Category: Holidays

Feeling Grateful

I feel grateful for so much this Thanksgiving day.

Grateful for my best friend who I met eight years ago today (yep, at a Thanksgiving dinner!)!

For my happy, brilliant, independent daughter who brings such joy to our lives!

For our dear friends and their wonderful children (too many to show photos of them all here!)!



For our supportive and loving families!

For our health!

For so very much. (I feel humbled and moved by how lucky we are!)

These days I’m also really appreciating the everyday things:

The plentiful array of local organic food available here in Northern California.

My daily cup (or three!) of decaf English Breakfast tea.

Great thrift stores that benefit a worthy cause and allow us to budget and be more environmentally friendly.

A cozy warm bed that fits us all, even when our daughter decides to sleep horizontally between us!

A fantastic library system that provides us with books, music and movies.

A plentiful garden in which we’ve toiled, learned and shared together what it means to grow our own food.

This blog that has been a tremendous joy in my life, through which we’ve documented our daughter growing up!

You, dear readers, for following along with us and adding your voice in the comments! We feel truly grateful to share our lives with you.

Hope you have a meaningful, tasty Thanksgiving day.

Now please excuse me as I’ve got some cooking to do!

More Holiday Crafts

We’ve been busy crafting over here (as always!). Here’s a glimpse at what Miss Leyba and I have been working on lately. All works in progress!


Mini wreaths wrapped with red shiny thread and bells.


Pine cones painted with silver acrylic paint. Think holiday ornaments. In progress. VERY in progress.

I beg you, please leave a comment answering this very important question: Should we add glitter to the pine cones or would that be overkill?!

I can’t decide. Really. I have no idea.

Miss Leyba would probably say, “Go for it, Mom. We love glitter.”

What do you think?

Yarn Cone Holiday Trees Craft Project

No surprise that our craft projects have been taking a holiday spin lately. Today we’ll share a simple kids holiday tree project.

Note that this a messy project (lots of glitter!) and takes several days to complete (because of all the layers that need to dry)… You have been forewarned!

We started with these free empty yarn cones, picked up at a local craft resale shop (that benefits our town’s senior center).

We painted the yarn cones with crayola washable paint in green and purple. (Because doesn’t purple just scream holidays?! Miss Leyba thinks so and I quite agree with her.) Please learn from my experience and don’t use washable paint. We used it simply because cause a toddler was involved, but the paint was somewhat thin.

I only got a second coat on half of the cones (impatient toddler and who has time for second coats these days anyhow?!), so you can tell from the photos which ones received just one coat of paint. Regardless I think they turned out just fine. We’re all about the process versus the product here in Spritzer Leyba Land.

After letting the cones thoroughly dry, we used craft glue to made patterns on the trees and then covered them with glitter. For our first coat, we used green glitter (also from the craft reuse shop).

We then added patterns with glue and silver glitter, after the layer of green glitter thoroughly dried.

We glued on embellishments. We used silver stars, but you could easily use buttons, mirrors, felt pieces, dried flowers or leaves (and turn it into a fall craft, rather than a winter holiday craft).

I zig-zagged glue and then rolled a cone, shown below, in the glitter on our newspaper for a more tree-boughs-covered-in-snow sort of look. (Who knows if I was successful but it was fun!)

Here are our three trees drying:

We then covered them with mod podge to seal the glitter on and to add a gloss finish to the trees.

Here’s when I thought I messed up and that the trees would be snow covered if the mod podge stayed white and didn’t dry clear (pardon the harsh lighting):


Imagine my relief when I found them the next morning, all glossy and dry, with no hints of white left over.

Phew!

Now to store them in a safe spot until December…