Solstice Archives - Poppytalk

DIY | A Festive Tablescape

Jan Halvarson — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 19:00:00 +0000

In anticipation of hosting friends and family that we haven’t seen in a very long time this upcoming holiday season, over the next few weeks I’m super-excited to share with you a few festive holiday ideas (including this DIY Festive Tablescape, to elevate your get-togethers.

For inspiration, I’m loving the boho-style paper palm leaf DIYs I’ve been seeing lately, which got me thinking about a budget friendly version. Things you can easily find in a grocery store. Like different sized coffee filters, brown lunch bags, maybe some larger grocery bags, skewers, etc.

To start, I’ve created a tablescape idea that I hope you’ll love as much as I do.

I’ve created a series of different DIY palm style leaves you can make using the items I mentioned above, as well as a few things you might have lying around the house, like card stock and pipe cleaners. I have always loved the challenge of making things out of everyday items, and I think you’ll agree, this one doesn’t disappoint.

Using the various palm leaves I created, I started out with a symmetrical layout, adding in dinnerware, cutlery, some pretty polka dot paper napkins, and created some little printable treat boxes (click here for the how-to) topping them off with a smaller coffee filter palm leaf which I think is so so cute.

To pull it all together, I made some cursive font words, using gold pipe cleaners and added some tea lights.

For food, the folks at KraftHeinz hooked me up with a few must-have recipes for the festive season. Starting off with a savoury Croissant Bread Pudding (the only brunch recipe you’ll need this holiday season, it’s that good), Banana Walnut Waffles with toppers like warmed hazelnut spread, nuts and whipping cream, and some Sweet ‘n Salty Peanut Butter Filled cookies (perfect to give as treat favours). The full recipes can be found here.

This post is in partnership with Kraft Heinz. Stay tuned for a post on how to make these leaves coming tomorrow!

There’s also a contest! WIN $50 to buy all your brunching ingredients. Visit addjoy.ca for more details!

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DIY Printable Cookie Treat Box

Jan Halvarson — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 09:37:55 +0000

These Sweet and Salty Peanut Butter cookies I posted yesterday deserve to be gifted, they are that good.

This treat box project is the perfect compliment to these sweet and savoury cookies. Semi-sweet chocolate is melted in a mixture of butter and vanilla flour and eggs and then topped with a salty, peanut butter cream cheese frosting. For the full recipe, visit the addjoy.ca website and while you’re there, be sure to enter their Add Joy $50 grocery card contest where they are giving away $40k in cards!

Wrap them in these adorable printable boxes to gift to guests this holiday season. Check out the how-to and printable below.

DIY Printable Cookie Treat Box

You will need:

Cardstock 8.5 x 11 paper (I used gold)
Printable Box Template
Printer
Scissors
Glue Gun

How to make:

Step 1

Download and print off the printable box template. Print off as many as you’ll need. Click here for the file.

Step 2

Cut on the solid line outline(s), and the outside of all the flaps.

Step 3

Fold all of the dotted lines, and then starting at the opposite end.

Step 4

Starting from the bottom end, fold in the first flap underneath the next.

Step 5

Working each flap into the other until you form a box.

Step 6

Fold into a box shape.

Step 7

Fold flaps on top to secure until you glue into place.

Step 8

Secure the bottom using a glue gun or tape.

Step 9

Then secure the side with glue and hold until dry.

Step 10

Then measure and cut out some tissue paper to line the box.

Step 11

Fold the tissue to fit inside the box.

Step 12

Fill the box with a couple of the cookies.

Step 12

Then top with your favourite bow or something like this coffee filter palm fan leaf I made (see instructions below).

Coffee Filter Palm Leaf (Bows)

You will need:

-Pour-over style coffee filters in different sizes. I used Size 2 for these smaller leaves, however for the demo I used larger ones for visuals.

-Glue gun or tape

– Scissors

Step 1

Place 2 of the same sized filters together. At a 45 degree angle, start to fold (accordian-style) working your way across from one end to the other.

Step 2

Separate the filters. Then place the same sized end of one filter, against the other and glue together using a glue gun. You could also tape, however keep in mind it might not look as finished as a glued one.

Step 3

Then gather the bottom end of the two glued pieces to create a fan-like form. Using an extra filter, cut a strip off one end. Then glue it to cover the end, wrapping it around like a stem. Secure at the end of the strip with more glue (or tape).

Step 4

Attach the bow to the top of the box using a bit glue.

Stay tuned for more tablescape and recipes coming soon!

Pssst! There’s also a contest! WIN $50 to buy all your brunching ingredients, go to addjoy.ca for more details.

Good luck!

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Make a Nordic Snowflake

Jan Halvarson — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 06:48:00 +0000

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Holiday Tree Printable Poster for Winter Solstice

Jan Halvarson — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 23:28:00 +0000

Winter Solstice has a special meaning for me and every year I look for something special to share here online with our readers. I’ve always wanted one of those tree posters for the holidays, so for the first day of winter, I created this one, a printable file you can download and either print onto an 8.5″ x 11″ letter sized paper or a larger 36″x24″ poster you can send to your local printer to print off. I just emailed the file to our local printer and asked him to print it out on engineer paper (the type of paper they use to print off blueprints). He printed it off for me within a couple of hours. My printer charged me $6 for the 36”x24” file as an engineer print. See below for the how-to.

Holiday Tree Printable for Winter Solstice

You will need
1 printable file (click HERE for the 8.5″x11″ or HERE for the 36″ x 24″)
tape (to tape to the wall) or
2 wooden dowels (with string and hooks) to create a hanging frame
fairy lights (optional) and sewing pins to attach to the paper

Just download the file size you prefer and either print on your printer or send the file to your local printer to print onto an engineer paper. Frame as you like (either tape or tape or glue to wooden dowels and hang with string. Once hung, decorate using fairy lights (we attached ours to the paper using sewing pins.

Happy Solstice!

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DIY Wire Script Font Garland

Jan Halvarson — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 08:08:00 +0000

A few years back we pinned (along with a million others we’re sure), an adorable door garland from Marie Claire Maison Magazine (circa 2010) that had the words “C’est Noel” written in a script font using metal wire and this year we were reminded of it again on Pinterest. Since our hearts are with our friends in Paris this winter, we wanted to show support by creating something French. Since I had some leftover gold pipecleaners laying around, I thought I’d love to have that on our door (or mantle) this year. And as I attempted to make it, we thought, wouldn’t it be nice as a tree or wall garland as well. And so the adventure began.

Materials Needed
Gold (or silver) pipecleaners
Thick florist wire
Glue gun
Gold (or silver) string (not shown)

For the door or mantle wreath using floral wire and pipe cleaners:
Step 1. Using the floral wire, start to spell out the word “c’est”. Don’t worry about the accent yet that sits between the c and the e, we will add that later. So for this, the easiest way to create a script using a floral wire is to just think that you’re writing it, and just bend the wires the way you would actually write in script normally. Step 2. Since the wires are not one continuous wire, you’ll have to connect the pieces together. We tried to do that at convenient places (like the “t”). Step 3. If you have leftover wire, snip off the end using a wire snippers. Step 4. Using a glue gun, glue the pipecleaner onto the floral wire, tracing the shape of each letter.

Step 5. Tie a string on both ends of each word from the letters to connect to a long piece of pipecleaner wire. One long piece of pipecleaner for each word. To add the punctuation or accents, simply snip off a short piece of pipecleaner and tie it with string and hang directly over each applicable letter.

For the garland using pipecleaners (only):

This is the fun one! Choose a quote or Christmas Carol. Using the pipecleaners only, start to form the pipecleaners into the script fonts of each word, adding on pipecleaners (by twisting them together) as you go to create one continuous phrase. We chose “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” by Nat King Cole. The trick to this is to use lower case letters only (just makes it flow better), and form the letters the way you would normally write them when you use a pen. Continue through until you have enough garland for the project. As you can see with our 7 foot noble fir, this took a lot of words. But we love it! We took some pictures of the tree before we added the other decorations, just to see it stand out for this post. (More finished tree pictures to come).

We quite love it! Also would be nice as gift tags or place settings!

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DIY Holiday Citrus Wreath

Jan Halvarson — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 18:07:00 +0000

Contributor post by Erick and Emily of Heidi’s Bridge

Now that the days have gotten darker with winter settling in, we’ve been keeping a lot of citrus on hand to add a bit of sunshine to our routine. Not only does citrus brighten any meal, we also love to decorate with it during the holidays, too. In honor of our winter tradition, we wanted to create a festive citrus wreath that you can keep up even after the holidays. Read below for the tutorial.

You Will Need:

-Olive Branch Greenery
-Citrus (we used mandarin oranges and kumquats). Note: like all flower arrangements, fresh citrus is perishable and is meant to be enjoyed in the moment. If you would like to reuse wreath year after year, simple use fake citrus or detach/reattach fresh citrus every year (the olive branches will dry out beautifully and can be reused).
-Grapevine wreath
-Heavy gauge floral wire
-Scissors

Directions:

1. Snip off some pieces of your olive branch to make approximately 6″ long sprigs.

2. Tuck olive sprigs into the grapevine wreath to attach. Working clockwise, tuck sprigs into grapevine wreath until the entire wreath base is covered.

3. Once your wreath is entirely covered in olive sprigs, it’s time to attach your citrus. First, thread heavy gauge floral wire through the middle of your citrus. Cut floral wire, leaving two 5 inch tails of wire on either side of citrus.

4. Postion citrus on wreath where you want to attach. Thread your two tails through the front of the wreath to the back.

5. Tightly twist two tails of wire together in the back to attach citrus to wreath. Repeat until other citrus is attached

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DIY Boxwood Mini Wreath

Jan Halvarson — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 20:53:00 +0000

Contributor post by Emily and Erick of Hello Home Shoppe.

If you’re any bit like us and the proximity between Thanksgiving and the Holidays this year has caught you off guard, this DIY was practically made for you! We’re so behind on decorating this year, so we were inspired to put together a simple, yet beautiful wreath made out of materials that we had readily accessible

According to Organic Gardening, boxwood is the most popular shrub in North America, so chances are, you can source the greens for this project in your own backyard. However, if you’re hard pressed to find any, head to a nearby nursery or garden supply store–we got ours from Tiny Terra Ferma. We like the fact that the materials for the wreath can be sourced from native plants–feel free to follow the simple principles of the wreath DIY, substituting with other plants growing near you! Magnolia leaves, holly, herbs, and any other hardy woody plants will work great here!

Materials To Gather

Boxwood Clippings–about 5-6 inches long.
Garden Scissors
8″ Wreath Frame
Floral Wire

Directions

1.) Cut your floral wire into a bunch of little “U” shapes–about 2 inches long. These little pieces will make it easier to twist your boxwood onto your wreath frame.
2.) In your hand, gather a few stems of boxwood into a little bundle. Using your floral wire “U” shapes, twist the bundle onto the wreath frame. Secure tightly in the back of the frame.

3.) Repeat this step, working clockwise as you secure the small bundles of boxwood to your frame, until you’ve filled the entire wreath.
4.) Once you’re wreath is completed, fill in any gaps with smaller clippings and trim off the longer branches, if desired. We left our boxwood long because we prefer the loose, wild look to the wreath. However, you can always trim your wreath to give the wreath a more uniform look.

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