Classroom Christmas Tour, 2025

 Hello! This is a really random post to share in January, but here is a quick tour of my classroom decorated for Christmas last year. 

Maybe it can provide some future inspiration for Christmas 2026. The lights came from both thrift stores and Amazon (specifically the star LED lights came from Amazon). The brown ribbon was bought in a huge bulk roll from Amazon. It was around $10, decorated my whole bedroom, classroom, was used to embellish gifts, used for hair bows, and I still have tons left! The bells came from Dollar Tree but I painted them to look vintage. The garlands and pine cones came from thrift stores. I probably paid a total of $5 or less for them. I did run out of those and buy one strand from Walmart, which is unreasonably expensive, as it turns out. The other decorations I had on hand from thrift stores or they were given to me as gifts in years past.  

I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for visiting! 

Blessings,

Lauryn 

Custom Keychain Gift Idea for Students

 Hello! Tonight I'd also like to share a gift idea I did for my students last Christmas as both an end of the semester and Christmas gift in one (also because I literally did not have any time to celebrate those two occasions with separate gifts). I have no regrets about this and liked the result, but disclaimer: these take an insane amount of time. Like they took me at least fifteen minutes each to put together, decide on the designs, tie, and hot glue. I multiplied that by thirty-eight students which I should have done before starting this project since I have almost zero time management skills and no sense of time passing. The number I came up with is approximately a minimum of nine and a half hours. I am pretty certain it took hours over that. 

That said, it is very time consuming. That is just for the keychain part, too, not counting the packaging part. I think I made the labels on Canva but could not find the printable to add in below. I bought the ribbon in a bulk roll from Amazon and still have plenty to spare months later. The beads came from a variety of kits I bought off of Amazon and then stole from my brother because the kits I bought ran out, so for thirty-eight students I should have bought three or four kits instead of two. Each keychain featured the student's name, and two large beads I thought they would like (such as a smiley face, bow, star, and so on) or three or four smaller ones (I tried very hard to make them all equal). 

The pros are that these are both pretty and practical, and they are very personalized. These could really be given to any age and any group of people, too. 

Thank you for stopping by, I hope you find this idea helpful! 

Blessings,

Lauryn

Christmas Room Tour, 2021

 Hey everyone, this is super random, but going through photos I realized I never shared my Christmas decorations. So here is either a very late or a very early Christmas room tour (from 2021). I decorated the mirror with hot-glued plants from outside. They are still holding on and look golden despite being dead! I added a bow and bell from a Dollar Tree pack of bells. I made the banner out of cut and tied strips of fabric. Most of the decorations came from thrift stores, others were gifts or décor I had from previous years. I wanted a very simple, minimalist feel with blush pink, burgundy, gold, and neutral brown colors. 

I hope you enjoyed!

-Lauryn

Christmas Room Tour, 2019

Hello, everyone! I'm so sorry I haven't posted in forever! I have a crazy, overwhelming amount to catch up on, but maybe this will be the year I can  become more consistent. Anyway, here is a brief Christmas bedroom tour from this past Christmas season. At the bottom I will include a tutorial for my bell banner, which is super easy to make. Even though the time is past, hopefully this will come in handy for the Christmas season of 2020.

Bell banner tutorial:

You will need:
-Bells (mine were a pack of regular sized bells from Dollar Tree)
-Brown acrylic paint
-A paintbrush
-A paper towel of some alternative
-A string

Step 1. Lay the bells out on something you can paint such as a paper plate. Use a medium-sized paint brush that is frayed, if possible, and dab brown paint. You can dab the paint over the whole bell or just in parts. I suggest leaving negative space for a rusty look. Then dab the wet paint with tissue or a napkin. The texture should look rough. Do one side, let them dry, then repeat the process for the other side of the bells.

Step 2. String the bells onto a long string and tie them on as you string them individually so that they don't slide around. That's all there is to it!

I was going for a modern-farmhouse mixed with modern-Scandinavian style, and since metallic and shimmering things seemed to be in style, I ended up incorporating some shiny sequins and a sparkly silver tree in my tree display as well as the gold bell banner. I made a dried orange banner that I was very excited about, but then I never actually strung it up and they rotted. The beautiful nativity string art was created by a friend and sold in support of my local HCT theater, and my little brother drew my wonderful Knee-Neep Christmas picture. I typed the typography print on Microsoft word and printed it on brown card-stock, then just drew the star. I saw that quote and design on a welcome mat online. Overall, I wanted a warm Christmas environment that was very natural and minimalist-looking with a calm sort of elegance. I hope you enjoyed the tour!

-Lauryn