Candie Cane Lane…

First off, THANK YOU all for the lovely and sweet comments about Ornament Thursday.  It’s been a treat to look at all your spectacular ornaments!  I feel so lucky that we have a secret br0wser that allows us to look at bl0gsp0t blogs—-but the other side of that is I feel like a real a-hole because I can’t leave you notes to tell you how much I adore what you made.  It’s weird, but it comes with living here.  See note of sorry at left…

It seems that the end of the year always brings crazy frantic work deadlines before the new year rings in.  I’ve heard it from more than one person the past few days.  It’s a juggling act between wrapping up work stuff and wrapping up presents. As a freelancer, I’m just so grateful to have work and a supportive husband who helps wrap presents and chips in to help make the salad for the holiday party. He’s great like that.

With the holiday festivities and work stuff I was feeling drained. I needed to make time to play.  I know, but often forget this about myself.  I feel all creativity get sucked in by pressure if I don’t take a couple of hours to do something absolutely just for fun.  So, Friday, late afternoon I headed with a bag o’ yarn and tools to Starbucks to meet three other friends for coffee.  I’d been wanting to try out the pom-pom makers by Clover.  As it turned out, one friend brought her knitting, another brought a beaded candy cane ornament kit.  Before we knew it our little table was packed with beads, scissors, pliers, and balls of yarn, all of us working on something.  We weren’t there more than an hour and a half, but the laughs and happy crafts gave me the energy to go back and tackle some more work! Ok.  The latte helped  too.

Old School and New School Candy Cane Ornaments

Let’s take a stroll down Candy Cane Memory Lane…..  The candy cane ornament kits my friend brought to coffee got me thinking about some we made back in elementary school.  We used pipe cleaners and plastic beads.  For this one, I used a slightly different interlocking bead (is that sad I remember what bead we used way back from 3rd grade?) and a red tinsel pipe cleaner.  Take 6 minutes to string it up and hang it on your tree!  As I was looking at my tree, I noticed all of my candy cane ornaments are facing the same direction.  Hmmm. I feel like that should be a question on a personality test.  "Do you prefer your candy cane hook going to the left or right?"  Who cares, just take time to play!

Candy Canes with glass bead Ornament Kits by Westrim Crafts