From Taylor - A Christmas full of Birthdays

This post is about Christmas presents. I'm sorry it's so long after Christmas! I was busy spending time with family and such. And then one of our good friends got me VERY sick. (Darn it Logan!) Anyway, hope you enjoy hearing a little bit about the joyous gifts we were able to give some loved ones. Pinterest is such a great place for homemade Christmas gift ideas.  I came across a few pins that kept popping up over and over. I included all of the ones that really caught my eye. They just made me think of my Grandma. I knew she would love something like this!

I liked all of these. But I also wanted to make it more personal. We used spray chalkboard paint for the bases. I liked this element because then it can say "Happy Birthday _____!" Or "Merry Christmas!" or whatever else you can think of. (Tristan's grandma's will most likely say "Write your own damn happy birthday!" because she's hilarious.) I was really nervous about the spray paint part of this. But I figured it was at least worth a shot. Plus, it was only about $3, which is WAY cheaper than the chalkboard paint at Hobby Lobby.

Rust-oleum Brand from Walmart. Pretty sure it was only $3.29.

Pretty stickers! We chose the gold ones because they were the right size honestly. But both of our grandmas' liked the color so I think we're good.

Then we had to find all of our other materials. Everything else came from Hobby Lobby. We decided stickers were our best bet for making the writing look good. We did use a liquid gold paint marker to write the names and dates on the circles. The rest is all made out of wood. The little circles needed a little bit of prep work. See the pictures below for help on that one. 

We had to hammer through on both sides to get the hole the right size. I bet there's a better way to do this, but we don't have a ton of tools...

They took about two coats on each side for these. The real time commitment here is the holes. I wondered if you could buy these with the holes already in them but I couldn't find any.

 Next came the eyes to hang each month from. The hardest part here was measuring. The first picture below was our failed attempt. As you can see, the latter months are way further apart than the first few. We redid that one and got it right on the second one.

 Then we had to write on all the tags and attach them all. Tristan did the writing. He has prettier writing than I do. (Just ask the bishop that married us. He told Tristan that the decorative certificate he should just have me fill in later with my pretty handwriting. It's hanging on our wall, with Tristan's pretty writing on it.)

An up close of the way the tags are all attached!

Final product! The "Merry Christmas" part is in chalk.

 We used jump rings instead of the S hooks. Since we had to wrap and transport these, I didn't think S hooks were a good idea. The strands would have just fallen apart. And then I got to thinking, if we want this to last, we should find a better solution. We used pretty big jump rings from the Jewelry section. We picked some that were really easy to open and close just using your fingers.  We chose to use picture frame hangers on the back because we really didn't have the tools necessary to add ribbon like I wanted. Plus, this way it hides the nail in the wall.

Have you guys done birthday charts in your families? What are your thoughts? My Grandma has had several over the years but the problem each time has been that when people need to get added, it's difficult. I hate to say this, but sometimes people and anniversaries need to get removed too. Knock on wood that never happens, but it's a reality. And white out will never look good. This way, we can add AND remove easily. We made plenty of extra circles and our hope is that even if we do run out it will be easy to make more.  Tristan's grandma has even more grandkids than mine, and most of them are adults with kids now too so we needed LOTS of room and circles. (November in their family had 10 circles by itself!)

This project is a success in my book. Both Grandmas loved it. And it really wasn't that hard. It did take a time commitment to get the prep work all done, but it was only about 10 hours total. Well worth the glee on Christmas! Also, it was really cost effective. All of the materials were only about $35 total. This gift was definitely a lot more about time than money. Pinterest has another success guys!

*** All of the names are blacked out in the pictures to protect our families. I did leave my name in the last picture so you can see the writing we chose to do on the circles. The big black section above the chalk writing has their last name written in gold stickers.