DIY XO Glittery Wine Stoppers for Valentine's Day | Popcorn and Chocolate

XO Glittery Wine Stoppers

DIY XO Wine Stoppers | Popcorn and ChocolateValentine’s/Galentine’s Day is coming right up! If you are still in need of a simple gift or a cute decoration keep reading to find out how to make these XO glittery wine stoppers!Glittery XO Wine Stoppers | Popcorn and ChocolateI feel like this year is just flying by… I say that every year, but how is it almost Valentine’s day already? I was happily celebrating my birthday last weekend in Portland, ME with Rose and I blinked and this week is already over! To be completely honest I’m not someone that really looks forward to the big v-day. Even when I was dating someone I never was super thrilled about the holiday. Glittery XO Wine Stoppers | Popcorn and ChocolateDon’t get me wrong, I love love love all the pink and hearts that are everywhere, just the actual day is a little cringe-worthy. I much rather celebrate by throwing a big Galentine’s day party with friends and eat sweets and drink wine and make some crafts, but tbh, I would always rather being doing that. DIY XO Glittery Wine Stoppers for Valentine's Day | Popcorn and ChocolateDIY XO Glittery Wine Stoppers for Valentine's Day | Popcorn and ChocolateThese glittery XO wine stoppers would be the perfect decoration to add to your bar cart at your Galentine’s day party. Orrrr you could make the X’s and O’s ahead of time and let everyone decorate their own! Sometimes I think I’m a party planner. But doesn’t that sound like a fun party?? Drink some wine, craft, eat some popcorn and chocolate. Seems perfect to me. DIY XO Glittery Wine Stoppers for Valentine's Day | Popcorn and Chocolate

Materials:

Instructions for XO wine stoppers:

  1. Make your plaster by following the instructions on the bottle and then pour it into your silicone tray in the X and the O. Let dry for the allotted time it says on your Plaster of Paris (about an hour).Plaster XO wine stoppers | Popcorn and Chocolate
  2. Once the X and O have dried, pull out of the tray and if you want to paint yours this would be the time to do so. As you can see I painted one set pink and left the other plain. Let dry.Painted plaster xo wine stopper | Popcorn and Chocolate
  3. Take your paint brush and dip it into the mod podge then paint on the glue in the areas that you want glitter to be. I sort of did a dip-dyed look with mine. Painted plaster xo wine stopper | Popcorn and Chocolate
  4. Pour the glitter onto your letters. Let dryGlittery plaster xo wine stopper | Popcorn and chocolate
  5. Taking a hot glue gun, glue your letter onto a wine cork.

    Glittery plaster xo wine stopper | Popcorn and chocolate

    Ew ew ew please excuse all the dog hair in this picture. Blame olive if you must.

  6. Open a bottle of wine and stick your new cork in!

Glitter XO wine stoppers | Popcorn and ChocolateLet us know in the comments below what you are doing for Valentine’s day – even if that is just sitting on the coach and watching Netflix all day (we won’t judge)! Be sure to comment/like/subscribe if you enjoyed this post and feel free to pin it for later if you want to!

Xoxo, Haley

 

DIY Glitter XO Wine Stoppers for Valentine's Day | Popcorn and Chocolate

Glitter Champagne Bottles for New Years

Glitter champagne bottle for New Years | Popcorn and ChocolateRing in New Years this year with these 2017 glitter champagne bottles. They are easy to make and involve buying a bottle of champagne – my kind of craft! Keep reading below to find out how to make these 2017 glitter champagne bottles.

Glitter champagne bottle for New Years | Popcorn and Chocolate

Glitter champagne bottle for New Years | Popcorn and Chocolate

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas/holiday! Seems like the time just flew by and here we are about to celebrate New Years. 2016 has been quite the year and I for one am glad it is coming to a close. I can’t wait to ring in the New Year and say sayonara to 2016.

2017 Glitter champagne bottles | Popcorn and Chocolate

With New Years just a couple days away we thought we would share a simple last minute craft you can do to prepare for the big night. You can make this craft in a couple of hours and will most likely have a lot of the supplies already at home.

Glitter champagne bottle for New Years | Popcorn and Chocolate

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If you decide to make these glitter champagne bottles be warned that you might end up with glitter in your hair, stuck to your fingers, all over your clothes and pretty much everywhere you are working. I had a trail of glitter following me from where I made the champagne bottles to where I took pictures and back again. My mom wasn’t thrilled. I think I’ve still got some stuck to my leggings too. It’s a dangerous medium to work with, but definitely worth the risk.

2017 Glitter champagne bottles | Popcorn and Chocolate

Materials:

  • Glitter
  • Mod Podge
  • Vinyl sticker numbers
  • Paint brush
  • Newspaper to collect all the glitter
  • Champagne bottle

Making the glitter bottle:

  1. Take your vinyl stickers and place the numbers 2017 down the side of your bottle where there is no label. 2017 New Year Champagne Bottle | Popcorn and Chocolate
  2. Paint on mod podge all over the bottle. Be careful when going around the 2017 stickers and try not to get glue on the actual sticker.2017 New Year Champagne bottle | Popcorn and Chocolate
  3. Cover bottle in glitter. Let dry for about an hour. 2017 New Year Champagne bottle | Popcorn and Chocolate
  4. Gently peel off the 2017 stickers. I used an exacto knife to get underneath the stickers and gently pry them up, trying not peel the glitter off around them. 2017 Glitter New Year Champagne bottle | Popcorn and Chocolate
  5. Pop your champagne and enjoy!

2017 Glitter champagne bottles | Popcorn and Chocolate

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Say goodbye to 2016 and hello to 2017 with these glittery champagne bottles! We hope you all have a wonderful and safe New Years! Let us know in the comments below what you are planning on doing. I’m most likely spending the night at home and cracking open these bottles 😉

Glitter champagne

2017 Glitter champagne bottles | Popcorn and Chocolate

 

Sculpey Pilgrim Hat Wine Stoppers

Thanksgiving table | Popcorn and Chocolate

It’s finally starting to look like fall in Boston, just in time for Thanksgiving! Wait… how is it already Thanksgiving? Is it just me? I feel like this year is seriously flying by… To decorate the thanksgiving table, we made these sculpey pilgrim hat wine stoppers! Or, if you don’t drink wine, you can cork whatever you want with them like olive oil!

Pilgrim Hat Wine Stoppers | Popcorn and Chocolate

Before we get to the DIY, I’m going to tell you my thanksgiving story. Here it goes. A bunch of years ago, my parents met at thanksgiving because my mom’s best friend and my dad’s best friend were dating. In my head it’s a lot longer of a story than that…

Holiday gifts | Popcorn and Chocolate

And I’m so thankful my parents met each other, not only because it means that I’m here, but because they love each other so much and they are always so endlessly supportive. So every year when we go around the thanksgiving table and talk about what we are all thankful for, I always feel obligated to say, “well I’m thankful for my parents, so I’m thankful for thanksgiving…” And as a kid it always felt silly, like I had to say that and wasn’t allowed to think of anything else. But now, as I get older, the more I don’t care because at the top of my list is always that I’m thankful for my parents because I’m so lucky to have such an incredible family.

holiday table | Popcorn and Chocolate

This is getting way soppier than I had intended when I sat down to start writing! Besides family and friends, and food… what’s the next best part of thanksgiving? Did you say drinking wine with family and friends and food? Good. That’s what I thought. In honor of wine, we decided to make these cute pilgrim hat wine stoppers. They would make the perfect gift with a bottle of wine as a guest or make them for your own table at home. If you’re having thanksgiving with fellow crafty people, I’d suggest just making a few sculpey pilgrim hats and bringing your glue gun and gluing them to the corks of each wine bottle you open through the night. Or just make them at home before you get there.. whatever floats your boat.

wine cork DIY | Popcorn and Chocolate

Here’s what you need to make the sculpey pilgrim hat wine stoppers:

  • Sculpey – black, white, yellow (if you don’t have colors, you can always paint white sculpey when it’s dry)
  • Cork wine stoppers – you can either buy these from the craft store, or just use the cork of bottles you open, up to you!
  • A hot glue gun and glue
  • Parchment paper

wine stoppers | Popcorn and Chocolate

It couldn’t be easier to make these cute wine stoppers, so you literally have no excuses this time! Here’s how to make them:

  1. Lay out your parchment paper on a surface you can work on.
  2. Roll a clump of sculpey into a ball – this will be the body of the hat, so use as big of a piece as you want the hat to be. Make sure it is at least as big as the cork wine stopper, but we thought it looked nicer if it was even bigger (about an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half in diameter).
  3. Start shaping your ball into a cone shape with a flat top and bottom. We did this by rolling it at an angle on the parchment paper on the table and pressing the top and the bottom flat. Keep working at it until it looks hat shaped! (See photo below).
  4. Grab a new piece of black – about an inch or so – and roll it into a ball and press it flat into a pancake. This will be the brim of the hat. Once it’s in the shape of the pancake, lay the body of the hat on top of it and see if it looks ok, if it’s too big or small, add or take away clay and redo this step. Once it’s just right, firmly press the body and the brim of the hat together so they stick well.sculpey pilgrim hats | Popcorn and Chocolate
  5. Roll the white out into a snake and press it flat. This will be the trim between the brim and the body of the hat. You can decide how thick you want it to be. Wrap it around the hat.
  6. Roll the yellow into a thinner snake but don’t press it flat! carefully make a small rectangle to place on the white rim. thanksgiving pilgrim hat | Popcorn and Chocolate
  7. Once your sculpey hat is assembled, bake it according to the package instructions – Mine said to bake at 275 F for 15 minutes per 1/4 inch, so mine was in there about 30 or 40 minutes, checking every 10 minutes after the first 20 minutes. I baked it on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
  8. Once your sculpey is baked and cooled, warm up your hot glue gun and glue the hat to your cork! Now you’re ready to cork some wine bottles with your pilgrim hat wine stoppers!

cork bottle stoppers | Popcorn and Chocolate

I love playing with sculpey! Let us know in the comments if you have other sculpey crafts we should do! Or if you have other wine stopper ideas… Also, if you like any of the other table decorations in the first picture, keep checking back here because we’re doing a whole thanksgiving table DIY series!

thanksgiving pilgrim hat wine stoppers | Popcorn and Chocolate

Green Smoothie | Popcorn & Chocolate

Grapefruit Green Smoothie

Grapefruit Green Smoothie | Popcorn & ChocolateRose and I sometimes like to play this hypothetical game where we choose a color and then list the types of food we would be able to eat if we could only eat foods that color. For example if the color was red you could eat red apples, strawberries, red peppers, tomato sauce, etc. etc. It’s rather fun and addicting although sometimes the yummiest colored food don’t lend well to a very healthy spectrum of foods (i.e. brown for nut butters and chocolate except what fruit or veg is brown..? Potatoes? lots and lots of potatoes).Grapefruit Green Smoothie | Popcorn & ChocolateGreen would be pretty nice to have because you would get some leaves, avocado, green apples, Brussels sprouts, pesto… lots of fresh foods, although sweets would be difficult to come by (Avocado pudding??). Although, now that I think of it if you like green apple flavored things you would be able to have those lollipops and hard candies. Green apple was my go to flavor for candy – especially with jolly ranchers, so I would be pretty smitten.Grapefruit Green Smoothie | Popcorn & ChocolateAnd if you chose green you would get to drink green smoothies, like this refreshing grapefruit green smoothie we have here. I mean just look at that lovely shade of green – doesn’t it make you so thirsty? There is something so refreshing about a green smoothie, especially after a workout – I can just feel the health benefits running through me. Sometimes I wonder if I’m too healthy at times… then I go eat chocolate and forget what I’m thinking about.Grapefruit Green Smoothie | Popcorn & ChocolateAnyways, back to green foods, in particular this green smoothie. It has spinach, grapefruit (yum!!), some banana and some mango and some coconut water and that’s it! Grapefruits are fast going out of season so I wanted to take advantage of them while I can, so I’ve started adding grapefruit juice to my smoothies. It adds a nice twist to the whole smoothie, and I wonder why I’ve haven’t been doing this all winter.Grapefruit Green Smoothie | Popcorn & ChocolateGrapefruit Green SmoothieRecipe_GrapefruitGreenSmoothie_P&C

Simple as simple can be. I guess I could do pretty well if I only had to eat/drink green foods…

Grapefruit Green Smoothie | Popcorn & Chocolate

What color of food would you chose if you could only eat one color of food?

Pomegranate Moscow Mule

IMG_8861Now that Thanksgiving is over it’s time to charge full speed ahead into the next holiday season, which happens to be my favorite time of year. I might get a few unsubscribes for admitting this but I cannot wait for it to snow! There is nothing like watching snowflakes slowly fall from the sky on a cool evening. It is just so magical. Sorry for anyone who hates winter and is dreading the snow.

IMG_8836I have a feeling this holiday season is going to be full of lots of laughs, extra cozy sweaters, much fun with friends and family, and of course good food and lots of alcohol. As a cheers to the good times coming, we have crafted this lovely pomegranate Moscow mule. It is the perfect drink to share with friends and family this winter.

IMG_8840I love a good mule. They are simple to make and delicious to drink. Plus, they come in the cutest, most festive mugs. Although, admittedly, the mugs were a pain in my behind when taking these pictures. I’ll forgive them because just look how cute!IMG_8885

Anyway… back to this delicious drink I know you are dying to try. The pomegranate adds a fun, festive flare to the traditional Moscow mule. We crushed up pomegranate using a mortar and pestle and added the juice to the mule. It couldn’t be any simpler!IMG_8785

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup pomegranates
  • 1/2 cup ginger beer
  • 1 shot of vodka
  • 1-1 lime wedges
  • Dash of sugar (we used raw turbinado sugar)

Directions:

  1. Start by crushing the pomegranates. We used a mortar and pestle to do this. Note – you could also buy pomegranate juice instead of using fresh pomegranate seeds.
  2. Add the juice from the pomegranates to your cup and then pour the ginger beer and vodka in as well.
  3. Squeeze the juice from the wedge of the lime into the drink and then add a dash of sugar to sweeten. Garnish with fresh pomegranates and another lime wedge if desired.

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Well, there you have it folks, a simple drink to celebrate the upcoming season. We’ve been making these pomegranate mules every weekend. They pair perfectly with a little bit of popcorn and your favorite Christmas movie.IMG_8856

Let us know what your favorite drink for the holidays is!