Happy New Year & Things To Come for 2011

First and foremost I wanted to wish all of you and your families and Happy and Blessed New Year!

I really hope the new year finds you all in good health and happiness and my wish for everyone is that all their dreams come true this year!

I’m excited about this new year. I’m not making any resolutions, but I am looking forward to making some changes. As far as DIY goes, the first is in my bathroom. I have been threatening talking about painting my bathroom for months. Finally I just decided to buy some paint and get started. So now I’m in it! Coming up soon will be the bathroom series, followed by the bedroom series (with that new duvet) and finally my office series. My office/craft room will probably take the longest, which is why it is last. I have been procrastinating cleaning out that room, as I posted before. But it is time to get rid of the clutter!I do believe that your home should be an extension of you. With everything that has been going on in my life in the last year or so, I haven’t really taken the time to make things around me pretty. Its time to really do that! I’m feeling happier and I want my home to reflect that.

I really hope everyone has a great weekend and a fantastic start to their New Year. Please remember to join me on Wednesday for my next Pajama Party!

New Inexpensive Bedding–Help!!

I hope all of you had a fantastic, fabulous, loving and safe Christmas! We had so much fun. The love and happiness pouring out of my little boy is unmatched and I’m still grinning from ear to ear!

I am going strong with the momentum of Christmas decorating. I am also trying to adhere to my New Year’s Challenge of not spending a lot of money on crafting. While I clean out my craft room, I am also thinking about redecorating my bedroom. Right now its very boring, with a simple white comforter, sheets etc. I want some color. When I was little, my mom used a very simple and inexpensive method for revamping our blankets and comforters. Once I pick out the fabric I want to use on the top of my Duvet only, I will show step by step how to do this. There is sewing involved, but my mom used to do this with only a needle and thread. Its an easy way to make something old look new again.

For now, I need help deciding which fabric to use. My white comforter will show a bit in the duvet, so please keep that in mind when helping me decide the fabric. My biggest problem with any redesign, is that I like so many different things, its very hard for me to narrow it down! So, here are the fabrics that I like the most. What do you think??

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I pretty much have a clean slate to work with in my room. No headboard (yet) or any specific furniture that will make a difference in this design. Let me know what you think for a duvet cover! All of these are from Joann’s ranging in price for $4.99-$7.99 before coupon and I’m going to only need 4 yards at the most. Not bad for a new duvet, especially after I use my 40% off coupon for one continuous piece!!

To 20 Christmas Songs. Do you agree?

I found this on YouTube yesterday and thought I would post. Love all these songs. Merry Christmas!!

New Year Challenge

I know, still 2 days till Christmas, but this has been bugging me. My craft room is a mess. A ridiculous, hoarding mess. I kid you not. I may or may not take pics of it. Right now it is the catch all room and it's awful. Plus I have so many craft items in there that I have not used yet, its a little ridiculous.

Sooooo I am going to challenge myself to:

A) clean and organize said room

B) redecorate said room

C) use the supplies I have in there

D) limit my craft spending for a while

Not that I spend a lot on crafting, but my biggest problem is that I HAVE TO make something, then I buy everything for it and never make it. Yep I do that. A LOT!

So, one of my New Year's challenges ( resolutions never work) is to use and make the things in my craft room. Maybe I'll even be able to find my sewing machine somewhere in there! ( Yes, its that bad!!)

Merry Christmas everyone!! Have a safe and Happy New Year!!

Last Minute Teachers Gift

I made some pinecone ornaments for my son’s preschool teachers, but I felt they weren’t enough, once I got them into boxes. Yesterday while working, I cam across this idea and decided to make some. I had everything on hand to do this already, so it literally took 5 minutes to put together. I printed some cute free printable Christmas recipe cards that I found here and wrote out the directions. That’s what took the most time! LOL! Here are the finished cake-in-a-cup kits:

Here is the entire set of recipe cards on the site that I found.

I put the ornaments and these cups in gift bags and was done. I was in a hurry though and didn’t take pics of that part. But I think these are super cute and can be used for any occasion!

Pajama Party #4 and Merry Christmas!

Welcome to Pajama Party #4! First off, I wanted to thank everyone that participated last week. It was so much fun to see all your wonderful submissions! Here are just a few:

Mandy at Sugar Bee made this gorgeous Yarn Ball Wreath:

Jenni at The Roseland Family made this wonderful Sugar Scrub:

Tricia at The Leafy Tree Top Spot gave us these yummy Meringues:

 

If you have been featured, please grab your button found here, on my buttons page.

I also wanted to take this opportunity and wish everyone a wonderful and Merry Christmas!! I am going to take the following week off to spend with my son, so the next Pajama Party will be on January 5th. Can’t wait to see what all of you have planned for the New Year! So here is to a safe and Happy New Year!!

Please link up any projects you have been working on.

I just ask the following:

• Link to a specific post NOT your main blog. This could be anything DIY related, cooking, crafts, home improvement, fiber arts, ANYTHING creative. Even great finds it ok to post, I’m flexible =)
• Please try and comment on the person/people before you. The more comments the better!!
• I ask that you follow my blog as well.
• Please have my button somewhere on your blog. Can be in the post, on a separate page or as a link.
• Have fun and come back every week!!

That’s it! I will post a few of my favs the next party. Can’t wait to see what everyone has come up with!

Holiday Décor–The Living Room

I know I’m a bit late this year, but here are the decorations I have going on in my living room/playroom area.

Our Tree

The faux mantle:

Martha Stewart magazine tree:

My sons playroom even got a tree which he loves!

and we can't forget Santa Buddies!

We have a lot going on outside and I will taking video and pictures of that soon!

My Faux Mantle

I am in awe every year at the beautiful mantles seen on blogs, in magazines and holiday movies. I haven’t had a fireplace or mantle in years. This year I decided I wanted a mantle to decorate. I had a shelf with pegs that I had purchased for a different project a few months back and hadn’t done. So I painted that a linen color, moved some furniture around and now I have a faux mantle.

I have mine, my son’s and my father’s stockings hanging. Picked those up at the Dollar Tree and used some snowflake ornaments I already had to embellish them. I also primed and painted a thrift store candlestick and plain craft frame from Michael’s with my new favorite silver spray paint.

I placed my Christmas card in the frame and voila! Instant art.

I love that I have this mantle now. I can’t wait for all the fun things I get to make for all the upcoming season. More excuses to craft!

Here it is no flash

And with the flash

I’m pretty proud of it!

Pajama Party #4

Its back! My Pajama Party is back. Please link up any projects you have been working on.

I just ask the following:

• Link to a specific post NOT your main blog. This could be anything DIY related, cooking, crafts, home improvement, fiber arts, ANYTHING creative. Even great finds it ok to post, I’m flexible =)
• Please try and comment on the person/people before you. The more comments the better!!
• I ask that you follow my blog as well.
• Please have my button somewhere on your blog. Can be in the post, on a separate page or as a link.
• Have fun and come back every week!!

That’s it! I will post a few of my favs with next weeks party. Can’t wait to see what everyone has come up with!

Silver Cloche (Finally!!)

I have been admiring cloches all over blogland for months. I mean months! And I have been looking for everything needed to make a cloche for months! Allison over at House of Hepworths made this beautiful cloche back in March. I have been looking at thrift store for a cheese dome ever since. I could not find anything! Finally, a while back, I found this:

 

Its already put together! I don’t have to glue anything. The funny part, is that my mom, who was sick of hearing me talk about loves me so much, bought me a cheese dome from Crate & Barrel. But I couldn’t spray paint that, I just couldn’t do it. So when I got this, I thought I would have a cool stand. But the glass dome from the Crate & Barrel cheese dome fits this perfectly!!

So after some priming and painting with my new favorite spray paint.

It looks like this:

Matching perfectly with the dollar store apothecary jars I made yesterday.

And by Christmas tree light only:

I love it!!

Red Velvet Candy Cake

I volunteered to make a cake for my son’s school’s Holiday Party. Remember my Death By Chocolate Cake post here? I decided to change things up a little for the holidays. I used red velvet cake, cream cheese frosting, white chocolate Kit-Kats and holiday M&Ms. What do you think?

Dollar Store Apothecary Jars

I have to tell you guys that this is by far, my favorite project to date. I found the instructions for these jars totally by accident, but am completely in love with them. Here are the original instructions.  Here is a finished jar:

 

And here are my supplies. I changed my mind mid project, and did not end up using the birch candlesticks in the picture:

 

• Dollar Tree vases ($1 each)
• Dollar Tree bowls ( 3 for $1)
• Krylon Metallics Brilliant Silver spray paint ($2.97 with tons left over)
• Birch Finials ( see picture below) (3 for $1.47)
• E-6000 glue (on hand, $4 at craft store. Use your coupon!)

Here are the birch finials from Hobby Lobby:

 

I do not have a Hobby Lobby near me. Until recently, Hobby Lobby had a policy to not have any stores more than 1000 miles from their home office. Which did not allow for California to have stores. Recently I saw that a store was going up in Cali! About 3 hours from me, but its progress. I day I will have a Hobby Lobby by me! Until then, its online shopping for me.

I ended up sawing off the bottom peg after spray painting. I decided not to saw first, so it would be easier to paint and it worked out fine. I put the end that I was going to saw off into a styrofoam block, primed and painted the finials and candlesticks.

(again ignore the small candlestick. Its too small to hold the vase properly)

I love the color of the silver. I was afraid at first that I was going to get something bright shiny silver, which I did not want. But I had to settle for this paint because my local Walmart was out of Satin Nickel. No worries, this came out soooooo purty!! I love the color. Its not as shiny as I thought and just the right amount of fabulousness!

(Yes I took the picture with my phone. I was impatient &  didn’t realize the reflection would show up lol)

Next, take E-6000 and glue a large candlestick to the bottom of your vase:

Then glue a finial to the bottom of a glass bowl.

Impatiently wait for everything to dry. Then turn your bowl over and put it on the top of your vase. Voila! A beautiful $3.50 apothecary jar!!

I still have 2 more to put together, but I was so excited to get this posted that I had to take pictures of the one. I LOVE it! Now I will fill it will pretty ornaments for the holidays.

Christmas Ornament Wreath

As a single mom, my holiday decorating is on a very strict budget. So you cannot understand how excited I was when I went to the Wally World Christmas department.

photo credit Thrifty Décor Chic who I LOVE btw.

My store looks very similar to this, but its backwards, meaning from the left green, then blue, etc. These ornaments are only $1 each!! Including the tubes of 4 on the bottom. The whole wall, $1 each and very sparkly & glittery, I might add.

On the other side of the aisle from these are these types.

And also larger boxes of the round ones that match the wall ornaments. So I bought a box of each color, green, red, blue and pink.  Plus 6 of the $1 ornaments. 3 birds and 3 flowers, which I will show in another post. This gave me enough ornaments to decorate my tree ( I also used some white and silver that I had left over from last year) and make a wreath.

Here she is:

Its not very easy to get a good picture of this wreath. The lighting in my home is not that great right now and even with daylight, its bad. This wreath is much brighter in person. I used this wonderful tutorial  from Eddie Ross I found last year, but was too intimidated to try.  I just went over to my local dry cleaners, got a hanger and sat on the floor for about an hour making this. These ornaments are plastic, so I was able to skip the hot glue step, as they aren't going anywhere.

I have recently installed a faux mantel and changed some furniture around, so once it is all done and decorated, I will be posting more pictures.

Happy Holidays!