Sunday, October 10, 2010

Christmas Crafts

Christmas is the most popular holiday for decorating your home. It's also the time to find and make Christmas crafts! While it is very easy to purchase ready made decorations and Christmas crafts, it is far more festive and fun to make your own special Christmas crafts!
Christmas crafts can be made from a variety of materials. If you like working with wood, you can cut out typical holiday designs, like snowmen, Christmas trees, or Santa figures and then spend some time painting to bring life to your Christmas crafts. There are many websites that offer free patterns to make these items, or you can print an image from your computer and use it to create your own pattern. If it's your first time working with wood as a Christmas craft, start out simply- cut out a rectangle and make a sign for your holiday guests! You could paint little trees or stars, and print out “May all your Christmas wishes come true!” or a similar saying.

Great Halloween Decorations

Halloween decorations made by The Beistle Company are some of the most popular collectibles among fans of vintage holiday decorations. Specializing in paper party supplies such as die-cuts, centerpieces and paper plates and cups, The Beistle Company has been manufacturing Halloween novelty décor and supplies since the beginning of the 20th century. Founded in Pennsylvania by Martin Beistle, The Beistle Company is still in business today and is one of the largest manufacturers of Halloween goods in the US. But for collectors, it isn’t Beistle’s new products that cause the most interest. It’s their highly sought after vintage Halloween decorations that have become highly collectible.






Saturday, September 25, 2010

great christmas lights

One would think that Christmas lights have been around for as long as Christmas itself. Can any of you imagine Christmas without lights? How would the children find their way in the dark, so early on Christmas morning without them? The history of Christmas lights is intricately tied to the dawn of the modern era, when houses began to be supplied with electricity.
As you are likely aware, Thomas Edison invented the first functioning light bulb back in 1879. A few years later, in 1882, an associate of his first employed the use of lights on his Christmas tree. Edward Johnson was the first to electrically light his family Christmas tree in his New York home. His home was located in one of the first sections of the city to be wired for electricity.

Friday, September 24, 2010

great holiday crafts

Kids, young and the young at heart, love the holidays and there are an almost limitless number of crafts that can be made to keep the kids busy, especially when the weather gets bad and they are home from school. Many projects can be done with common items found around the house.
Paper snowflakes are always a favorite and all you need is white paper, scissors and possibly glue and glitter. Fold the paper in half, half again and again, until you have a triangle. Cut small shapes, unfold carefully, you have beautiful one of a kind snowflakes. If you have glue and glitter, the kids may want to make them a bit fancier. They also make wonderful decorations to hang from the ceiling and windows for the holidays.

great halloween pumpkins

Halloween inspires all kinds of activities to do with your toddler, especially pumpkin fun! Visiting the pumpkin patch together, shopping for (or making) Halloween costumes, and decorating the house. But one of the best Halloween activities is doing art projects together.
Here are two very simple pumpkin crafts that every toddler will enjoy. Prepare for the activity in advance, so your little ball of energy can dive right in.
Simple Paper Jack-o-Lantern
There's nothing at all fancy about this idea. Simply cut a few pumpkins out of orange construction paper. Then, cut several triangles and a few big goofy grins out of either black or yellow paper. Lastly, cut a stem shape and leaves out of green or brown paper.
Present the pieces to your toddler along with a glue stick and watch his creativity. Consider framing this work of art with some photos of your child at the pumpkin patch.

great halloween decorations

Store your Halloween decorations so they will be easily accessible and in one piece year after year. Here's the scoop on how to do just that.
Designate a special color marker, such as the Halloween color orange, to use when labeling the outside of your Halloween decoration storage boxes and containers. This color-coding technique will make them easier to locate.
When you buy plastic storage containers for storing Halloween decorations, ornaments or costumes, make sure that either the lids or the entire container is a Halloween color (usually orange, purple, black or grey). That's another easy way to find your Halloween items at a glance in your garage, closet or attic. Obviously, you'll mostly find these colors at walk-in retailers sometime between September and November. But if you look around, you can problem find them at some online retailers year-round.

great homemade christmas gifts

Is your Christmas list starting to look like a telephone book? It's time to consider making your own gifts. Here are several easy ideas for wonderful homemade Christmas gifts.
* Winter Warm-Up Baskets with Homemade Marshmallows and Hot Chocolate
You can purchase hand-crafted marshmallows in a gourmet store like Williams Sonoma, for $15-$18 or simply make your own.
Place 4-6 marshmallows into a clear plastic bag and tie with a decorative ribbon. Put the marshmallows in decorative fortune cookie boxes (found at your local craft store) or put them in a decorative basket with gourmet hot chocolate and holiday mugs.

great corporate christmas gifts

E-Readers which are also called digital or electronic readers, lets users wirelessly download books and read them on hand-held devices resembling a glorified etch-a-sketch. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but these handy little digital readers have become extremely popular; according to a recent Time article, Amazon has already sold 1.7 million of the Kindle E-Reader since it was introduced in 2007.
And according to the same article, the Association of American Publishers states total revenue from digital-book downloads has risen 149% this year, while they estimate e-book readers sales to top 3 million by Dec. 31. Plus, according to Forrester Research around 1 million of these gadgets could be sold this holiday season, and sales in 2010 are projected to double, to 6 million.

great inexpensive christmas gifts

he holidays are quickly approaching, which means it’s time to buy gifts. If you’re a little light on funds, following are ideas for inexpensive Christmas gifts.
Inexpensive Christmas Gifts
If you’re low on funds heading into the holidays, stress becomes a problem. Don’t sweat it. Here are some inexpensive Christmas gifts that will be hits with everyone.






great christmas gift baskets

After giving out Christmas gift baskets for a couple of years, you may find that you have started a new trend among your family and friends. The next Christmas might be filled with all kinds of Christmas gift baskets. This is a great idea because when someone puts together a gift basket, they add a personal touch to it by taking generic gifts and showing that some thought and effort went into it.








great christmas decorations

Christmas decorating in America has evolved over the years. We have taken many different traditions from various countries and made them our own. The way we decorate our trees, string lights, and celebrate Christmas in general have become almost an art form in America. Although Christmas is considered a Christian holiday, many non-Christians celebrate Christmas as well.








great christmas presents

The tradition of giving gifts at Christmas is believed to have started with the Three Wise Men who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. But the practice of giving gifts as is common today, evolved from a retail strategy that involved Santa Claus and attracting children into stores. For that reason, giving gifts at Christmas and during the holidays has been centred on children.






great christmas crafts

Christmas crafts can be made from a variety of materials. If you like working with wood, you can cut out typical holiday designs, like snowmen, Christmas trees, or Santa figures and then spend some time painting to bring life to your Christmas crafts. There are many websites that offer free patterns to make these items, or you can print an image from your computer and use it to create your own pattern. If it's your first time working with wood as a Christmas craft, start out simply- cut out a rectangle and make a sign for your holiday guests! You could paint little trees or stars, and print out “May all your Christmas wishes come true!” or a similar saying.






great halloween gifts

Halloween is a fun holiday celebrated on the night of October 31st. Children will dress in their favorite costumes and go trick-or-treating for candies. These activities can be traced back to the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain, which was a celebration of the end of the harvest season. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31st, the boundary between the alive and the dead disappeared, and the dead became dangerous to the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. Costumes and masks were worn at the festival to mimic the evil spirits to placate them. Because of the origin of this holiday, traditional characters for Halloween celebratons include ghosts, witches, vampires, bats, black cats, goblins, skeletons, and pumpkin-man. Halloween gifts often include one of these characters. This article provides some gift ideas for your trick or treaters.






great christmas gifts

Christmas holiday should be fun, however, there are still many people who dread this time of the year because it's so hard to find gifts for their friends and loved ones. If you're a woman who are in trouble finding an ideal gift for the man of your life, spending hours in the stores browsing all their mens gifts but you can't find anything for him, then you should consider this article.








Womens Christmas Gifts

Christmas is the time of year for cold weather, snow, mistletoe and beautiful Christmas Gifts exchanged around a roaring log fire. Where a traditional dinner is served, and you get to tuck into family favourites such as roast turkey, Christmas pudding and a rich cake encased in deliciously sweet marzipan and icing. Or is it?
Christmas could equally be about spending time in the sun, where a traditional dinner consists of food suitable for a barbeque and fit for a king; maybe some fish, or some steaks all sizzling away alongside some freshly caught tuna. Perhaps this barbeque takes place on a beach, so while your food is cooking, you can spend a little time swimming in the sea, or relaxing in the sun and working on your tan. It certainly sounds a lot more attractive to a rainy day somewhere, where your time working on Christmas dinner is spent watching some of television's 'golden moments'.