Blue Bird Holiday Home Decor

Hey Yall! I hope everyone had a peaceful Thanksgiving! I made a fun and affordable Blue Bird Holiday Home Decor that I am hoping you will enjoy. It was SO easy and looks adorable. All the supplies (other than the glue gun) can be found at the Dollar Tree.  If you are a lover of woodland creatures and lanterns, this craft is for you.

The supplies you will need to make this Blue Bird Holiday Home Decor are listed below:

1 Blue Bird Ornament 

1 mini battery operated lantern 

Holiday Floral 

Hot Glue Gun

Glue Sticks 

Scissors

 The first step I did was cut the berries off of the holiday floral with my scissors. I then hot glued them to the top of my lantern. Before hot gluing  the blue bird to the lantern, I gently pulled out the metal clasp from the blue bird. It was my goal to make sure my Blue Bird Holiday Home Decor looked as realistic as possible.

I recommend positioning the bird on your lantern first to make sure you know what direction you want your blue bird to sit in. Once you have done this, add a strip of glue under the bird and hold on top of your lantern and holiday floral for 10-15 seconds until the bird is secure. I glued my Poinsettia on last to the top of the lantern. Once all the pieces were on, I turned on the lantern by flipping the switch under the bird. If you would like to watch my Blue Bird Holiday Home Decor YouTube video, I will link it below for you 🙂 If you enjoy my video please remember to give it a thumbs up. Have a great day!

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Coca Cola DIY Holiday Decor

I hope everyone enjoys my Coco Cola DIY Holiday Decor that I finished last night! Most everyone knows about the cute cuddly looking polar bears in the coke commercials at Christmas. When I came upon a few plastic polar bears at the Dollar Tree, it brought me back to my memory of these cute Coke polar bears! I decided to buy them and hold onto them to see what I could come up with for a DIY. As time went on, I collected pieces for my Coca Cola DIY Holiday Decor idea.

Some of the pieces I found were including but not limited too, Christmas ornaments, a wire sleigh, holiday trees, plastic animals, a large serving tray, etc.  I took my time finding pieces for this craft because I really wanted it to be affordable. I tried to keep the color scheme, for the most part ,red and white to represent Coke!

I really do like how my Coca Cola DIY Holiday Decor turned out! I  am choosing to not do a step by step for this craft because I think it is important you use your imagination on this one.  This is because I collected my pieces from several different thrift stores, I can’t exactly tell you where to find these ornaments. Over all though, what I used was a coke, candy cane, soldier, and Santa ornament. The two plastic polar bears, one penguin, gold bells, the snow man salt shaker and small eraser coke cups were from Dollar Tree. The pack of sodas that the penguin is carrying is from Michaels,  as are the two very small white trees. One of the sparkly white tree ornaments is from Michaels and one is from a thrift store. I used a piece of gold string for the “leashes” on the polar bears that the solider is holding.  I was going to use a mirror to give the ground an “icy” look but I found a large platter for under $4 at a thrift store that I thought would work perfect!

I will tell you that I HIGHLY recommend using a hot glue gun ! This keeps things in place and helps support them as they stand. The sodas that the penguin are holding are heavier than the penguin himself. I glued his feet to the platter and the cokes to his stomach. The polar bears are also glued down, as are the trees, soldier, and candy canes. I would highly recommend that when you are done with your Coca Cola DIY Holiday Decor that you put it on a safe shelf so that it cannot be knocked over or stepped on. It would make a lovely holiday centerpiece for a dinner table!

If you would like to see a little tour of my Coca Cola DIY Holiday Decor please check out my YouTube video below on my channel ” Jenny Laura . ” I would love to have you as a subscriber if you have not yet joined my channel 🙂 I do a lot of affordable DIY’s, thrift, and book reviews. Thank you for joining and supporting both by blog and my YouTube channel!  Enjoy the video 🙂

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Woodland Holiday Decor

Hey Yall! Hope everyone is having a nice day. Today, I am going to show you how to make a Woodland Holiday Decor for your home that is affordable and quite stunning. Woodland creatures are trending this holiday season! You can find owls, squirrels, birds, deer, and many other animals on everything from ornaments to clothing. I hope you enjoy making my woodlantd holiday decor creation.  This is an original idea so I just ask that if you do share this on social media, please link it back to me. Thank you and have a wonderful holiday season!

Woodland Holiday Decor 

Supplies Needed: 

Shadowbox

Pine Cones

Glue Sticks

Glue Gun

Sparkly flat Deer (or other Christmas Decor that can fit in shadow box)

Background (I used a gift bag but also scrap book or wrapping paper could be used)

Double sided tape

I originally got my shadow box from a thrift store. It had an old Christmas picture in it and was full of bells. I thought it looked charming but it needed some work. The person that had it before went a little bell crazy haha. I saved all the bells and took the backing off. To make my woodland holiday decor I had to add some extra things to this frame. You of course can find a shadow box at your local Michaels or craft store.

Once my shadowbox was taken apart, I used a gift bag to as my new back ground. I just placed the bag on the top of the frame and used it as a stencil to cut a square out of a bag that would fit in the shadow box.  The next step is to use a piece of double sided tape for each gift bag corner to stick the background to the backing of the shadowbox. If you do not have double sided tape, I am sure a drop of hot glue on each corner would work too. I then hot glued my deer to the back ground. I had to cut his legs down a little bit so that he would fit in the frame. Before putting the frame backing back in the shadow  box, I added some mini pine cones.  I purchased mine at Big Lots but you can also pick some up at the Dollar Tree.

After closing the backing  up, your Woodland Holiday Decor should be complete and ready to be displayed. For a more in depth look at my Woodland Holiday Decor please check out my YouTube channel, Jenny Laura, below. I hope you enjoyed this craft and thank you for visiting!

 

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This Life Breaks My Heart

Hey Yall. So I am having a really dark day today. One of those days where it is raining and my heart hurts. The kind of day where nothing makes sense and I struggle to care anymore. In counseling, I’m supposed to come up with things that I am good at in my life. All I can think of is this giant list of things I’ve failed at, moments I have missed, and tears I have cried. Somehow, I think if I turn that in the assignment has been failed. It is hard to think “positively” when you hate that word and all that is associated with it. Happy people make me want to drink until I do not know what universe I am in. I fucking hate people that have their life, their perfect grass, and their families together. Their phones ring with people at the other end that want to talk to them. People that care and are full of love. Why can’t I call heaven? I’m thinking of buying a fake phone and just pretend to call people. I’m so lonely in this world full of insignificant people. People that walk through you, laugh at you, use you, and ultimately leave you. I don’t just despise where I live, I despise life. Is it depression or reality talking? Not long ago, there was ANOTHER shooting at a church in Texas. There is no where safe to go to find peace anymore. No one trusts the person behind them to catch them if the fall. Whatever it is, this life breaks my heart.

 

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Slow Cooker Spinach Lasagna

Hey Yall! I made an amazing slow cooker spinach lasagna recipe that I hope you will enjoy! The ingredients are affordable and the process is easy. This recipe came from 12 Tomatoes and can be found here.  I cooked my slow cooker vegetarian lasagna on low for 4.5 hours and it turned out perfect.

As you can see from the above picture, I had a buggy full of ingredients earlier today. What was needed to make this spinach lasagna recipe was:

2 packages frozen spinach

2 cups of Italian cheese blend, grated

3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese plus extra for garnish

2 Jars of Alfredo Sauce

1 package of lasagna noodles 

The spinach lasagna recipe is located in the link above. I would highly recommend checking it out as it was so yummy! I also purchased Five Cheese Texas Toast which is super simple. You just spray a cookie sheet with some Pam or put down parchment paper to keep the toast from sticking. You then bake the toast at 425 for 20 minutes.

When your spinach lasagna recipe is done, it should look similar to the above picture. I love the crock pot because you can leave your ingredients in there and come back to a full cooked meal! My boyfriend and I both enjoyed this for dinner and said we would make it again. the next time we may try adding a few more things to it to experiment. Over all though, This was really yummy. I would highly recommend. Also, if you are a Vegetarian, this is a great lunch or dinner option for you! Have a wonderful night.

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Woodland Creature Ornaments

Hey Yall! I want to teach yall how to make woodland creature ornaments ! There are few things cuter than woodland creatures, don’t you agree?  They are found in decor for all different holidays at stores like Michaels. Today, I actually was at Michaels and became inspired to make a few woodland creature ornaments when I found some little wooden frames. Below are the things that I used for my craft.

The key with making ornaments is to just get creative. You can use ANY kind of scrap book paper that you want. I chose to use a red and green sparkly paper for my woodland creature ornaments.  I also used a sheet of woodland creatures to cut out for the center of my ornament.  Besides the paper I also had 2 wooden frames, hot glue gun, glue sticks, gold paint, sponge brush, scissors (I ended up using much smaller scissors to cut out animals) and a little dish for paint.

Using your sponge brush, give your frames a coat with your paint. You can use any color paint but I chose gold. After letting my frames dry for a few minutes I gave them a second coat of paint. It did not take long for each coat to dry. I would say from 10-15 mins! As you are waiting for your frames to dry you can cut out your little woodland creatures. I started with larger scissors but quickly realized for precision sake, I needed small scissors. All I had were finger nail scissors so I made it work!

Once your frames have dried you can start by turning them over onto the back of your scrapbook paper. I chose to use the back of my paper because the front was very sparkly and hard to trace on. You may not have too though if you have a print that is not sparkly. I traced the opening on my frame with a pencil and then cut the shape out. I cut the shape a little wider than the tracing so that it would overlap on the frame and I would have some paper to glue down.

Once you have traced your shapes and cup your paper, the next step is to hot glue the paper onto the frames. Make sure the front of the image that you want to show through your frame is facing forward. As opposed to hot gluing the paper I decided to hot glue four dots onto the back of the frame. One dot per side. Then I pressed the paper onto the frame. Once the glue dries you will be able to hot glue on your woodland creatures to the center of your paper. Be careful to not burn yourself as these animals are quite small. You should now have ornaments that look like this:

I added a red ribbon by threading it through the openings on the ornaments. I think it really added a nice touch. I hot glued the top of the ribbon together to make a loop.  I hope that you enjoyed making woodland creature ornaments with me! This woodland creature ornament craft is an original idea. You are more than welcome to share on any social media platform. Please link your post back to craftsandcamera.com. Look forward to seeing yall again soon with more DIYs !

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Pumpkin Pup Pops

Hey Yall! I have a healthy and delicious pumpkin pup pops recipe ! I Your dogs are going to absolutely love it and the good news is that it is easy to make. My dogs licked their lips as I mixed together the ingredients to this recipe for them. This recipe is from the BitzNGiggles blog which I encourage you to visit! The pictures below show you how the recipe turned out and how to make it. Enjoy and be sure to check out my YouTube video below if you would like to see my pups, Charlie and Daisy, up close as I make the recipe.

What you need to make pumpkin pup pops:

1 can 100% Pure Pumpkin

1/2 cup natural peanut butter (I used creamy)

1 cup Plain Yogurt

12 paper cups

12 rawhide sticks

I personally doubled everything as I ended up getting too much yogurt and pumpkin! I am sure my dogs are not going to complain haha.

How to make the pumpkin pup pops: 

I used very basic supplies to mix these ingredients together. It’s my goal  to make things extremely simple, as I am pro things being EASY.  All you need to do is get a bowl and a spoon or spatula. Mix together your yogurt, pumpkin, and peanut butter. You can use hand beaters I assume but it was so easy without them that I did not do that. The texture of your mixture should be pretty thick and smooth. This is good because it will help your raw hide sticks stand up in your paper cups.

Once you have mixed all your ingredients together take a smaller spoon and put about three spoonfuls into each paper cup. I filled up my paper cups to the top because I had so much pumpkin mixture (I did double the recipe though). This is the point where your dogs are literally going to be begging you to give them a taste!

As you fill up your paper cups with mixtures, place a raw hide stick in each one. It helps to have  a baking sheet to directly put the cups into.  This will assist you when you carry your popsicles to the freezer, as they will not fall over in the tray. Based off observation, I do think it takes a while for these popsicles to freeze and be ready for your pups.  My pops have been  in the freezer for a while now and they are still a bit soft. My recommendation is to freeze your pumpkin pup popsicles over night.

I can’t wait to see how my dogs enjoy them tomorrow!They got a  taste of the batter as I was preparing their pops and they LOVED it! If this is a success I will try baking them some cookies next. It is nice to make your dogs and cats treats because it lets you know exactly what is their food. Please click my YouTube video below to watch me actually make these pumpkin pup pops! I hope you and your pups enjoy! I did try the batter myself and found it to be pretty good!! Have a wonderful night and thank you for stopping by.

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October Dollar Tree Finds #2

Hey Yall! Hope everyone is having a great day! I found some great October Dollar Tree Finds today that I wanted to share with you. I absolutely love how the Dollar Tree is using dogs in their Christmas bags and notebooks. Some of the cutest notebooks I have ever seen are located below. I am going to go back tomorrow and pick up several! The thing about finding cute items like this is that they sell out and sometimes do not re stock. You almost have to buy things when you see them. I just wish they put the Christmas decor out a little closer to the actual holiday.

They also had a lot of mini Christmas tree items like ornaments, a tree skirt, star, etc.  Along with decorations, they were selling mini Christmas Trees. I did not get one because I actually have a small green one that I am going to try and use. I may pick up a white Christmas Tree though when I go back to have as back up. I have just noticed everyone hauling these and I just kind of like to do something different. If you need floral, the Dollar Tree has some beautiful Christmas Floral. I almost picked up some today but was trying to not go over board.

You can find some very cute note pads as well to put on your fridge. Below is a picture of the cutest one that I saw. There were four different designs in total though. I like to use these note pads to write down grocery lists. Something about them being right on the fridge allows me to always find them. If something does not have a magnet on the back it for some reason disappears in our house.

Before I went shopping for my October Dollar Tree Finds I recorded two friend mail videos. I had so much friend mail from before I had my wisdom teeth surgery till now that I had to make two thirty minute videos! I have SO many stickers, stationary, Washi tapes, etc that I do not know what to do with everything. People from my YouTube channel have been very kind and supportive.  I never realized how many people I would reach by making haul videos and book reviews.  ♥ If you are interested in watching my friend mail videos I will post the links below for you:

*** Massive Friend Mail Haul Part #1 ***

*** Massive Friend Mail Haul Part #2 ***

Two other October Dollar Tree Finds that I really liked were the scarfs and the coffee cups. They looked like they had just put both out! I will tell you from experience that the scarfs GO so if you want a scarf be sure to grab it when you see it 😉 I almost did not get one but ended up picking up the snow flake and the snow man one for me. They had four designs total. I also picked up two scarfs for a potential later give away ……shhhh. Also, for you coffee lovers they had some adorable cups. My favorite one is the truck below. As cute as it is, I have so many coffee mugs that I did not pick it up. I may change my mind on that though just due to the fact that there is a red truck on the cup!!! I am willing to bet that one will sell out as well.

I also stopped by the thrift store today and found this amazing pillow that I have to share with you!! NOT that I need any more pillows but I have learned that the best pillows to get are the ones with the zip covers so that if you need to store the pillow covers all you have to do is fold them up. This dog pillow was in such great shape that it literally did not look used. That is the kind of thing I prefer to buy from a thrift store. I do not mind things that are old, sometimes broken, or rusted if they are antique collectibles. Pillows on the other hand are another story. 🙂 This dog is called a Weimaraner  . ♥

Hope you enjoyed my October Dollar Tree Finds! If these items are not at your store yet then definitely check back. My store seems to get things absolutely last. It helps to watch haul videos though because it lets me know what to look for in my store. Hope you have a wonderful night and look forward to posting again soon! Take Care ♥

 

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October Dollar Tree Finds

Hey Yall! I’ve discovered some cute October Dollar Tree Finds  that I wanted to share with you! There are a lot of Halloween items at the store along with Christmas things.  It is only October so it is really hard to get motivated for Christmas. With that being said, sometimes you have to buy things ahead in order to get them. I’ve yet to do a Christmas haul but am sure that I will do one in the future. Today, my focus was more on buying some after surgery snacks, washi tape, and a few pencil sharpeners for girls that I write too. Hope you enjoy the pictures below. I must say that the little brooms were SO adorable. I highly recommend going out to see what you can find at your Dollar Tree!

Below are some other October Dollar Tree finds that I came across while in the store. I especially liked the Halloween solar lights. I may go back and get a  few of the skull ones to put along our walk way. If anyone has tried the Dollar Tree solar lights please let me know how they are. For some reason the ones I have gotten from places like Lowes always seem to fall apart.

There are a few non Halloween items that I took a picture of as well below.  I did end up getting an owl pencil sharpener and a cupcake one. I also grabbed several rolls of Washi tape. The patterns I chose were the ducks, cupcakes, and blue/white print. The little tractors were very cute too but I just did not see myself using that one. For those that send friend mail, Washi tape is a very popular item to send! I always try to grab a few extra rolls of the same pattern so that I can have one and I can send one too.

I hope that everyone enjoyed this October Dollar Tree Finds! If you would like to watch the YouTube video on my haul it is posted below. Hope that everyone has a good night. If you find anything you would like to share with me, you are more than welcome to email me at craftsandcamera@gmail.com . Also, I always love comments so feel free to leave me one and I will be sure to get back to you  ! Take Care.

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My Wisdom Teeth Removal Update

Hey Yall! This post is my wisdom teeth removal update  ♥. I can say that this past week has been anything but fun.  All of the bad side effects I have been having though are medication related. I’m sure not everyone would have such a hard time but I have always had a difficult time stomaching medication (especially strong pills). I was originally on Ibuprofen 800 mg, Percocet, Zofran, and Benadryl.

My first awful side effect was feeling extremely itchy. After going off of one of my initial anti biotics I continued to feel itchy but also nauseous as well. As disgusting as this sounds, I spent a large portion of the day trying to keep food down. After calling the oral surgeons office I was told to go off of the Zofran to see if that helped (which it did not). We called back and they said to go off of the Percocet. Later that night I finally started feeling less nauseous but extremely painful. This led to a follow up appointment this morning to see if I could take anything else with my 800 mg Ibuprofen.

Everything about this morning was OUCH.  I have realized why babies pull at their ears when their teeth are coming it and will have way more sympathy for them after this experience. It felt like pain was radiating from my ears but it was actually where they pulled my teeth at the back of my jaw. Jeremy made me an ice pack and put a wash cloth around it. He truly has been great with helping me. In moments of high stress he can be extremely strong, in a way that always impresses me. You can see his hand behind me as I hold the ice to my mouth in this picture.

After I was seen I was put on Hydro codeine to be rotated with the Ibuprofen every 6 hours. So far, thank goodness, I have been able to keep this medication down. They put be back on Zofran to take 20 minutes before the Hydro codeine to help with nausea. We went to CVS to get my meds and I walked around looking at all the very over priced items. They did have som really cute stuffed animals though that I took pictures of. I am glad I did not have money because I just may have come home with an over sized soft stuffed animal that I have no where to put.

 

On the way home I picked up some more egg drop soup and some skinny noodles with vegetables from the Chinese restaurant. It took effort to eat half of them and was painful to rinse them out of my gums. I know, GROSS. You have to rinse your gums though or you will get an infection. When I got home I just lay in the arm chair chilling with Daisy while waiting for my meds to kick in. It took several hours for anything to happen.

My friend, Jordan, got to hear my wisdom teeth removal update last night. She highly  recommended a crime series on Netflix so I watched several murder shows before I got any relief. I am unsure why in the world true crime is comforting but I have always found it fascinating. How investigators use evidence to track a criminal and figure out what happened is crazy ! Especially the use of luminol. If there is not blood present to the eye one can spray luminol over an area. If there is blood it will light up. The better technology gets the less likely people are able to get away with anything, as it should be.

I will end with my wisdom teeth removal update with this picture of these cute mini Halloween beanies. I did not buy any of these things because we are trying REALLY hard to not spend any money right now on anything other than food.  We are both job hunting and have a lot of bills. It is very overwhelming. -_-  I know though when something does not work out it is because it was not meant too. Hope everyone is having a good night. Thank you for all the support and love. ♥

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