HO HO HO Christmas Decor

As I am focused on Christmas, I totally forgot to ask you how your Halloween went. I hope you had a great one! Ours was a blast! We had more trick-or-treaters than the past few years, so that really made it my day. And of course Greg, being Greg, once again managed to make Halloween a memorable night for us with his colorful Facebook posts!

Hahahaha…You just gotta love him, right?! But don’t you worry, I already have my response ready, and I’ll be posting it the first thing next Halloween 😉

Say what? Ooohhh, you are asking about that Christmas wreath above the door…yes, that is the exact same wreath you saw on this post back in late May – you know, the one he never took down from last Christmas! Yeah, it’s still there. He even left it there for Halloween! But at least he is creative, I gotta give him that! Instead of taking it down, he actually put a zombie right in the middle of it – in a way that it looked as if the zombie was jumping right out of the Christmas wreath. And just because his wreath-tweak became the trick-or-treaters’ favorite Halloween decor, Santa now sees him eligible for a gift similar to this. HO HO HO HO!

Such a perfect gift, isn’t it? I am not sure about how to get it yet, but maybe I will DiY it. We’ll see…but before that, lets’ take a look at my first DiY Christmas decor of this year, shall we? 

To make this HO HO HO Christmas decor, I used 3 pieces of scrap wood cut to 7″ by 11″, a 5 inch hole saw drill bit, red and green craft paint, FolkArt’s chalk paint in Sheepskin color, some ribbon and 3 big sleigh bells I bought from Dollar Store. Keep in mind that Dollar Store always runs out of their seasonal decor stock about a month before the season. So if you can’t find the big sleigh bells there, you can try these on Amazon.  

As usual I started off with the wood. Let me rephrase that: as usual I started off with Greg. Since he was right in the middle of a tough project, I put on my sweetest smile ever and asked if he could cut some holes in the scrap wood – hey, a girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do, right? Ok, maybe I got his attention right after telling him how awesome, handsome and winsome of a woodworker he was, but in the end, I got him do that part for me…hehehe 😉

Using the 5 inch hole saw drill bit, he cut the holes I needed.

Here is a hint with the wood: I could only find scrap hardwood in Greg’s woodshop. Hence I asked Greg to drill these big holes. But if you use pine or any other soft wood, this step can easily be done with a hand drill.

Once the holes were cut, I started painting the boards with 2 coats of FolkArt’s chalk paint in Sheepskin color.

While the paint was drying, I chose the font I liked (mystery quest) and using my Silhouette I cut the letter H stencils on repositionable vinyl.

With the help of transfer paper, I placed the stencils on the white painted boards.

When stencils were on, I started stenciling the letters. I used red craft paint for two of them and green on the last one, then let the paint dry.

In the meantime, I worked on the sleigh bells I bought from the Dollar Store. As I didn’t like the gold strings, I cut those off.

Then, I cut a small piece of ribbon, folded it in half and put a knot right in the middle. The knot was only to mark the middle (length-wise) of the ribbon.

By this time, the paint was nice and dry, so I distressed the letters a little. With the rest, I didn’t want the paint showing the wood underneath, so I didn’t distress the white painted parts, but sanded only a little to smooth the surface.

Next, using my glue gun, I glued the 2 ends of the ribbon to the back of the jingle bells, and after that, I glued the knotted part to the inner-upper-side of the boards.

When all the bells were hot glued, I trimmed the faux greenery a little so the bells would fit in the holes properly and hang freely. And that was that!

What do you think?

Simple looking, but they bring holiday cheer wherever you put them.

As usual, some close-up pictures for you.

I love how they look together with my whimsical trees!

Oh, just in case you are wondering, other than the hanging metal bell and the little bird, everything in this scene is DiY. Yes…really! Even those whimsical trees!! Aren’t they awesome?

I hope you liked my HO HO HO Christmas decor. If you also liked the whimsical trees, click here to see how I made them!

Handan, xo