No mantel? No problem! The stocking tutorial on making and hanging those socks for Santa.

Stockings hung by the chimney with care? Not in this house of crafty loons. 

Christmas is slowly approaching and to me this is the saddest week. Soon all the fun crafts, food, and that joyful magic will evaporate and we will have a long wait until the next Santa season. 

Lets make our stockings. God bless black Friday at Jo Annes Fabric! They had comfy fleece for $1.49 a yard. We went to Wal-Mart, Toys -R- Us, and Target that morning and nothing was as brutal as all the vicious ladies in the fleece section going bonkers. We picked half a yard of fleece for each Scaff. It was fun picking the prints according to personality.  You'll also need some white felt for the cuff.

I free handed a basic stocking on paper, but if you want yours super perfect there are loads of free patterns online. Trace, cut, and sew. 

I just drew a rectangle for the cuff and hot glued it to the stocking after I turned it right side out. 

Don't forget your little tab for hanging! If you are really loading your stockings you might want to sew in place of hot gluing. I sewed the stocking but I really LOVE my sewing machine and I get kinda hissy about sewing thick materials, crafty and crazy persons problem. 

Now as you saw above we hung our stockings in a different way, so like the perfect dress this outfit needed some accessories. These were also black Friday finds, with coupons!

Even though I would have loved to take 3 hours and paint these perfectly, kids love to help and be included. Since this would be something meaningful to us I wanted it to be made by MY greatest creations. 

I just put some paint on a paper plate and let those creative fingers do their thing. Nothing makes a kid happier than showing off what they made all by their selves.

Even the baby got to paint a bulb in her choice of color; orange. What a cute Christmas Elf.

So as I said before; no mantel, no problem! We went adventuring and found this cool branch. A few nails and ribbon to secure it to the wall and some push pins to hang the stockings on, and we ended up with a piece we are all proud of. 

It is much easier to buy these things, but it is defiantly not cheaper or more special. My kids get such a kick out of explaining whose stocking is which to our visitors, and they take tremendous pride in knowing they helped!

Thanks for reading! Merry Christmas!

Scrap Fabric Christmas Tree

Got a fun and easy one for you tonight. I saw this FABULOUS set of lights made by a talented girl on a blog and had to try her technique. Whiteney Caroline Desings did this but used ribbon, I am far too conservative with my ribbon (two beautiful girls with beautiful hair need all the hair bows this mama can crank out) so I used some scrap fabric. 

All you need is some scrap fabric or ribbon and some Christmas lights. I think you should use mini lights because they don't get as hot, and during the Christmas season fire is this Poor Badgers biggest fear. 

You basically just cut you some strips, the length and width is all determined on how you want it to look, I liked the shaggy look so I think I cut mine 7 inches long by 2 inches wide. After you cut your strips just tie a plain knot onto your lights. Easy as pie. 

By the by, the star that you saw was made by my oldest badger. She is turning out to be a super crafty gal and I wouldn't trade her not a gosh darn thing. Notice the hair bows on her head? That is where I got the fabric for this project, from some old yo-yo hair bow projects last year.  Poor badgers craft on a dime.

I used my strand of fabric lights to fashion myself a little tree to place in the house that could have used a little extra light. I used thumbtacks (we are planning to paint in the Spring anywho) to fashion the outline of the tree and my sissy cats star made the tree just poop.

Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is enjoys the blessings of our saviors birth as much as the Poor Badgers are. Merry Christmas! 

Meet our family elf; Alabaster Snowball!

Oh how my kids LOVE this new Christmas tradition called Elf on the shelf. I wanted to blog about this in time for you to adopt your own family Elf. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of our savior, but I really feel strongly about incorporating fun family traditions that foster imagination and family bonding.

First you need to go adopt your own Elf. These are pricey, around $30 a kit. But you only have to buy them once and thankfully we got ours on Black Friday with a 10% discount and a $5 off coupon. Book stores,  pharmacies, Target, and Hallmark stores carry them. They come in this cute box that you save each year to announce the coming of your family Elf!

Your kit comes with a story book you can read to your kids explaining the story of the scout elf. In a nut shell the second you first get your elf home you must name them, that is how they get their magic. Then read you kids the story and let the magic happen. 

Santa needs help figuring out what kids are good or bad, so these scout elves watch your family. Once an elf joins the family, they are bonded for life. Once the holidays begin the elf you had last year reappears at your home with his book and he/she begins taking note of the kids.

Every night once your kids go to sleep, your elf uses its magic to fly to the North Pole and tell Santa all the good things and bad things they did for the day. Then your elf zooms back home before morning and hides in silly places. It becomes a game to see who can find the elf first and see what silly thing your elf did. 

Only two elf laws; elves can only listen to you. They will take note of what you want for Christmas and relay the message to Santa, but they can not talk back. The second is VERY important; if you touch the elf it will lose its magic. No more flying to Santa. Proudly I can say that after a month, no Scaff kid has touched our Alabaster. 

Our Elf is Alabaster Snowball, he is a Southern Gentlemen with a pension for the ponies. He enjoys the formalities of a polite and proper phone conversation but also is frisky and likes to do some very wonky things.

One morning we awoke to this bit of cheekiness. We blocked the number. We think this was a bit of elf revenge. 

On Christmas Eve night, your elf leaves your family for the year. He joins Santa and his buddies but will return promptly once the Christmas season comes back around.

We love that our family has adopted this proper little trouble maker. Alabaster Snowball has made this month so fun and it will be sad when he leaves. There is a website that lets you share the stories and pics of your elf; elfontheshelf.com.

Thanks for reading! We hope you have enjoyed Alabaster as much as we do.