Vintage cookie cutter garland and two more fun Christmas links

I mentioned a little while ago how smitten I was with this tutorial over at Joli Paquet. I was able to find the repro vintage cookie cutters at Home Goods and armed with more vintage cutters from my collection and ribbon bought for half-price at JoAnn's the day after last Christmas, I set about making my own garland.(Sorry for the lousy photos--it's hard to get a good one since there's always light coming in) Making the garland couldn't have been easier--just measure the ribbon, find the center and string on the cookie cutters! I knew I wanted to hang mine on the curtain rod over my kitchen window but the valance I had up, cute as it is, didn't match. Luckily, the same friend who lent me the other valance also gave me this cute gingham curtain trimmed with fat white rickrack, which turned out to be the perfect background for displaying the garlands.
I started out by making the bottom garland but when I finished I still had plenty of cookie cutters left and another spool of ribbon, so I made another! The only thing I did differently from the tutorial was leave off the buttons, for no other reason than pure laziness!

I love how the garlands turned out! What a fun, easy and satisfying craft project and a cute decoration!

The Christmas countdown clock seems to be ticking a bit faster for me today because in exactly one week we'll be on the road to Utah to spend the holiday with our families. That means I have to get all the gifts purchased and wrapped, get us packed, packages mailed, do any baking, gifts to friends, etc. by Saturday. Yikes! I wish I was one of those people who does their Christmas shopping all year round but that just doesn't really work for the people I have to buy for, so I'm usually scrambling at the last minute

Hopefully you're further along in your preparations than I am so you have a little time to check out my favorite time-waster website this Christmas, Betamaxmas. You'll love it if you're a child of the 80s like me! Be sure to check out the TV Guide for the programming lineup and move the antennas on the TV to make the picture fuzzier or more clear.

If you're still crafting and need some great vintage Christmas images, check out Clearly Vintage, a blog that has new vintage images each day until Christmas! She also designs a line of vintage-inspired rubber stamps that are really neat.

And one more thing for those viewing this on a blog reader--I've updated my blog roll on the left side to include a whole mess of blogs that have great vintage Christmas inspiration. Go check them out!