My last minute Christmas projects

I hope that you are ready for Christmas at your home. I'm happy to say that my last gift has been wrapped and is under the tree, the turkey is in the fridge and I just have a few last minute things on my grocery list that I will pick up a little closer to the 25th. I am looking forward to spending time with my daughters baking in the kitchen over the next few days. 

I wanted to share with you a couple of my last minute projects. The first one is a little treat bag that you can make up and hand out to friends that stop by over the holidays. I called it a Reindeer Treat bag!  I created the bag header and I you can use it too if you want. Just  download my art, print it on white cardstock and cut it out. To attach the bag header to the top of a glassine bag  or a clear bag you will need to fold the bag header in half and use staples to close. Fill the bags with candies or use my recipe below.

Reindeer Treats Recipe: mix together  equal amounts of pretzels, Shreddies cereal, M&M's candies and chocolate chips.

Download Reindeer Treats bag header here.

You will notice on the download that there are two extra square tags on the side of the download. I hate to leave blank space when I am printing something out so I added the tags!

I love to send and receive Christmas cards. It's a Christmas tradition that I personally look forward to every year. This year I made a ribbon garland using scraps of ribbon to display the cards with pictures on them. My photo above shows my  2012, 2011 and 2010 Christmas cards to demonstrate what the Christmas card garland will look like. 

Here's a quick overview of how to make one of these ribbon garlands. It doesn't  take long to make. It's such a simple project that you could make it with the kids in under an hour ... it will keep them busy before Santa arrives! I used lots of different ribbons - assorted colours, widths and textures. I even added some tinsel ribbon for fun. I cut the ribbon into lengths of about 6" but you don't have to have them all the exact same length so don't worry too much about measuring. I used one long length of twine as the base and tied a loop for hanging on one end. Then I just started tying ribbons in a random manner along the twine. I added a large wood clothespins in between the ribbons about every 4" to hang the cards. You will want to cut the ends of the ribbons once they are tied onto the twine. Cut the ends however you want ... mix it up as you can see in my photo above. Make the garland as long as you want to fit the space you want to hang it. When you are done, tie another loop at the end of the twine for hanging and cut off any extra twine. 

I made a couple of these chalkboard signs with my daughter and her friends a few weeks ago. They were painted on wood market trays from Creative Bag. I bought some more of these wood market trays to use for Christmas day entertaining. The trays are disposable but the shapes are really nice and I clean them off and paint them with black board paint. You can see more details on how I create these here and here. I am going to save the trays from Christmas day to do something for my daughter's rooms. I know that I will be checking my Pinterest boards for quotes to use. 

I hope that your Christmas preparations are going well and that there will be time to do sit back and relax with family and friends. 

Merry Christmas Everyone!!