Newest Project List

I can’t decide if I need my brain to shut up for a while or not.

On the one side, I’ve had so many ideas of things to work on it’s not even funny. I’m exhausted just looking at the potential project list. On the other, this latest burst of inspiration is pretty exciting.

Normally, the holidays and decorating tends to sneak up on me. This year, I can’t manage to get what I need to do out of my head. Things will grow this year because of MCG and I need to make arrangements so she can be included when we are ready to decorate. I’ve been working through all the things I need to adjust or add to for her and how I want to go about doing that. It has given me a new list of things I need and want to work on.

First, we started a new tradition several years ago where we all have to wear our goofy, but traditional, santa hats while we decorate. I only have enough for the 4 of us and I want them to essentially be the same. My choices are to try and find another one like ours for MCG or get all new. Considering what I have are kind of cheap, crappy things, I really considered just getting nicer, new ones.

Of course that isn’t enough for me, so I’ll be making us all new hats with fun, comfortable materials. Knowing that we will most likely continue to add to our numbers over the years and I really don’t want to have to do this every time we grow, I’ll be getting plenty of fabric to make more in the future. My entire project list is going to take that growth into account as well.

The next new item on my list is stocking holders. We moved our stockings from the stair railing last year because of the construction workers being here and I didn’t want them to constantly be getting bumped or potentially damaged. I figured a way to hang them on my mantle with sticky hooks, but that sticky did some minor damage to my wood. I don’t want permanent hooks or anything and the contour of my mantle makes it impossible to use traditional hangers that would just sit on the mantle (at least ones with any kind of hook that hangs over the edge).

I could go back to hanging them on the stairs, but there is just too much traffic up and down now that it isn’t all that practical. We really loved the look of them on the mantle, so that is where I want them, but I needed to figure out at way to make it work.

After some looking around, I came up with a great idea to build my own hangers that would sit on my mantle. Instead of a hook that would hang over the edge, I’ll be making them with a smaller hook I can hang a ribbon from. I’d hung these on ribbon on the railing before, so it works really well this way.

I came up with the final decorative design ideas today. Something that I could easily make now and reproduce again years down the line as needed without having to buy a bunch of stuff on a guess as to how big (or not) we will grow over the years. I’ve learned that you don’t always grow. Sometimes you stay stagnant or even shrink, so I don’t want so much stuff that I may never use and this idea works perfectly and should be relatively simple to pull off.

When working out my plans for my mantle, I decided that I really, REALLY need to find a better home for our wifi router. We’d moved it there right before MCG came because it provided better signal throughout the house, but it is ugly and takes up too much space. I’m going to test out putting it nearby behind our TV in the corner of the room and see if it works. If so, I have a small table I want to build for it. I was thinking about building a similar one to put on my lower landing of my stairs heading to the basement, so I’d already had a plan for how I wanted to pull it off and should be easy enough to add to my to do list. If it works there.

The last item on my list is the stockings themselves. I haven’t decided what I want to do there. We currently have a sort of mishmash of different ones that I’ve gotten as the kids were born. They are fun and cute and I can do that again with MCG, but I’m not certain I want to. I love the idea of them being either coordinated or all the same. Again, that brings up the problem of growth and how I handle that. If I buy them, I have to buy a lot that we won’t use any time soon, if at all. That isn’t something I like. If I make them, I can do like the hats and just buy a lot of extra material. At least with the material, I can decide at a later date to use it for something else if it looks like I won’t ever need it for the stockings.

I really don’t know for sure what I want to do on that last one. BG has reminded me of how wasteful it is to get all new just because we may want them instead of actually needing them. She is my walking, talking conscious when it comes to environmental stuff and being wasteful. Sadly, even with that, she is also torn because she also loves the idea of having them coordinated/the same. I do have to make a decision soon, though. I need to have time to make whatever it is I decide on happen in time to get the decorating done.

Bare minimum, I have 5 hats to make and 5 stocking holders to build. If I do all the others, that will add at least one table to build and 5 stockings to make. That’s quite the list of projects to work on and get done over the next month. It’s quite a bit, but I’m really excited about working on them. My idea for those holders especially is going to be awesome.

The added bonus is that I’m going to have some fun things to share soon!