On the sixth day of Christmas...

..my true love gave to me, a DIY "Be Merry" sign!

A few weeks ago, as I was trying to make my loft space as finished and welcoming as possible for the holidays, I found myself trying to think of a creative use for my photo holder/display thingy. 

One of these:

What do you call these things anyway? Do they even have an official name?

I've had this whatchamacallit tucked away in the closet under our stairs for over a year now and just didn't know what to do with it. Now, I'm not hating on these types of photo holders. I know tons of people have them in their homes and find them very useful. They are a great place to stick favorite family photos, reminders, receipts, all those little papers you have lying around. But when I tried to use this thing before in my old apartment, it just turned into another place to collect junk. Except this time all my junk was on display. So I took it down off the wall and stuck all my receipts, photos and reminders into a drawer. 
SIDE NOTE: I wish people would stop hating on the junk drawer. I have two and I love them both. You never know what wonders you might find in them. The other day I found a star shaped hole punch in one of mine. How much fun is that?

I also still had lots of left over burlap from the vintage bridal shower I hosted a couple months ago (read about that here). So my friend Hannah (as a matter of fact, the same Hannah whose shower I purchased the burlap for in the first place!) and I decided we'd wrap the whatchamacallit in burlap and then write a cute Christmas saying on it. 

After one layer of burlap, it was too see-through. So we added a second layer. Btw, we just used hot glue for this, no sew!!

Hannah has super cute hand writing, so she wrote "Be Merry" for me :)

Here's the finished product!

What do you think? Pretty crafty, huh? This project cost zero dollars, which makes my thrifty heart sing. Besides, I don't think my whatchamacallit wanted to be tucked away for another year.

Have you re-purposed any of your unused items into something cheerful this holiday season?

Thanks! And don't forget to be merry!

Jesse