Paper Hearts Tutorial

I wanted to post the last Christmas craft I made for our apartment this year. I know it’s after Christmas, but these would also be great for Valentine’s Day (which is the next holiday coming up, just a little plug…)

It’s super fast and easy! And fun! Have I convinced you to try it yet?

Paper hearts!

So, this is how you start!

First, start with an old book and some hot cocoa and some candles. Check, check, and check.

Then, I went ahead and cut all my strips of paper so the “fun part” would go faster.

You need 4 sizes, and that can vary depending on how big you want your hearts to be.

Mine were about 6 inches long and going down by about an inch or so. But again, it can vary.

Then grab one of each size and grab a stapler.

Hold it sort of like this. (Or however it works for you.) From the biggest to the smallest, and then staple the stack together at the bottom on top of another strip of paper to act as a base.

Like this! See? Easy!

Then do the same with another stack of paper on the other side of the base paper.

Then grab the stack on one side and line up the ends together, pull them down and staple them to the base, so they look like half a heart.

 

Then repeat with the other side to make a full heart and staple again!

Ta-da!

They're very easy to make, and cute, right?

P.S. There’s still time to let me know what you’d like to see posts about in the future! Leave a comment on this post: 
http://thenewlywedwife.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/what-would-you-like-to-know/

Paper Tree Tutorial #1 (Folder Version)

Just to let you know, I had a nice blog post all ready to give you yesterday and WordPress had a slight hiccup and somehow it all got lost. (So much for the automatic saving, right?)

Anyway, I apologize for the delay, but here’s what I was going to share with you yesterday but didn’t get around to retyping out. 

Here’s how I made my paper trees!

That Christmas card collection is much more full now! Thanks! Oh, but this picture is about the trees, how nice! Right?

Now, since I didn’t come up with this idea, nor did I necessarily do a great job of explaining it, I’ll share this link. It’s the page I went to when I was learning this little craft. It’s pretty exciting to watch the video, ok, not, but it did help a lot, so that’s your choice.

Anyway, here’s what I did.

First of all, I used old magazines and catalogs, as well as a real estate booklet thing. I will say that it works better to choose magazines with binding instead of just staples because the pages tend to rip out of the staples as you fold, just a heads up.

Start by breaking the binding, bending it back and forth to make less of a definition of where the cover naturally opened and closed originally.

Then start folding each page the first time around by taking the top right corner down to the center fold, making a big triangle with a right angle on the left side, (yes, geometry will help later in life!) like this.

Yes, I took a picture to show you the fitness page, just in case those holiday treats have you inspired to do some strength training while folding. No? Ok, that's fine, too.

I think it worked better to move the pages around to the back of the stack (like the way you move the passed calendar pages down to the bottom so the top part isn’t so thick on the nail as the year goes on? Or is that example only work for me? Let me know if I’m alone in that little trick…) as you work your way through the book because otherwise, the side are very lopsided and I think it was easier to work with the folds if I kept it more level.

When you’re done with that, it should look something like this.

Nice, huh?

After you have all these initial folds done, go back and start round two. This time, you again take the right hand side and fold it into the center, making an even skinnier little triangle. It’s okay if it hangs over the bottom edge of your book. It’s supposed to do that.

Keep in mind that your pages will look different depending on what size book you started with.

My hand looks weird in this picture. Oh well. At least my ring looks nice.

Ok, again, I like to move the pages around as I go. But Martha doesn’t do that, so it’s up to you.

Next comes the hard part. Okay, it isn’t that hard, but it’s less easy. Because so far, my little cousins could do this on their own, all day, blindfolded. I’m kidding. But it is easy, no?

You have to fold the bottom part of this fold up to make it a right angle triangle again. I like to fold it up on the outside first, crease it, and then tuck it in. Martha just tucks it in all at once. But I thought that was too hard.

This is the folding up part. Easy enough.

Then the harder part…

Tucking in is the last step, so keep that in mind as this gets annoying.

After that, you should be ready to set it up and fan out the pages to make it as full and round as possible.

All done!

Then you can paint or glitter all you want. Do it outside and let them air out as long as possible. Turns out that cheap spray paint plus spray glitter plus thin paper makes for a pretty smelly tree.

(Sorry, hubs.)

Or you can leave them as is, but they didn’t look that “Christmasy” to me, so I went with the paint.

You can't see the glitter, but it's there, trust me.

 

I know the other trees were a bit cooler, so I’ll post about them soon.

It’s crazy here and everywhere, so posts may be fewer and far between until after the holidays. You’ll forgive me, right?

Our stockings are hung…by the kitchen with care…

It’s Christmastime here in our tiny apartment. I’m used to having a whole big farmhouse all decorated in greenery and snowmen. But here, we have neither greenery nor snowmen.

What we do have is Christmas spirit! Or rather, I have that and Hubs just plays along to make me happy. Don’t get me wrong, he had fun decorating our tree, but he certainly wouldn’t have fretted too much if we had decided we didn’t have room for a tree.

But…never fear, because Christmas is here!

Ta-da!

Yup, that’s our first Christmas tree, folks. I’m proud we decorated frugally, so I’ll share what we learned in this adventure.

First of all, make stuff yourself! Like these trees! (That I’ll post about later!)

Yup, I like paper crafts. And pine cones, from my parents' yard at home, in our fruit bowl.

It’s part of the little scene on top of bookshelf #1

Candles are from my mom's unused decor box. They're several years old, but certainly still look pretty.

And the nativity set? Another tip, “re-use.”

I bought this YEARS ago during a sale of wood-carved products from Bethlehem at my church. It's all we have for now.

I also have a tree like that on the shelf in our living room.

I got the idea from here.

With our "love dove," candlestick, and our freshly printed free subway art, of course, see how we re-purpose?.

The print is from here.

And I HAVE to show you the adorable place mats my mother-in-law made for me. How adorable are they?

Sooooo cute!

And our second kind of paper trees, the folded ones I made, and I’ll post about, with our growing collection of Christmas cards.

It's a wintery forest in our pass-through! Oh, and there's the poinsettia that may or may not make it until Christmas...

I got the ideas for the trees from the mothership, Martha, of course.

And we also have stockings! But as the title of this post suggests, we had a bit of a dilemma when deciding where to hang them, as we have no fireplace.

But we got a shelf from my parents’ basement. (It’s a wonderland of usable stuff down there, though my mother’s probably horrified I’m admitting how much is down there. Sorry, Mom!)

Hubs painted it white, and I sanded it down to give it that vintage look I like. It’s old enough to really be vintage, it just needed a little love.

The stockings we made for each other. He made mine several years ago. I made his a few weeks ago.

See, we can even make our own stockings! His is made from an old pair of jeans. And since we don’t have a sewing machine and Hubs would have FREAKED if I’d tried to smuggle it home, I had to sew it by hand, which took…awhile.

Here’s the whole look that greets you when you come in our front door by the kitchen now:

Decorated with candles and a free picture frame (from the church) to which I added a cute Christmas scrap-booking paper I already had, and a framed, free Christmas printable.

Print from tatertots and jello.

Closer look at the frame. Love it!

Cute!

There, our stockings are all ready to be filled up with fun little gifts.

And in the spirit of giving, I’m going to GIVE you all a little tour of our tree.

Here's our initial ornaments. I can't remember where or why we have these, if they're from you, thanks!

Here we go, a cute little “S” I got from the church I volunteer at.

You'll also see the red swirl ornaments Hubs picked out for us to buy, and a preview of the paper hearts I made. And the craft ribbon I had that we used as a garland.

Here’s one I made last year at school.

It's glow in the dark!

And the ornaments from my childhood that I collected as a kid but that haven’t been hanging on our family tree in a long time:

I have the whole series of these little books. They open and close and have such cute little scenes in them.

Oh, and you want to see the ornaments I made?

My paper hearts! I love how they turned out. I'll post instructions soon.

Here’s some more…

I bought this one ($2) because it reminded me of "happy wife, happy life." Or a happy hubs... (It went with a matching Merry Christmas one, but I liked this message even better than just wishing a Merry Christmas. I'm wishing y'all a Happy Everything!)

Oh and just to make sure I represent,

Am I happy Pujols left? Nope. But can he do what he wants? Yup. Besides, my man Molina is still there! And that's all I'm going to say about it. Oh, and don't forget the edible decorations, the candy canes!

It makes my heart happy to have our tree up and looking so festive. Who cares if our ornaments and decorations are a bit skimpy and we only spent 5 bucks on our tree. I say it’s beautiful!

Happy home.

A birthday weekend…

First of all, Hubs turned 24 this weekend on Saturday. (Happy birthday, hubs!) He doesn’t love to celebrate his birthday as much as I love to celebrate mine…but we did the best we could. Here’s how it went down and what I learned this weekend.

1. Friday night we went to a friend’s house and just chilled with some trivia, some Boulevard Wheat, and some conversation. Before this we went to Wendy’s for dinner. (I know, I know…we were going to go to an actual restaurant but the wait was for more than 30 minutes for the two of us…and it wasn’t even that nice of a restaurant!)

2. Saturday morning I got up and made biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Then we chilled on the couch and got ready to head to Warrensburg for lunch. Wyatt requested New China Buffet since we were going to the Burg for a wedding reception that afternoon anyway. The in-laws and brother-in-law met us there, and we all enjoyed a grease-filled, overly filling buffet. (Wyatt enjoyed it the most I think, but we all went along with it. It was his birthday after all.) Then we went to the reception, had a good time, and saw a bunch of friends. Then it was time for dinner out as a group. (This weekend recap revolves around a lot of food…hmmm)

3. Sunday I had to work from 9-3ish. Hubs slept in and had leftover B’s and G’s, then went Christmas shopping for me! (He’s pretty pleased with his shopping so far, which makes me excited, and makes me need to go shopping!) When I got home, I started his birthday dinner, one of his favorites: my blue cheese butter and bacon burgers and fried potatoes.

Looks good, right?

It turned out great and was delicious. Then I gave Hubs his present from me. Spoiler alert, he LOVED it.

Here's Hubs with his new Turtle Beach headphones. (No, the flowers are not growing out of his head...)

Now, here’s the info: they’re the cheap ones. Still name brand, (and according to Hubs, AWESOME), but they are the (I assume) older model and certainly not the crazy $300 ones. But, he likes them, so I’m happy.

I’m also happy because they make it quiet in here when he wants to play video games and I don’t want to watch (which is usually).

So he played for awhile and then we did this:

See that big tree? See that tiny box of ornaments? There's a disconnect going on here...

And then we decided we’d done enough for one night and we ate some cake and headed to bed. I was planning to make some delicious-looking cookies and cream cupcakes for Hubs’s birthday cake, but we got a cake from the in-laws and certainly don’t need 2 cakes at once, so those will wait for some other occasion. I’ll leave you on the edge of your seats waiting to hear how they turn out.

Yes, he's cutting his cake with the biggest knife we own...a cleaver. He loves those knives, and goodness knows I love him.

Here’s what I learned in the process of all this madness.

1. Starting a new job isn’t always fun. Training and scheduling and meeting a bunch of new managers, etc. isn’t always easy…and Friday afternoon at work just wasn’t great. And I was all out of sorts when I got home. Somehow, though, Hubs managed to get me up and out of the house and even though we didn’t end up eating what or where I’d sort of wanted, and even though I didn’t really feel like chilling with the guys that night, it was exactly what I needed. And somehow, I got home that night feeling much better about life and work and all that jazz. Hubs really does know best sometimes.

2. Seeing friends only every couple of weeks (or longer) is a totally different world than when you see them all the time in college. It’s sad and good at the same time. Sad because we have to grow up and get jobs, and move away. But good because those are all good things…it’s just a bummer to be away from those you enjoy. Everyone understands that, I’m sure. I don’t need to get into it more.

3. This morning when I crawled out of bed a little before 8:00 (I stayed in bed after Hubs got up today. I was tired for some reason, and he got to sleep in yesterday and the day before…), I looked around the corner and saw this:

We didn't go to sleep with these lights on...

Reason # 106 that Husband roommates are the best. He knows me, and knows how to make me happy with the most simple of things. He knows how much I love Christmas lights and turned the tree on so I’d see it when I got up. It made me smile, made me feel festive, made me more optimistic about the day, and made me fall even more in love all over again. Isn’t it amazing how one small act (it took him a few seconds to plug in the tree) made a huge difference in my day? That was an excellent way for him to pursue me without even speaking. Actions really do speak louder than words, people. It’s cheesy, but it’s true.

4. Giving gifts is a great way to tell someone you were paying attention to them. I’m so happy he loved the birthday gift so much. I debated buying them because they weren’t the ‘top of the line” (we can’t justify that much on something we don’t NEED) and I didn’t know if they’d be worth the money they did cost. After all, I know pretty much nothing about video games. But, Hubs LOVES them, and his eyes were shining bright when he opened them, shining bright when he hooked them up, and practically glowing when he was trying them out the first time. In fact, his “too-loud-because-he’s-wearing-noise-canceling-headphones” comments of how awesome they were told me he really did think they were the “best gift he’d gotten in a long time.” Historically, he doesn’t always love the gifts I give him because he says he doesn’t NEED anything and he’s kinda picky and hard to shop for. (Ok, I added that last part, but it’s true sometimes!) So, I’m super excited he loved this one. It makes me feel both nervous and extra-excited for him to open the Christmas gifts I still need to buy.

5. As we decorate our apartment, I realize just how symbolic our minimal decor is of our little family. We don’t have a lot, and what we have is often hand-me-down or thrifty finds, and yet, as it comes together, it still makes me happy, still makes me feel warm and cozy inside. Hubs and I are new at this marriage thing. We’re not struggling to get by, but we certainly don’t have a lot, and we’re thankful for all the help we’ve gotten from our families. But we’re our own little family now, making it work together. And actually, we make me smile every day. I’m constantly surprised by how much more I love him. I’m constantly amazed by how awesome it is to be married to my best friend.

We've both had a birthday since we've been married now...Hubs is 24!