Black Spray Painted Frames and Glittered Candles

I "shopped" my home to decorate this holiday season with picture frames and candles. I had saved all my used pillar candles and old nicked-up frames for a "future project". I got an opportunity to pick up some black spray paint at Wal-mart. I also bought Modge-Podge because I was out. I l-o-v-e that stuff!

Here are some of the "Before" items that got the spray paint treatment.

I propped the items on anything I could find...from rocks to pieces of wood, just whatever was handy.
And "After"....













I plan on sanding the edges of the frames and candle sticks, but I still need to get sandpaper!

For the candles, I cut the melted tops off and smoothed out the edges. This part is NOT kid-friendly! However, once that's done, the rest is child's play! : ) I used a sponge brush to paint Modge-Podge on the sides of the candle. Next, I took the top of a shoebox and sprinkled glitter (Sulyn Brand) and rolled the candle back and forth in it until it was completely covered in glitter. I know that the finer grain glitter is very nice for this project, but I didn't have any on hand. The regular glitter gave the candles a more retro look in my opinion. Another idea I've seen is to use Epson Salt instead of glitter to give the look of snow. I think I will be glittering a few Easter eggs this year, too!!!

Special Christmas

My son (who is in the army) was finally able to come home for Christmas for the first time in 3 years! It was so good to have all three children home again for the holidays!


















Also, my granddaughter (who turned 1 yr. old on New Year's Eve) really made it special this year! Grandchildren are such a blessing!

My gift from my DH was a Brother CS-6000i sewing machine! I am really enjoying having a portable sewing machine after 30 years of using one in a cabinet. I love it! More on that later...

Baby Legs

My daughter asked me to make my granddaughter some "baby legs" leggings from knee hi socks. I had found several good tutorials here and here. The ones with the "lettuce edge" hem is great for girls and the cuffed edge is good for boys. Target has 3 pair of ladies socks on sale for $6. That's $2 a pair if you're doin' the math! Much better than the $12+ price at Gap and other retail stores. Of course, I grabbed some up.

I basically just cut the foot part off each pair of socks and set my machine to sew a moderately close together zig zag stitch. I stitched along the raw edge and gently pulled the fabric as I sewed. This created the ruffled lettuce edge hem. The next thing I knew, I had sewn up six pair of leggings in no time at all. This was so easy. The only thing that slowed me down was simply threading bobbins and rethreading the machine to match the different colors in the socks!

Ta Da!








Edited to Add:
And here is Miss P modeling a pair!