"Merry Christmas" Garland from Old Christmas Cards $0

 

 

This one is super easy. You just have to crop old Christmas cards!

I had a corduroy alphabet sticker set that I used for the letters, but you could just as easily print letters on your computer or stamp them. I mounted each letter to a piece of cardstock and then double-mounted that onto old Christmas cards. Set eyelets in the corners (or just punch a hole) and string some waxed floss or whatever thready-type stuff you want through the holes! It's a hodge-podge way to showcase all the neat cards people send.

Halloween Garland from Tangled Trash $0

 

 

 

Every year our church has a Halloween carnival. There is a fish pond. The same heap of Oriental Trading Company toys get given every year. This blob of Halloween necklaces has been in the supply box for at least four years. Greg tried to untangle them during an entire Presidential debate but it was no use. Too tangled. So I chopped the rubbery little plastic pieces off of the strings and made a garland with them.

I just tied each trinket to a scrap of ribbon with a different scrap of ribbon. I was finally able to use the roll of Halloween ribbon Diane Gaede gave me two years ago! Hooray! No materials needed other than scissors, ribbon, and the items you are stringing.

I love hanging seasonal swags from my collection of glass bottles. Plus it forces me to clean all the bottles a few times a year.

You can make garlands from anything: leftover holiday paraphernalia, buttons, miniature toys, game pieces, cards, ticket stubs, etc.

Wall of Game Paraphernalia <$175

My entryway wall. Basically my childhood on a wall. My happy Durko-childhood with my siblings in our mid-Missouri basement with thick blue carpet perfect for playing games on. I don't know which we loved more: games or puzzles.

This might seem pricey for a ReDEUX, but the framing will get you every time. The games were all either free (my sweet MIL) or $1 at D.I.. I repurposed several frames I already owned, I used book cloth and art paper and things I already owned for the backing, but the giant Manhattan frame was a pretty penny. I still have plenty of room before I hit the vaulted ceiling.

This is the set of Clue cards that I played with as a kid. Miss Scarlett was fierce and Mrs. Peacock looked like a female Sherlock Holmes. The rusty knife still kind of gives me the chills when I look at it. I always thought I was good at Clue.

Then we have Triominoes (triangle dominoes) and assorted game pieces: Candy Land men, Monopoly hotel/houses and a wooden Monopoloy piece my MIL gave me. I don't ever remember Monopoly having wooden pieces, but several people have told me they remember them. The top shelf is all the Clue pieces. The figurines come with the current version and are totally lame compared to the metal replicas we played with.

My favorite Monopoly piece was a tie between the iron and the thimble (foreshadowing domesticity, I'm sure). Here I framed the dog. We are dog lovers, after all.  

My aunt sent me a set of playing cards that form a map of Manhattan when arranged correctly. I discovered it by accident. The cards came in a plain brown box with no instructions, so you can imagine my delight when this was realized. This piece starts a lot of conversations.

Vintage Clue, Crazy 8's (my first memories of Crazy 8's with Suz are before I was even in school), and Kids' Rummikub. I love the "moon man" on that one.

We loved Candy Land and LIFE. I would give my last wisdom tooth and some of Ari's college fund to anyone who could locate me a 1962 vintage Candy Land board. The one with the crooked little peanut brittle house and the molasses swamp. The new boards are ridiculous and the older board is just okay. I want the board from when I was a kid. I think I learned my colors from Candy Land. It's part of my DNA.

Chutes & Ladders: possibly the most annoying game in history. I liked it as a kid, although it seemed like I never got the #28 ladder as much as I deserved. As a mother I played this game with RE roughly 380 times before I figured out I could make the spinner land on whatever number she needed to win. This game never ends when truly left to chance.

LIFE was the game I think we played the most. Suz was always the banker and I always landed on the space that said "Your goat ate the neighbor's laundry. Pay up." To this day I hate being the banker because Suz always did it and I never appreciated her labor of love until now. Banking must have been a pain for her, especially because I always got the occupation that earned $8,000 on payday, which was a nuisance to deal out. Not like being the lawyer that got a fast orange $20K. We never once used a Promissory Note, although I appreciate their graphic beauty as an adult. The sound of the clickety-clackety LIFE spinner is a sound I can't hear without smiling. I put the green car with a boy and girl on the board I framed because Greg and I leased a green Honda Civic when we were first married and beginning our LIFE.

Other games we played that I have not yet framed: Aggravation, Hi-Ho Cherry-o, Hungry Hungry Hippos (our 1970s game wasn't a piece of junk like the game made today...our hippos endured five children slamming glass marbles in their mouths and nothing ever broke), Go Fish, Hangman, Sorry, and this huge box Suz had called 222 Games (my favorite game was called Lady Luck). We also had a game called Enchanted Forest that I bought from ebay. It's basically the neatest game ever and the board says "Made in West Germany."

Suz sometimes let me play with her Spirograph.  

I never understood Pit but often rang the orange bell.

The two games we ALWAYS played at our cousins' house were Battleship and Operation. I've been trying to find an Operation at D.I. because I think all the little white pieces would look so neat mounted on black in a tiny frame, but everyone that donates that game to D.I. does not include the pieces. There are currently 3 useless Operation games at D.I.

Snack Dispenser from Chicken Feeder $3

My friend Becca, who recently left her appendix at the hospital, had this on her kitchen counter when I went to visit her. I think it's the most ingenious thing I've ever seen. It is a chicken feeder, but she put her almonds in the mason jar for snacking throughout the day. (Mine would be loaded with Ghiradelli 60% chips.)

I went to IFA Country Store and bought the feeder for $3. I have mason jars coming out of my ears. You screw the feeder on to the mouth of the jar and flip it upside-down. IFA sells the feeders in aluminum (cute, but very sharp and hard to take apart) and assorted colors in plastic. I picked plastic for easy cleaning, plus sliced fingers always make for a sad snack. Then again, sliced fingers would cause me to snack less, and since I snack on chocolate chips...

I made this jar for my SIL Teeno, who is the most radiant of all my SILs and has a laugh that births fairies. This Roald Dahl quote reminds me of her, "If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." Anyone that knows Teeno knows what I'm talking about.

Other things to put in jar: trail mix, dried fruit, granola, dry cereal. The sky is the limit.

Happy snacking!

p.s. Trivia from Becca: your appendix is roughly the size of your index finger and completely useless. But birds use their appendixes. So all is not lost.

Newspaper Bag Christmas Wreath $0

We used to get three newspapers a day. (We have now simplified to one a day.) There was an excess of newspaper bags in our home (even with our using them as doggie bags on Lucy's walks twice a day).

I had a spare metal circle from a Paper Source wreath kit. (You could form a circle from a metal hanger or wire.) I cut the newspaper bags in half and tied each half on the circle. Right over left, left over right. Once the circle was full of knots I twisted and fluffed the strands so they lay right. I tied a small loop with baker's twine on the circle and pulled it to the back of the wreath so it can hang on our 3M Command hook.

I love that we got a few green bags for my "holly." I love this wreath, even if it's a glorified lei. I like the type on the bags and how it pops off of my white door. My daughter made it with me and was excited to gather the red bags each morning.

We got enough bags for the wreath in a month, but normal people only get one paper a day, so if this is something you'd like to do, start saving your bags soon so it will be finished by Thanksgiving!