The Christmas Party

Christmas 2011

Here is a post I wrote and never uploaded for the Christmas Party I was so excited about

So about a week before Christmas I host a Christmas Party.  I have to admit that I went a little decoration crazy.   

I was mostly trying to decorate with red, white and silver.  All of the glass ornaments hanging from the red cloth draped over the mirrors are the no mess glitter ornaments that I had made a few weeks before (see post below).  

The spread was pretty simple, though this wasn't done on purpose.  Two nights before the party I was making some zucchini bread and zucchini muffins and suddenly I noticed sparks in the back of my oven.  The heating element on the bottom of my oven had one spot and it was glowing orange and sending out sparks.  So I immediately turned off the oven and removed all the muffins and bread from the oven.  Luckily the muffins were finished, but the five mini loaves of bread all had to be thrown out, because they had not cooked through before this happened.  This is the moment I started to freak out, I had a chicken wellington wreath shaped entree I was planning to make for the main course, and a bunch more baking to do between this and my party.  So the next day at work I call every appliance part place I can find and they all tell me that they can absolutely get me my part, as long as I can wait about a week.  UM, NO!  Then I finally find a place (in a suburb that is of course on the other side of Dallas from where I work), but they had one in stock and would be open until 7pm...I was saved.  So now it is the night before the party; my husband and I drove all the way across town during rush hour to find this little hole in the wall shop that did have the exact part I was looking for, and all I could think was 'alright, if we get home get this fixed I can get right back to it and still have like 4 hours of baking time'.  We get home to repair the oven, now before you replace the heating element you have two options; the first is to pull the oven out and unplug it or second to use the fuse box to shut off power to the oven.  In my house we had two problems with this our oven and stove top was built into the existing counter and even if we pull out the bottom drawer you can not see the plug, the other problem is that not one of the circuit switches in our box turned off the oven light.   I know what your thinking, flip the master circuit breaker and boom easy, that is what I thought too.  In my house if you turn off the master breaker switch every light in the house goes off, except the one telling me that my oven is on. 

Long aggravating story short, I didn't have an oven for the Christmas Party.  I did however make some great crock pot recipes, some awesome crock pot hot chocolate and for the rest I either made no bake options or gave in and used store bought.  Either way it was a great party.

**Months later I would discover from my electrician that as long as the oven isn't turned on it is safe to change the heating element.  Oh well, now I know**    

Countdown Christmas!

I know, I can hear you...'CHRISTMAS!?!, but Jenni it isn't even Thanksgiving what are you talking about?'  It isn't as though I have already decorated anything, I have just been planning all of my home made gifts and planned store bought gifts (Black Friday rapidly approaches), that I will be doing this year.  I have purchased many supplies and also began to plan my Christmas Party; blog to follow, sometime in mid December, and I am making several home made decorations for that as well.  I also took complete advantage of all the Veterans Day sales for Christmas decorations, I won't decorate my house until the weekend after Thanksgiving, but I am almost completely ready to just do it in one really long day.

First I Had purchased some red and white yarn (when I bought yarn for the Halloween Yarn Spider Webs), planning on making smaller versions of those yarn balls in red and white for this party.  However, I am not yet ready to untangle that much yarn.  So inspired by a yarn wreath I saw for sale online (http://www.etsy.com/listing/84593359/15-christmas-candy-cane-wreath-with), I decided to make one.  Before I began wrapping my foam wreath form, I balled a bunch of yarn one softball sized ball for each color.  Then I began wrapping very precisely for each section in three layers.  Try as best as you can to spiral the yarn very neatly, this will give the wreath a much more uniform look.  I also happened to see these fake flowers at the craft store they are all glued to wires (though it would have been easier if they were longer wires, the back is definitely jerry-rigged with extra pieces of wire) and decided I could use them to accent my wreath.

Supplies:
Foam Wreath
Yarn
Accent flowers or ribbon
patience (this took 4 or 5 hours while catching up on my DVR'd shows)

Then I discovered this awesome and super easy DIY Glitter Coated (but on the inside) ornament project.

Full Tutorial here

http://thegreenbeanscrafterole.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-that-glittersminus-mess.html

Supplies:
Floor Polish (I used Pledge Floor Care Clean & Shine) ($3)
Clear Ornaments ($3 per box)
Fine Glitter ($3-$9)
Q-Tips
Funnel (you can use an envelope with a corner cut off if need be)

The red and silver are for the party, the purple that is just for me.  I love purple!

These took less than an hour, and I want to make more so badly.  Maybe I will hit up the Hobby Lobby tomorrow, because I am almost out of glitter, and I need more ornaments.  Plus, my sister has already requested some in purple, blue and silver.

I have so many projects between now and Christmas.  I will show you as many as I can before, and tell you all about everything after the Holidays.  I will do my best to stay more current with projects as they happen.