the art of holiday decorating ☾☆

making fun DIY decor for ramadan + eid

Maybe this is the new home-owner in me, but did you guys know that holiday decorations are crazy expensive?

You did?

Well, this was news to me.

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I had this realization last December when my husband and I started decorating our new home for Secular Holiday Winter Season™. We quickly discovered that cute store-bought decorations tend to cost your firstborn son and a half.

All I wanted was an army of silly felt mice, but my wallet said otherwise.

she didn’t go through eight years of medical school to be called MS MOUSE

I decided to DIY most of my decor. (This is where being an artist and having sudden ADHD obsessions come in handy).

My projects included a reduce-reuse-recyle-friendly gingerbread garland inspired by this one. I cut up a bunch of left-over cardboard, added details with a white Posca marker, and strung it with some ribbon that had previously been tied around my birthday present from Maxine Vee. She gave me a Cath Kidston spa set, it was quite lovely.

My husband made some houses too, but you don’t have to see those ones

I also wanted to paint my own ornaments. I had a really tough time finding un-painted ceramic baubles, but thankfully Dollarama sells a very cheap DIY kit that included four ornaments and some paint.

I tossed the paint aside, and used Posca and gouache to make fun floral patterns. I also tried to use oil pastels for the fruit one.

A fun note for you guys; don’t do that, it was a horrible, waxy idea.

I did not seal them with anything. Instead, I am letting fate decide whether the paint should preserve for years to come

Because this was such a success, I decided to try to DIY more decorations for Ramadan and Eid this year.

For those not in the know, Ramadan is a holy month for Muslims where we fast from sunrise till sunset… not even water! We also try to be the best that we can be, give to charity, show kindness to others, and aim to strengthen our relationship with God.

Eid is the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan where we celebrate with friends/family, wear our new best clothes and (halal) pig out with feasts.

Because we follow the Lunar Calendar, the dates for these holidays change every year.

To greet your Muslim pals, you can say the following;

Ramadan/Eid Mubarak

Or the English:

Happy Ramadan/Eid

Please don’t say Happy Ramadan/Eid Mubarak. It is cute and well-meaning, but ultimately redundant.

Although it’s great that North America is starting to share more representation of our holidays (I was pleasantly surprised to see that Walmart and Party City have started to stock Ramadan/Eid decor) I still wasn’t seeing the folksy kind of decor that fits my cottage-core persona.

Here is the decor I ended up with:

the golden hour lighting was a paid extra

A paper wall-hanging that I made following a tutorial from Lia Griffith. While it looks complex, this was a deceptively simple project that mostly involved an afternoon of cutting and hot-glue-gunning, with all materials supplied by Michaels. You can purchase the template and specific materials from her website to make things easier for yourself, but I just eyed it and went willy-nilly with my cutting.

On the same Michaels trip, I picked up my felt and twine for a folksy banner inspired by this X-mas felt garland and this lettered banner guide. My contribution was adding some Ramadan flair by giving the banner a ‘lantern’ shape, a jewel-toned palette, and little tassels (not pictured above because I forgot to add them).

Although I love learning new skills, I felt that paper and felt crafts were enough learning for one season and I didn’t need to add sewing to the mix. This banner is actually a no-sew project! The hot-glue-gun is my new latest obsession.

these garlands are best looked at from afar. the cutting could’ve been… neater.

I had a stroke of genius when I realized that I could actually use this banner three times in a year. I separated Ramadan and Mubarak into two strings, and made a third Eid string. This way I can just switch them out for the correct holiday. I can also repurpose the Eid string later this year for Eid Al-Adha.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we have two Eid’s in a year. The second one is smaller and there’s a goat involved and… you know what we don’t have time for this. I’ll let you know in June.

Apart from my DIY projects, I repurposed some other things I had lying around the house. This included:

A brass moon+star garland, usually hung in my office, that I got from Zone Maison.

A Turkish Coffee tea-set and little brass bowls that my sister got me from Dubai. Plus a vintage candlestick holder from the Aberfoyle Antique Market. The ominous black candle was the only one I had; if you have any links to cute/creative candlesticks please let me know!

And yet another garland. This was actually a bit of a DIY hack; Indigo was selling some of their paper ornaments on clearance after X-mas. I thought these looked quite a bit like Arabic lanterns, so I grabbed two boxes and tied them together with some twine. These will also come in handy for Secular Holiday Winter Season™.

The final living room setup! Along with some fairylights, the room looked quite festive in the end and not too bad for our first year. I’d love to do more projects in coming years so if you guys have any suggestions I would love to hear it!

This whole post is a little old news since Eid was last week, but who cares! Here’s a little belated Eid Mubarak from me and Dan in matching outfits, featuring my CAPE!!!!

The last thing I wanted to show you were these sugar cookies I made in March. It’s old news, but since I’m sharing my new fleeting hobbies anyway….

I recently joined a book club with a group of lovely ladies; every month we read a book, and then get together with a group discussion/potluck. For my first month in March, we read The Henna Artist. It was okay.

We thought it would be cute to have a Pakistani-themed lunch; some people brought gol gappe, patties, tikka, etc.

Even though I have never in my life made home-made cookies or attempted dessert decorating, I am ultimately a people-pleaser and had the idea to make Henna-themed cookies in the hopes that these ladies would like me. I was able to find some hand-shaped cutters, and used plain icing to make my designs. For a first attempt, they didn’t turn out too bad! They definitely could have been neater and I might try to do these again, but the cookies were definitely a hit and I achieved my goal… I think.

What if they actually thought I was annoying and hate my guts?

Hmm…

ANYWAY THAT’S IT BYE