Tag Archives: ornaments

My December Adventures!

Posted in My Weekly Adventures by

Its the last day of December. Isn’t that crazy? I’m doing this on the last day instead of tomorrow since we have 2020 business to take care of then so shifting things up a little. We’re going through the very busy December and all kinds of recap and seemingly a bunch of shopping and gifts and fairs and outings, etc.

Fingers crossed that all will go as planned as writing in December has been a bit all over the place… (it hasn’t because this is going up much later than expected)

CRHS Annual Craft Fair (December 1)

DIY Christmas

You can see the post on it HERE.

Marbled Ornaments

Next up, I went along and tried out some Marbled Ornaments as well! Which was mostly a failed attempt in general but did decide that its a project to further pursue and figure out. Plus, its some nice way to use up old nail polish so that its not just thrown out without some form of recycling/repurposing. You can check my post on that HERE.

Marché Casse-Noisette & Mini-Comiccon

Marche Casse -Noisette took place from November 28 to December 8 at Palais des Congres which happened to overlap with Mini Montreal Comiccon held December 7 and 8 also at Palais des Congres just one was in the main hall and the other was upstairs. With that said, it made sense to go and check out both at the same time. While the haul wasn’t particularly a lot, it was a first time visit for both place for myself. Some nice discoveries to be found. I will definitely go check the Marché Casse-Noisette again but probably not the Mini Comiccon as its rather lackluster.

Salon des Metiers d’Art 2019

Salon des metiers d'art 2019

  • Coach House Shortbread Company: Dark Chocolate & Salt; Almond & Rose; Ginger
  • La Nougaterie: Salt Flower Caramel; Dark Chocolate; Christmas
  • Nutra Fruit: Chocolate Covered Cranberry; Dark Chocolate- Cranberry Spread
  • Cidrerie du Minot: Des Glaces
  •  Choco Chocolat: Dark Chocolate; Dark Hazelnut

A lot of the SMAQ 2019 sales is about the same as previous years, the exception being that I bought the spread from Nutra Fruit and the chocolate from Choco Chocolat, which I believe is a new booth this year at the Salon. Most of this stuff is for festival party time and gifts and whatnot.

Ottawa Day Trip

Mavericks Donut

We took a quick trip with a friend to go to Ottawa to do some quick errands. We had a nice lunch at Fatboys (post about our first time HERE) and then finally found time to go grab some donuts at Mavericks Donut, which they had 4 dairy-free flavors and the husband and the friend each chose 4 to get a dozen. After that, I finally brought home Pumbaa from Disney Store to join Timon at our place and then picks up some wine at LCBO and some food in preparation for NYE dinner plans at T&T Supermarket.

Holiday Festivities: Christmas Dinners & NYE Hotpot

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Christmas Eve dinner was a ton of fun with a lot of people at the in-laws. It was a fun little event with some surprise gifts for ourselves which we didn’t expect to get anything in the first place. My mom wanted to have a turkey feast (as shown above) so she held a dinner and invited us and some of her own friends for dinner and here we have the overzealous food galore. Everything was delicious as usual. NYE is a hotpot meal and part of the Battle of Ingredients festivities so a separate post will be done for that.

Boxing Day Shopping Haul

Boxing Day this year has been a little less exciting. It has to do a lot with the fact that we’ve been trying to decrease expenses and its truly changed the spending habits into being very cautious with our expenses. Its not going to seem it since we’ve done a lot of shopping this past month…seemingly..but then its all useful things or food. Either way, without further ado (as this is the last part before this post ends)..the shopping haul from Boxing Day.

  • Adidas outlet: Running Shoes
  • Dynamite: Sweater and 3-pack scrunchies
  • Steam Sale: Life is Strange 2: Complete Edition, Detention, Gris, The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, Glass Masquerade
  • Playstation Holiday Sale: Overcooked 2, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
  • Amazon: Playstation 4 Controller Charging Dock
  • Walmart: John Wick 2

Cute Kitty Pic

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That’s it for this December Adventures!
How was your holidays? Had a lot of fun with family? Did you do some Boxing Day shopping?

DIY Crafts: Marbled Ornaments

Posted in Crafts, Winter Holidays Marathon by

It seems crafts are definitely in the air as I tackle on something that I’ve seen around the Facebook feeds and Youtube front pages over the past year and while it was for some other things like car aesthetics and such, I decided to try to do it for ornaments as I did some research and some people do it as well.

This was a learning process so most of it was a failure BUT, I think I had one that turned out okay and the other ones, I’m going to redecorate so that they can be used for tree. As for why its a failure, I’ll talk about at the end. The process in general works but its more the execution…

Anyways..let’s check it out!

Craft accessories

Marbled Ornaments

  • Old nail polish
  • Clear baubles (mine are glass, but they do sell it in plastic..not sure how that would end up though)
  • Room temperature water
  • Old container (not reusable for any edible items)
  • Toothpicks
  • Cotton swabs

How to do it:

Marbled Ornaments

  1. Fill the container with room temperature water. Take the nail polish color(s) you want to use and drop it into the water. It should float and expand.
  2. Quickly, use the toothpick to make the patterns (if its multiple colors). I believe you can for single color also but I haven’t tried before.
  3. Use a glove if you want to cover the entire bauble or dip it half way to wrap it up. Remember to use a cotton swab to pick up any left over colors from the water before re-emerging the bauble from the water.

Marbled Ornament

Voila! That’s the final and most successful one (at the sixth try)!

But I’m not going to cheat all of you out of all my failures as well so here’s all six of them…

Marbled Ornaments

Look at it like how you’d do a C shape and that’s the order of how it was done.

  • The first was the result of not having a cotton swab to pick up the excess so it dragged all over it creating a huge thick smush. The colors aren’t bad but that blob doesn’t work with it.
  • Two and Five has the issues of mostly choosing bad colors so it just blended together into a whole lot of nothing.
  • Three and Five suffers a bit from the first issue I had but also had these issues of the toothpick dragging too late and it had already formed the film so the colors moved all into a bunch
  • Six is by far the best one both in marbled effects as well as the color combination

There you go! That’s the little DIY Marbled Ornaments that I did! Its really a lot harder than it looks. I wanted to try it to get rid of all the old nail polish that I can’t use anymore because its separated or whatnot. I wonder if using not so separated one would be better even if I did shake it to make it work. There is a big nail polish fumes emitting from the bauble though. So you will want to air them out a lot before using these DIY Ornaments.

Other than that, it is pretty fun to mix and match colors and work on this. Like I mentioned above, I will probably find some way to incorporate other old things and add some stuff to these failed ornaments so that they can be used one way or another to hide the issues on the surface. I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I’ll do an Instagram post on it or something when I’m done.

Have you tired marbled ornaments with nail polish?
If you have, please tell me whether you were successful and where you see my issues are. Any tips and suggestions will be highly appreciated!

Christmas: DIY Ornaments!

Posted in Crafts by

Man, it seems like I make ornaments every single year! I was gifting them. Then I made some for my own tree last year.  This year, the tree is done but I still had some leftover glass ornaments that I could use so I figured that I’d start making it for next year. I had found a really simple DIY ornament on Pinterest and it had me intrigued.

Let’s make some ornaments! 🙂

DIY Ornaments

What you need: 

Glass ornament balls (not sure if it works on plastic)
Acrylic paint (whatever color you want)

Acrylic paints I used: Gold, Silver, Frost

Acrylic paints I used: Gold, Silver, Frost Translucent & not shown here: Extreme Glitter/Silver

Making this is super easy if not a little time consuming. But once you figure out the technique that works for you, it’ll be a breeze.

Pretty much, you put some paint into the glass ornament ball.  Then you shake so that it covers the entire interior. My suggestion is to cover the top with a kleenex or paper or something so that when you shake it won’t come flying out and dirtying your furniture or clothes, etc. At times, shaking doesn’t work so you can try tapping it on the table.

 I started with the batch with small ornaments for the first night and then tried out the big ones the next day. Here’s how it turned out:

DIY ornaments

The first batch was all clear cut.  Two of each: metallic gold, metallic silver and translucent frost.

The next night when I decided to give this another go.  I did one more metallic gold as I thought their effect was the nicest but tried out the Extreme Glitter ones.  In the back row, you see that I got a little more creative and started mixing.  You can actually see it here.  The top right is a mix of told and silver. You can’t really see it because of the glare but it swirls in the bottom and the middle. The one right above it was a mix of Glitter and White (which I also didn’t list up on top).  The effect isn’t too bad.  If I could only figure out how to make it a little more structured.  Maybe with paintbrush strokes or something.

This year making these is really in preparation for next year since we’re done with ornaments and the tree.  And, I was cleaning up the boxes in storage and found these sitting around waiting to be decorated and crafted. I have two more packs. I’m sure I’ll figure out some fun way to decorate them next year 😉 For now, back to the storage they go.

Do you like to make your own ornaments? 

My Christmas Decorations are UP!!

Posted in Everyday Randomness by

**Note: If anyone caught this before multiple times, I apologize, the tablet was giving me a hard time with the pictures and the video.  It should be all fixed now.**

Christmas used to be a lot more festive and then there were a few low season years when we didn’t even own a Christmas tree.

For the last few years, Christmas has been a lot more fun since my boyfriend has a lot of family here so we have a big gathering including my mom and me and his sister’s in-laws family. It gets quite fun.  We usually do the whole Christmas eve celebrations. My boyfriend’s dad actually is the most festive of all.  He has a collection of Santa Claus and some move and sing different tunes.  The last few years,  I’ve given him penguins and an elf for decor as well.  The lights are lit and then the Christmas trees are put up.

Check out both of our Christmas decorations!

These pictures are taken with my tablet, so hope the quality isn’t too bad.

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This beautiful tree is my future in laws. Isn’t it absolutely beautiful? You see that ladder with Santa on it? That Santa can climb up and down the ladder. I find that extremely cool.

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This Christmas village is placed at the foot of his Christmas tree. That’s all I have of his for now. If I get some videos of his Santa collection, I will post it up later.

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This is the elf decoration that we both have. This blue one is mine, and he has the green one. It moves but unfortunately, I haven’t gone to get batteries for it just yet. It’s actually really cute because it moves like a busy elf running around.

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My moms favorite addition is poinsettias. The second day she came back home from her trip and she already had bought it. Even before all the other stuff was put up.

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When all of our relatives moved away, we gave away our big Christmas tree. The year after, I couldnt handle it and went out to get this small tree lit with colorful LED lights that change colours. Unfortunatly its hard to capture it, but I did add a candy star on the top and little cute decorations. As for that circular ornament, I made that two years ago at a cookie swap. It’s the only one that survived my cat’s paws.

And to end things, one of my favorite decorations with a little video, also with my tablet so please the shaky hands.


Is your Christmas decor up? A lot more festive? Do you buy a real Christmas tree?