A few years ago, when I was pregnant with Ellie, my friends and I had an ugly Christmas sweater party. It was hilarious and ridiculous. We had a lot of fun and totally wanted to do it again. Fast forward a year and ugly Christmas sweaters were suddenly outrageously expensive.

I don’t know about you, but I have zero interest in shelling out $25+ to wear something once and laugh at its sheer ugliness. I’m way too cheap for that.

But I do still love the idea of a good ugly Christmas sweater. It just needs to be a cheap one. Like, maybe, a sweatshirt or sweater that I already own and never wear and a few dollar store embellishments. Now that sounds much better to me.

These ugly Christmas sweater DIYs having varying levels of difficulty, but all of them are nice and cheap. Now. Go forth and get ugly!

10 ugly Christmas sweater DIYs

This post is sponsored by Pottery Barn Kids, but all excitement is purely my own.

For the last couple of years, my sister has been putting together the cutest little Christmas Eve box for my niece and nephew. The box usually includes some comfy pjs, a Christmas movie and a special little treat for them to enjoy while they watch the movie together. I’m a total sucker for Christmas traditions, and this year I finally decided to follow her lead and make Christmas Eve a little extra special in our house with a Christmas Eve box.

1. Snowman Kit
2. Friendship Bracelet Kit
3. Prank Kit
4. Finger Monsters
5. Drinking Glasses
6. Fingerprint Kit
7. Dino Hands
8. Animal Toothbrush Holder
9. Mood Rings
10. Astronaut Ice Cream
11. Sno-Baller

I’m a procrastinator. There’s no doubt about that. Instead of getting things out of the way so that I don’t have to worry about them, I inevitably wait until the final seconds and frantically pound out whatever the task is (always using the feeble excuse that I work better under pressure).

So it should come as no surprise that I did this with our holiday cards this year (although I’m patting myself on the back for actually doing them since my procrastination foiled my plans the last couple of years).

So. There I was last weekend with a discount code from Shutterfly that was about to expire. I decided that I absolutely had to use it since I’m amazingly frugal (which sounds much nicer than the truth: I’m cheap).

I was excited to use Shutterfly not only because of the discount but because I did Ellie’s birth announcement and a couple of photo albums with them and have always been happily surprised by the awesome quality you get for the price. But I digress.

I rounded up my girls, cleaned the snot and chocolate off of their faces, threw some festive accessories on their heads and placed them (ever so delicately) in front of the tree.

It should be that easy, right? Sit the girls down, tell them to smile and voila! A magical picture that captures the holiday spirit while simultaneously portraying them as perfect, sweet, little well-behaved angels.

Let’s just say we needed a round two later in the day.

After our second attempt, I was laughing hysterically. We had one usable photo and a slew of outtakes that show off their personalities way better than the nice shot could ever dream to.

What fun is there in perfection anyway? The real fun is while you’re trying to get there. Afterall, what stories do you have to tell if everything is perfect and everyone is well behaved all of the time?

I tried to make a card with a bunch of the outtakes but couldn’t find a (cheap) design that worked with the shots I wanted to use. I have to say, it came out pretty cute anyway (not that I’m biased or anything)–but you’ll have to wait to see what the final product looks like!

Do you have any funny holiday photo stories to share? I know I’m not the only one trying to wrangle up my monsters for the perfect shot!

How is it mid-November already?! I feel like my little muffin just started kindergarten last week and already there are Christmas trees and holiday deals being shoved down my throat.

Mild panic attack aside, I’m definitely one of those people who needs a pre-Thanksgiving nudge to at least make me aware of how quickly the holiday season will explode all around us.

On that note, I’m hoping to share my first in a series of Holiday Gift Guides this week. Since it’s not quite ready for you, I thought I’d share a new holiday tradition (which I happened upon on my favorite time warp website, Pinterest) we’re going to start this year: the Christmas Countdown.

I’m in the process of rounding up 24 holiday and winter-themed books that I’m going to wrap up and put under our tree starting on the first of December. Each night, my oldest munchkin will get to pick a book and we’ll get all comfy and curled up and read it just before bed.

Since we’re not a religious bunch, this will be our spin on an advent calendar. Samantha will absolutely adore this (she gets to open a “present” every night!) and I love the idea that it will make reading even more exciting for her (and eventually our little Ellie Bean will get in on the action too!).

Here are some of the books on our must-have list:

1 Nutcracker :: 2 The Night Before Christmas :: 3 Llama Llama Holiday Drama 4 The Polar Express :: 5 The Missing Mitten Mystery
6 How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I’m in serious need of suggestions! What was your favorite winter/holiday story growing up?