DIY Tree Garland.

Or Garlic, as SC kept calling it all day.  Book page garland.  Cheap & chic.  And so easy, even you can do it.  It’s pretty self-explanatory according to this picture:

I use old books in the same hue for random decor around the house and knew it would come in handy one day.  I grabbed a book, straight edge & box cutter.  I sliced my strips in 1 inch wide pieces the length of the page and stapled like a mad woman.

TA-Mother-Frickin-Da!

I can imagine a hundred other possibilities for this garland, so staple on my friends, staple on.

Naughty & Nice Applique Shirts.

Shopping for festive holiday shopping of any kind on this island is a task. For that matter, shopping of ANY kind on this island is a task.

‘Round October, I started looking on-line for holiday jammies, dresses and whatever I thought I could dress my boy up in that didn’t make him look like an elf. I knew we had several Christmas functions to attend and I wanted my kids to look festive (dammit). I became obsessed; bidding and loosing on ebay…comparing prices across sites like I do….then realized I was wasting my time and decided to let it go. I moved on to something else I was obsessing about at the time, but can’t remember what it is now.

Until a couple of nights before the boat parade. It hit me! I’ll applique shirts! What would they say? Peace on Earth? I’m an Angel? Santa’s Helper? Nope. To complicated.

Naughty & Nice. Perfect.

After a couple of cups of iced coffee close to 7pm I knew I could pull it off. I used iron-on adhesive paper. It comes in a roll at your fabric store (even our ghetto store in Christiansted where the woman would not let my potty training two year old use their bathroom…so I let SC pee on their floor).

First, I ironed a patch of fabric to the adhesive paper to give it some stiffness so I could cut easier. I printed my letters on regular paper then pinned them on the most festive fabric I had in my craft stash. Red Bandanas left over from SC’s Cowboy birthday round-up.

Using the tiniest scissors in the world, I cut each letter out, peeled the backing, placed them neatly on the white undershirts I bought from KFart and ironed the heck outta them.

TA DA! And it only took a couple of iced coffees, a couple of Corona’s and a long phone conversation with my Mom to get them done…about midnight! 

Please meet Mr. Naughty:

Miss Nice wasn’t living up to her shirt, so there is no photo.

I don’t think I could live with myself as a mom any longer if my kids did not have a lick of anything festive to wear. And now I can sleep better at night.

*If you are feeling really brave, you can use your sewing machine to surge along the edges of your applique. It gives it a nice finished look and most likely your appliqué won’t come off. I have a cheap machine and I almost dumped it in the ocean a year or so ago because the stickiness of the appliqué paper kept messing with the tension, making me more crazy than I already am. But, hey, good luck with that!