I’ve been seeing these top 10 posts of 2016 pop up all over my feed lately and was just dying to find out what Popcorn & Chocolate had in store. I can’t believe a whole other year has gone by. This year was full of some fun crafts we shared on our blog and some not so fun transitions and moves in our personal lives. Throughout it all we’ve always had our blog going, even if it has meant spending our whole weekend dedicated to taking pictures and creating crafts. I love the grind of blogging and wouldn’t have had it any other way. So, without further ado, here are our top 10 posts from 2016 with a bit of behind the scenes commentary as well (inspired by Laurel at A Bubbly Mess).
10. Free Thanksgiving Table Printables 
As you make your way down the list you will see that this was the year of free printables. Since they seem to do so well we will definitely incorporate lots more in 2017! Behind the scenes: I sent this picture to Rose of me using our printable to plan my Thanksgiving. Double behind the scenes: my Thanksgiving was delicious (thanks for asking), Rose’s was a disaster as her thermometer exploded in the oven and ruined her whole turkey. 
9. Flamingo and Swan Pool Float Costumes 
I’m so glad you all loved these costumes as much as I did! They were a hoot to make and looked ridiculous on, which is a sure sign of a good costume. Behind the scenes: What you didn’t see with these pictures is us attempting to take them. I kept laughing at Rose behind the camera. I’m pretty sure she still has these costumes floating around her house…
8. Fruity Flower Pots
Another favorite DIY of mine. These guys were super fun to make but also so fun to take pictures of. Some crafts just don’t want to go your way when you are photographing them, but these little gems were great. Behind the scenes: We used one fake air plant because Rose keeps killing all of ours. Before you scroll down to the next picture can you guess which one is fake from the 3 above? 
7. Candy Cane Lawn Flamingos 
Again, so glad you guys liked these silly candy cane flamingos! Behind the scenes: When I was making these my mom kept laughing at me every time I went outside to spray paint them. Then I left them drying propped up in our wheelbarrow in the garage so everyone saw them whenever they went in out of the garage. This was me on the day I photographed them – red nose and all. It was cold. 
6. DIY Pom-pom Easter Baskets 
Behind the scenes: these baskets were super easy to make but the hard part was finding the actual basket. We were at my house in NH and my mom had Easter baskets she was getting rid of so we were going to take them but forgot them so we scrambled all over Allston trying to find some cheap but decent looking baskets. We ended up finding these at the dollar store and they seemed to get the job done. Also, fun fact, we were in San Francisco when we wrote and published this post.
5. Colorful Etched Vases with Flower Puns and Sayings 
This is one of our most popular DIY’s on Instagram as well so I’m not surprised to see it make it on the list. Behind the scenes: Oh, where to start? These vases damn near killed us. It was one of our first crafts we made for Homedit so we wanted to make them perfect. Well, we soon found that what we originally wanted to do, which was to have the etched words colored, would not, will not work. We were stubborn AF trying to figure out a way to make this work. We must have dyed a million jars with different solutions. Eventually we flew in the flag and just went the easy way out and spray painted them. So much easier.
4. Cactus Piñata 
This was one of my all time favorite crafts to make. I mean, it’s a cactus piñata, what isn’t to love? I was smitten with it. Behind the scenes: See how proud I am of my piñatas? I made that Aries ram for Rose’s birthday and promptly named her Lucinda and the cactus Señor. I convinced myself that I had a hidden talent of piñata making… perhaps we shall see if this holds true in 2017??
3. Nautical Hand-Painted Backgammon Board 
This was another one I loved to make (and play)! It involved us going to the beach to take pictures, which is always a win in my book. Behind the scenes: the one problem with taking pictures at the beach is that it can be windyyy. Everything kept blowing around so we had to strategically place rocks and bags onto the towels. Unfortunately we couldn’t do the same with my hat… 
2. 2016 Printable Oscar Ballots 
Another printable for the top! Behind the scenes: This ballot came out great but what you didn’t see were the countless hours we took to make sure everything was aligned nicely and that the colors were bold enough. Not to mention having to look up most of these movies as we hadn’t seen any of them… eek.
1. Printable Super Bowl 50 Commercial Bingo 
I am not even surprised that this is the number 1 post of 2016. These bingo boards got us so much traffic, we were tootin’ our little horns we were so excited. You best believe we will be doing them again this year. It’s our little tradition since college so we gotta stick with it. Behind the scenes: Our other tradition is to make so.much.food. and eat it all through the whole game – just the two of us. Here was our spread: lots of veggies and apples(?), pretzel bites, a faux chicken tender (we thought we should have some protein), chips, and a huuuge bowl of a vegan cauliflower cheese dip. Sooo good. I think I eventually got up for dessert too. No shame. 
Anddd there you have it, our top 10 posts of 2016. I love looking back on our crafts and seeing which ones do well. I get so happy when I see that a craft I loved to make is popular. I hope you all are having a wonderful start to 2017 and hope you all stick around to see what we get up to this year. Let us know in the comments below which one of these DIY’s you liked the best!
And, also, just because I couldn’t leave without sharing this little New Years behind the scene fail. Here is what I wrote without thinking when I was trying out the 2017 champagne bottles. I sent this picture to Rose but she was grocery shopping so I’m going to guess she didn’t notice I put 2007 either. #whatyearisit?
Learn how to make this no sew Thanksgiving table runner and placemats
That is just what we did. We threw on our running shoes (first time we used those too; the gym was deemed scary too) and jogged to the closest grocery store. Yes, we jogged, we were that excited for tacos. We jogged our way to Sainsbury’s and rushed through the store looking for all the supplies we needed. We were going to make tacos and margaritas and thus needed all the typical fixings. The store had almost everything we needed for the tacos expect the key ingredient the ground beef. We had to jog/walk our way to a different store to pick it up. We were determined.
Once back at my dorm, we faced our fears and made our way into the kitchen. We had to “borrow” someone’s pans to cook the beef but we managed to cook everything and had quite the feast ahead of us. We poured ourselves some celebratory margaritas and dug in. It was definitely worth the scary kitchen and all that jogging. We feasted like kings. It was only after the fact that we realized it was Cinco de Mayo so we poured ourselves a second drink and broke out the popcorn for dessert. If only we had this
Phew what a day that was! We joke about it now but we always make sure to have something to celebrate with on Cinco de Mayo, if not to remember just how crazy we are sometimes. This year we are planning on sipping on some 
p.s. here is my ever growing collection of homemade pinatas. We named the cactus Señor and the ram is Lucinda – they are bffffs now (we forced them to be). Go check out this ram I made on my 
Hello from San Francisco! We are currently on vacation checking out the west coast and what everything is like over here. We started out in Portland, then made our way to visit my brother in Eugene and now we are in San Fran! It has been quite rainy the whole time, but we have donned our raincoats and rain boots and have still had a lot of fun seeing everything (at least what we could with the fog and rain)! Today as I’m writing this, it is the first bright and sunny day here. We are about to go to the Golden Gate bridge and possibly walk across it. I couldn’t be more excited!
Supplies:
Valentine’s day is in 4 days.. do you have do you have your gifts ready? If you are like us and do everything last minute, we have the perfect quick and easy DIY for you, and likely you already have all the supplies at home.
To make these Valentine’s day marbled hearts, you will need some nail polish, paper, and a container that you don’t mind getting covered in nail polish (we used an empty yogurt container).
First cut out heart shapes on your paper. We recommend using card stock because it is sturdy and thick. You can either use a stencil to trace hearts or free-hand cut them out like we did. We also used the grade school heart making trick by folding the paper in half and cutting the heart along the fold so you have symmetrical sides.
Next, fill up your container with lukewarm water and probably you should grab some paper towels at this point too because things will get a bit messy from here on out. Drizzle a couple of drops of nail polish into the container and repeat with however many colors you want to use. Finally, dip the paper heart into the container with the nail polish and pull out as straight as you can. Set on a paper towel to dry.
This project, although easy and uses minimal supplies, does take a little practice to get that pretty swirled marble look. We recommend working quickly once you have dropped the nail polish into the container as it tends to dry and get clumpy fast. We also recommend to have a toothpick or two handy between applications to clear out any residual nail polish. Just swirl the toothpick around the surface of the water and that’ll do the trick. Lastly, we definitely recommend wearing gloves and not making the mistake of dying your hands 4 different shades of pink like we did ;)
There you have it – a super simple last minute Valentine’s Day idea. You could hand these out as Valentine’s Day cards or just have fun making them for a little Galentine’s get-together.
Let us know what your favorite thing to do in the winter is in the comments below! We would love to know!
