

 I made the little one with burlap wrapped around a canvas. I found an estsy shop that sells these and I decided to create my own. The Capital E is in Eva's room and the lowercase e is in Elise's room.

My grandfather made this dresser. I believe he made my dad paint it and it was gray and in my brother's room while we were growing up. It came away with me when I went to college, we painted it maroon with white knobs . . . gig 'em Aggies! 

It got another redo when I was pregnant with Caleb and we put it in his nautical themed nursery. When I got pregnant with Elise, we had to switch rooms around again and it needed to become Eva's. It got repainted in a nice, bright white and I purchased pink glass knobs at Hobby Lobby. I found them on clearance for $2.99 each and bought out all the ones in Conroe and The Woodlands!

 These little buckets and watering cans were found at Hobby Lobby on clearance. Eva's birthday is in August and all the summer stuff was on its way out.

 

I gave them all nice coats of white spray paint, stuck some styrofoam balls inside, tied on some ribbon and had fancy decorations. I LOVED these and felt very proud of myself. 

 I fell in love with a ruffly shower curtain from Anthropologie, which was ridiculously priced. I can't find it now and I can't even remember how much it was . . . but it was ridiculous. 

I did some searching and realized I wasn't the only one in love with it. I found a couple online tutorials (here and here). It finally convinced me to purchase a sewing machine. While my mother-in-law was here for a visit, we spent a couple days making this one. The main body is a full-sized white sheet from Walmart. The stripes are made out of twin-sized sheets, also from Walmart. It was quite a project for my first sewing endeavor (thanks for spell check, computer). But honestly Andrew's mom did most of it. I learned many things though . . . My mind doesn't do a great job at engineering something like this. 

 

 All the work was worth it. It's beautiful!!! (Except the kids have a hard time opening it by themselves because its so heavy.)

 Father's Day of last year

 

I had the kids each pick out a piece of scrapbook paper out of one of those coordinating packs and trace and cut out their own letter. Then we stepped outside, snapped a quick photo (in terrible, terrible noon sun) with them holding their letters spelling DAD. I had them printed, then glued them on some more paper, added a #1 and slapped them in frames. Happy Father's Day. I was watching some neighbor friends whose mom was out of town, so they made one for their dad, too. 

Lastly, Caleb had to be a red, marching ant for his 2nd grade music program. It was in February, so they were clearancing (spell check says that's not a word, but I'm going with it anyway) out their winter stuff. I found this long-sleeved boys polo at Walmart for $5 or $8. Then I found this strong felty fabric at Hobby Lobby for 79 cents a sheet. It's next to the felt, but is sturdier than felt, I don't know what it is. Each sheet was pretty large and I could get two ant legs out of each. I just cut them out and sewed them onto the shirt. I also attached a thread from his sleeve to the middle leg and another from the middle to bottom leg so that they stayed up better.

 Since it was February, I found this Valentine's headband at the dollar store. It had two big hearts on the top of the antennae, which I trimmed down to smaller circle-ish shapes. I purchased a package of huge red puff balls at Hobby Lobby and hot glued them to the trimmed ends. Ant antennae!

 Thanks for bearing with me on all this crafting. I have done much, much less since the baby was born, but I want to do much, much more since I spend so much time on pinterest! Seriously, we're supposed to be eating dinner in 16 minutes and I have no idea what I'm going to make.

Light

Tonight I read to Eva before bed. After we finished, I asked her if it was scary (the book was about Clifford and Stinky the Skunk Ghost). She said the only thing she was scared of was the dark . . . except when she's at home and its light.

I just stared at her. How true is that? When we're in the light, the darkness has no grasp on us, it has no hold over us. Even though the dark is scary, the light is more powerful. How powerful and trustworthy is our God!



In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:4-5.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7

Also, it made me super glad that she feels safe when she's at home.

Peace to you.