Tulip & Lily: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Hi Folks,

today we start our little Advent calender. Every day until Christmas we are going to post about festive clothes, Christmas party ideas, Christmas decoration, gift ideas and much more. We hope you'll enjoy it! :)

For those of you, who somehow overslept the official start of the Christmas season we'll bring you two DIY-ideas for a last-minute Advent wreath (Katja) and an Advent calender (Steffi) today. :)

DIY 1: Last-Minute Advent Calender

What you'll need

24 envelopes
felt ornaments
glue
thin cord
24 clothespins
gold spray
hammer and nails
pen

How it works

Put your clothespins on a broad sheet of paper and spray-paint them from every side with your gold spray. The distance between the spray can and clothespins should be about 30cm.

While your now golden clothespins dry you can glue your felt ornaments onto your envelopes. I made my envelopes myself out of simple brown paper using this easy description by Emily from Design and Nonsense but of course you can also use purchased ones.

The calender numbers I simply wrote onto the envelopes into the down right corner.

Make knots into the ends of your cord and fix the cord with nails on your wall. Then you can hang up your envelopes. Now you've only got to fill the calender and you're done! Hope you'll have fun with it! :)

DIY 2: "Very british" advent wreath

What you'll need

greenery wreath
4 red candles plus candle holder for wreaths
glue gun
4 tartan ribbons
wire
small red ornaments
4 pine cones
4 walnuts

I always buy a ready-made greenery wreath because I am too lazy to make my own (allthough I have TONS of coniferous trees in my garden and neighbourhood). But I always decorate them by myself.
And this is super easy :)

Start with the candles: put them on the candle holder for wreaths and plug them in the wreath. Fix the tartan ribbons with some wire directly under the candles. I also glued some star anise on the ribbons.

Then spray-paint your walnuts and pine cones and let them dry. With a hot glue gun you can fix the walnuts, pine cones and small red ornaments easily on your wreath.