YAMF Holiday Handmade is sponsored by Kollabora, the community for makers.

The last advent might just be my favorite but I can’t tell if that’s just because of the yeti.

To make your own mini mountain advent you’ll need:
- kraft card stock
- scissors
- white paint pen
- super glue
- labels (I used some from the Martha Stewart line at Staples)
- toothpicks
- mini trees

Step One: Do an Internet search for triangle box template. Pick a few sizes and print 25 out.
Step Two: Add snowy caps with white pen.
Step Three: Cut and assemble. To get them to stay together, I actually had to use super glue. To make them functional, keep the bottom easy to open.

Step Four: Number 25 labels. Attach to toothpick by folding in half. Insert on top of each mountain.

Step Five: Line up the mountains to create a range and add mini trees, plastic animals or an oversized Yeti. Your call.

First and last photos by Jennifer Little of Sugar Photography

YAMF Holiday Handmade is sponsored by Kollabora, the community for makers.

I have two more advents to share with you this week. Hip, hip!

To make your own pegboard advent you’ll need:
- 25 glassine bags (I like the selection from ClearBags)
- treats
- date stamp
- sewing machine
- clothes pins
- decorative tape
- floral wire
- pegboard

Step One: Stamp your bags with the appropriate dates, fill with treats and stitch closed.
Step Two: Cover the front of the clothespins with tape. Trim wire and string through the hole of each clothespin. Attach to pegboard by putting each end of wire through holes and twisting together on the backside.
Step Three: Attach bags to clothespins.
Step Four: Make more bags to replace the ones that get stolen throughout the day.

Top two images by Jennifer Little of Sugar Photography

I’m a tad bit excited to announce the launch of Julep, a fresh new blog from Minted. I’m excited because it’s written by some of the coolest contributor cats on the block and I snuck into the party. I’ll be sharing a couple diy posts a month. My first one is what I like to call a modern cornucopia which you can read all about here. It’s a foolproof centerpiece for Thanksgiving.

And here are a few more posts I’ve written full of Thanksgiving ideas:
Non-tacky tabletops
Pleasing place cards
Easy diy table runners
Festive-ing up the whole house

YAMF Holiday Handmade is sponsored by Kollabora, the community for makers.

The other day Beck was down for a nap and I turned on the TV for a little background noise and it just happened to land on The Price is Right and they were having a theme episode where everybody in the audience was pregnant (that part isn’t really relevant but it was really funny to watch really excited pregnant women). During my hour of procrastination, the classic Punch a Bunch game was played and the idea for this advent was born.

To make your own you’ll need:
- white poster board (I tried thicker board but my circle cutter hacked it up)
- circle cutter
- tissue paper and/or crepe paper
- scissors
- tape
- 25 paper bags

Step One: Cut out 25 circles from your poster board and label each one.
Step Two: Cut out 25 pieces of tissue paper, sized to fit over the hole.
Step Three: On the backside of the poster board, place the pieces of tissue paper over the holes and attach with tape.

Step Four: Trim down 25 paper bags and make slits in the opening so they fit over the holes as well. Place treat inside and tape down bag on top of the tissue paper.

Step Five: Hang up and stand back while your child gives it a hefty punch.

Sharon is back today making sure Thanksgiving isn’t neglected with this awesome garland tutorial.

Hi everyone. The biggest fall holiday, Thanksgiving, is right around the corner. Here is a really easy DIY for making corn husk flowers that will be the perfect addition to your holiday decorations. And there is one little twist in this tutorial that I think might blow your mind. So get ready for it!

Pick up a bag of corn husks from your local grocery store. They are usually found with the Mexican spices and foods but are not at all stores so you might need to check a few before you find them. There are a ton in each bag so you can make corn husk crafts like crazy.

You don’t need many things for this craft so it is something you can whip out really fast. Grab a stack of corn husks to get started, plus you’ll need your scissors, some scrap papers (one scrap paper each for however many flowers you want to make), a glue gun and yes, a curling iron. What?! You say. Oh yeah, a curling iron.

Separate the corn husks. They are all stuck together in the package but pull apart really easily. Grab your scissors and cut out a petal shape from a corn husk. These do not have to be perfect, just free-form it. You will need 3 graduated sizes for each petal and there are 5 petals to each flower. (math, grody).

Simply hot glue one set of the three sizes together at the bottom of each petal. Continue with all 5 sets.

It’s time. Go plug in your curling iron. Full disclosure: I did NOT figure this step out on my own. Do you have crafty friends who just know stuff that nobody else knows? My pal, Carole, is one of those people. She showed me how to curl corn husks. But that sounds really odd, like this is something we sit around doing. It is not. We did get crafty with corn husks many years ago and this happened. She’s a total craft genius. Curl the ends of each petal to your liking. And much like hair, the larger the barrel, the larger the curl. Once they are all curled, lay out the petals to see how you will want to glue them together.

Use a small piece of scrap paper to hot glue each of the 5 petals too. They will overlap and you just want to try to spread them out kind of evenly and make it look nice. The scrap paper will help you depending on how you want to use these flowers as decoration.

It is super easy to make different size flowers and you can easily make them in to garland with a little tape on the back. Tape won’t stick to the corn husk but will to the paper.

I love these corn husk flowers because they are pretty neutral in color, have that feeling of fall and are ridiculously easy. Just the way I like things. Wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

See more from Sharon at Cupcakes and Cutlery

YAMF Holiday Handmade is sponsored by Kollabora, the community for makers.
Advent day two! This one is inexpensive and can be created with any image of your choice.

To make your own you’ll need:
- 25 paper boxes (hello Hobby Lobby)
- an image sized to 17 x 17 inches (or the size of your boxes formed into a 5 x 5 square)
- paper cutter or scissors
- glue stick
- masking tape

Step One: Adjust your image to the size of your boxes formed into a 5×5 square. This mountain image is 17×17 inches and can be downloaded here. Have it printed as an engineering print at your local copy store. That will set you back a whopping $1.80.

Step Two: Lay out the print face down onto a flat surface then lay your box lids face down on top of it. Lightly trace the outline of each box then cut out each square. Number each box and coordinating piece of the paper if puzzles aren’t your strong suit.

Step Three: Glue stick it up and add the paper squares to the box tops.

Step Four: Tack it to the wall with masking tape or something stronger. Your call depending on the clumsiness of your child or self.

Step Five: Add some treats because empty boxes would just be sad.

Yes, the countdown to Christmas is on.

YAMF Holiday Handmade is sponsored by Kollabora, the community for makers.

Well hello, welcome to yamf’s holiday handmade – an entire month of diy projects that are sure to please. I didn’t have quite the buildup I did last year but I hope after reading that first sentence you did an arm pump with an exaggerated yes preferably in an Oprah voice. I’ve teamed up with Kirsten for the whole series so you know it’s going to be good.

This week will be dedicated to the advent calendar because I’m fond of receptacles that offer me a daily treat.

To make your own, you’ll need:
- 25 paper mache boxes in varied shapes and sizes (like these)
- acrylic paint (I’m a big fan of the colors available from the Martha Stewart line)
- paint brush
- white paint pen
- gold foil sheets + adhesive (optional)

Step One: Paint the taupe boxes in a pleasing color palette. For the record – maroon, brick red and forest green is not a pleasing color palette.

Step Two: Number them up with the paint pen and gold foil (you can read about the technique in this post). Preferably have someone with decent handwriting complete this step.

Step Three: Fill with treats that won’t go stale. If this is for your kids, choose things like dum dums then get a box of Godiva truffles for yourself and hide them in a safe. With a key.

Today’s colorful post is brought to you by the talented Barbara Rucci. Although this art project is meant for kids, I can’t wait to try liquid watercolors out myself.



Simple, open-ended art projects are what kids love best. With no pressure on them to create an end product, they are allowed to focus on the process and explore the medium while (hopefully) finding their own personal expression.

This is not to say that there can’t be rules! In these color studies, which I just love, there were two rules. First, you could only use one color palette at a time. Second, you had to cover the whole page. At first, it was hard for them to stick to one set of colors. Seeing all of the pretty colors, they really wanted to make rainbows (of course!). But soon they were going through stacks of paper, experimenting with and exploring the paint and how it moved on the page.

As they painted, I used new words and phrases to broaden their “language of art”. We talked about palette, study, color families and color wash. I also made a point of using exotic color names so that soon they were painting with aquamarine, forest, crimson, magenta and ochre. They felt very grown up!

SUPPLIES:
If you haven’t ever used liquid watercolors, they are worth every penny! Their vibrant colors are unrivaled, and they are great for covering large areas. I ran out of mine, so I used tube watercolors, which have the same effect, minus the vibrancy.

- Liquid Watercolor or Watercolor Tubes
- Paper (I used plain copy paper, cut in half. Watercolor paper would be best as it won’t crinkle when drying)
- Plastic Egg Cartons
- Brushes
- Sponge

We pressed our dried pages underneath some books before hanging them up on the wall. You could also cut them into strips and make a paper chain, or string them on a ribbon and make a banner!

A word about mess: Watercolors are the least messy of the painting mediums, but not so for liquid watercolor. I would suggest laying down a towel first, then covering that with newspaper. One added bonus of this project is that the aftermath is literally a beautiful mess. I left my paper-covered table up for days it was so pretty.

Have fun!

You can find more of Barbara’s art projects at Art Bar Blog or shop her cool holiday postcards at Late Night Cake.

If you haven’t noticed, around here I like to present readers with doable and practical ideas (yes, I believe that pretty party decorations are practical). So to continue with this theme I’m starting a how-to series of three steps to better (blank). All steps being things that are easy to implement for better living. Today, we’re talking toy and book storage.

Step 1: Have functional and good looking storage in the room you plant yourself in the most.

My friend told me I would want a coffee table that had storage but I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t bulky and visually heavy for our small space. I opted for an airy table that’s easy to move and added a storage cube from Land of Nod that pulls double duty as seating when needed.

Step 2: If it’s attractive, let it function as decoration.

We have open shelving in Beck’s room to stack books and to display art and cute toys. And his animals are scattered throughout the house.

Step 3: Hide away the rest in solid, easy to access bins and place them in play designated areas of the house.

If you come to a point where the toys are greater than the amount of storage it’s time for a game of keep, donate or trash.

There you go, three easy steps.

all photos by Jennifer Little of Sugar Photography

sources: stacking ring, wooden sorter, stuffed fox

Thank you for your awesome response. The workshop is now full.

As Liz Lemon would say, things are happening! At least that’s how I feel with this announcement today. On November 17th I’m teaming up with Anthropologie to host a holiday diy workshop in Denver where we’ll have four wrap and craft projects to work on. Space is limited so make sure to rsvp to anthroevents@anthropologie.com soon. I hope some of you can make it for a festive good time.

PS Reuse that Halloween pumpkin + best of the week!