Blog Catch Up and Christmas Bells (Dec.4, 2022)

 I was up early this morning, made myself a coffee then found a movie to watch.

I settled on Nothing Like the Holidays.

It's an older movie but it was cute.

I kept pausing it to go do things so it took me a long time to finish it.

Mom had done all of my laundry yesterday (bless her), so I got that all put away.

I did some dishes and some cleaning, I also got out and did a little shoveling.

I got the sidewalk all cleared off.

Then I decided to spend some time working on the blog.

I like to post everything chronologically and I write my blog posts each day but I missed doing it when we were in Iceland and then again when we went to BC in September.

I make myself notes for when I do go write the posts and I've slowly been catching up with both of those vacations.

I just had the last 2 days of our BC trip to catch up on and I wanted to get it done once and for all.

So that's what I focused on today.

I was able to finally get all caught up and it felt great.

I made one of these signs to send to my sister for Christmas.

I love it with the frame - I think it just makes it pop.

Now to find a box big enough for it to fit in.

Jason is making his Sunday lunch for the guys out there today - one of them brought in some deer meet so their are having deer tacos, deer steaks and dear sliders.

Then they are having ooey gooey brownies for dessert.

At 3 pm I picked up Kody and Morgan so we could go look at some Christmas stuff that Nadine is getting rid of.

I thought they may want some of it.

It worked out well because Kody was able to help haul all of Morgan's stuff from yesterday into the house.

Then Mom wanted me to take her down to the store to pick up a few groceries.

I was really cold and wanted to take a bath but decided to hop on the treadmill and get that out of the way first.

I did my 1 mile, it took me right around 15 minutes.

(This includes my warm up and cool down).

Still sticking to the speed of 4.0 for the running.

I meant to put the incline back to 1.0 but forgot.

I'll do that for next time.

Happy to report that I'm still remaining injury free.

After the workout, I ran myself nice hot bath.

Did some social media surfing and got caught up with Molly's antics.

Molly's path to the North Pole.

(this was from yesterday).

Molly opened a kissing booth.

Alivia posted some of the artwork she's been working on recently.

These are some cute kittie bookmarks that she made.

I decided that I wanted to work on making these bells that I saw so I got all the materials that I needed and took them out to the kitchen.

I've seen several different DIY versions of these but the ones I liked the best were on this YouTube channel.

@artsymaddieDIY

This is the link to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPXzoVkYtvk

I found the exact cups she uses in the video but I couldn't find balls the right size to go with them so I picked these coffee cups instead.

They aren't as big but I was able to find balls that will work.

The first thing I did was make the template of the cup so I could cut foam to put on it.

It was a lot harder to make the template than I expected and it wasn't perfect but it will do.

I don't have a whole lot of foam and I wanted to use what I had on hand so I thought this packing foam that was on the dresser I just bought would make a good first layer.

I'm making 8 bells so I got the foam all cut out.

This is the only foam sheets I had on hand.

They are thinner than what I would have liked but they'll do the trick.

Got 8 of those cut out too.

I was hoping I'd be able to use my glue gun but it melted the foam so I had to use regular craft glue instead which takes much longer to dry.

I realized there was a bit of a lip at the base of the cup so I cut some foam to put on the cup there to make it level with the rest of the cup.

One layer of the foam did the trick.

These are the foam balls I found.

I cut them in half just with a bread knife - they were very easy to cut.

Since I cut them in half, 1 ball was enough for two bells.

I wasn't thinking so cut more than I needed to.

That's ok though, if they turn out well, I may make more.

I got the balls glued on to the ends - I was able to use my glue gun for that.

I had to tape the foam on but once the glue dries I'll take that off.

Next I cut up the bath mat that I found.

I decided I wanted to strips on each bell.

I didn't want the little hole things that were between each strip so I had to cut the strips individually to get that off.

It took a bit of time but it was easy to do.

I got those glued on - I was able to use my glue gun again for that - so much faster than craft glue.

I had a sturdy roll from some Cricut vinyl that I rescued from the garbage in my craft room.

I had to be careful when I was cutting them that I didn't rip them.

I did that with the bread knife as well then I sanded the edges to make them smooth.

I glued them with the glue gun to the top of the 'bell' - I put extra glue on because I wanted it to kind of drip a bit to make it look like a weld spot.

Now I'll let them dry overnight and tomorrow I'll start the next step.

Before I went to bed, I did decide to add some spackle to help make the transition between the foam and the cup more smooth.

I tried air dry clay first but it didn't work that well.

The spackle was getting really messy but I got myself a dish of water to dip my fingers as I was working and that really helped a lot.

I love making projects like this - it's really a lot of fun.

I watched another Christmas movie this evening that I'd never seen before,

A Merry Friggin' Christmas.

It's an older movie - I like both Joel McHale and Robin Williams.

It was cute.

I didn't track my points on WW today but I made good choices and I didn't go overboard so feeling good about that.

That's all for today, until next time, be happy!