Ornaments: Oranges

This was a great DIY craft inspired by my mother-in-law Deb. She’s always coming up with really beautiful, handy ways to decorate. I saw these on her tree a couple of years back and decided to try to make some this year. My husband was excited to try too since he had enjoyed his mom’s trees for so many years.
Basic instructions:

1) Slice oranges in 1/4 inch even slices horizontally so you get a nice star pattern. This is easiest if your oranges are fresh, but if you’re using old ones because you don’t want to eat them.. its ok, it still works. 

2) arrange on a cookie sheet at bake at 150 for approximately 4 hours. Flipping them half way through will help with even drying of the slices. Depending on your oven, the thickness of your slices, and the relative humidity of your house this may take more or less time. It took me about 6 hours to get my thicker slices dried out enough.

3) Tie a ribbon

4) And hang on a tree, or garland. I hung mine on my garland to spice it up some. The Oranges look SOO pretty with the twinkle lights on.

  And there you have it, Dried Orange slices for ornaments. This is perfect if you don’t have a lot of money to buy ornaments or if you’re just starting out as a family and don’t have lots of eclectic memories in your ornament collections

Cards cards and more cards

Another thing I love about Christmas are all the beautiful photocards I get in the mail. For those of you who take the time to send them THANKS!! I love getting your notes, your pictures, and your updates. It’s the only time of the year that I really get to relish in how much your kids are growing and how beautiful all your families are!

I just ordered our cards for this year and I was so excited because snapfish.com had a coupon for 50% off! Sweet deal… but only for two more days. If you have a card that you’ve made and are waiting for a deal this one is great!  Use the code CYBER50.

Happy Card Making!

Ornaments: Angels

Have you put up your Christmas tree yet? We have a standing tradition of putting up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. It keeps us from going out shopping (yuck) on the busiest shopping day of the year and helps us spend some time as a family on a really nice long weekend.

Needless to say, I love pretty ornaments. I especially love angels. In fact, I collect the Willow Tree yearly dated ornament series and have since it started (I was very fortunate that they started the series when I the year I got married and wanted to start collecting ornaments.) This is this year’s Willow Tree ornament:

Here are the other ones I have:

I’m not usually a collector of things. But this is one thing that I really love to collect. It chronicles all the Christmas’s we’ve been married and helps me to remember all the wonderful years we’ve been together.

Ok, enough cheese for one day. Hope you had a great thanksgiving and that you’re enjoying some family time together!