Tis the season!

Gosh...I have really been ignoring my blog lately.  I have MANY things to update on and just haven't had the time to do it.  I remember once upon a time I used to be so good at posting projects and family updates.  Having 3 kids really changes your free time...duh!

So here is my first of many updates to come.  We wanted to start a new tradition since this year will really be the first year that Levi understands about Santa/Christmas/Jesus.  So where do I turn for inspiration on Christmas traditions or countdowns?

PINTEREST!!

I found this idea from Design Dazzle and loved it.  So did Matt.  I purchased all of my socks in the $1 spot at Target and Dollar Tree.  The Santa socks on the end were the most expensive ones at $5 from Target.  Design Dazzle has printable ideas for each night that you can use and even has blank tags for your own ideas.  Like them on Facebook and you can download the PDF file.

I'm so excited to see how much fun Levi and Jax are going to have with this.

Merry Christmas!

Jute Christmas Trees {Tutorial}

Hello! Hello!

I hope your weekend was awesome. We had fun with our family this weekend. We celebrated Levi's and Matt's birthday. Tons of fun! The pictures will come soon.

Last week I posted pictures of my Christmas vignette. I showed you the picture of my Christmas trees that I made. They were pretty simple to make and I thought I would give you a tutorial on how I did it.

I wanted the look of the trees that you find now in Target or Pier 1 that are made of twigs. I couldn't find a picture of what I'm talking about but I know what I wanted in my head. Anyway, I wanted the look and texture of those trees but didn't want the cost.

I purchased 2 pieces of poster board from Dollar Tree for $1. I followed the instructions at The Creativity Exchange for making my cone.

Once I had my cone made it looked like this. The cone is about 23 inches tall.

You can click on each picture to see closer.


I purchased jute from Walmart in the hardware section. I think it cost about $1.50 for a roll. Depending on the size of tree you make you may need more than one roll. At 23 inches one tree took one whole roll of jute.


I poured glue in a bowl and used a paint brush to brush the glue on the tree. I only did a little section at a time because the glue will dry quickly.

Starting at the top of the cone I twisted the jute around the cone.


I didn't want the tree to look too perfect but I made sure to cover up as much of the poster board as possible. So I just worked my way down the cone.


Once I was finished wrapping the jute around the cone this is what it looked like.


I let the glue dry for a few hours before I did anything else to the trees. I didn't want to keep it this color so I spray painted it with gold spray paint I used on a different project.


I absolutely love the way they look on the buffet. They have the texture I was going for and it was super cheap to make. At a cost of around $3-$4 depending on the size of your tree it is a better option than spending $30-$40 on the same look.


This picture makes me smile! Have a good week!

A Christmas Vignette

When I bought my buffet off craigslist last year not only did I want it for more storage but I already envisioned a beautiful Christmas display on it. Since I wasn't finished with the buffet in time for Christmas last year I have been collecting items for this year.

I can't stop staring at it. It sparkles at night when the tree is on. When I walk by it during the day I can't help but smile! What can I say...sparkles make me happy!

You can click on each picture to see closer.


The green tree and presents are from Walmart and I paid $.50 each on the after Christmas clearance last year. These are ornaments and I just cut off the strings. Walmart has a huge selection of cheap and sparkly ornaments in several colors. The balls were clearance as well. I paid $5.00 total for 2 boxes of green and brown balls. The silver star was a miniature tree topper that I already had that I spray painted silver.


This is a look at the other side of the buffet. There is another Walmart $.50 tree and a silver snow flake I spray painted. The glass cover I found at Goodwill (of course) earlier this year for $3. The gold tree in the back I made. A tutorial for that will come soon.



I love the wine decanter that I found for $1 at...you guessed it...Goodwill! I put a strand of green beaded garland in there. Simple!



This is the whole buffet. I'm in love! This is exactly how I wanted everything to look. I love the green, gold, silver and brown all together.

Have a great weekend!

Linking up here:
Christina's Adventures
Just a Girl
Chic on a Shoestring Decorating
Remodelaholic

Christmas/winter wreath

About a month ago I went to Goodwill and I found the perfect sweater to use for a Christmas wreath. It is soft and had the right colors that I was looking for. For only $2.99 this pretty little thing was mine.

You can click each picture to see closer.


I needed a straw wreath so I went to Michaels and found one for 40% off. I rushed home and started working on the wreath even though it was still a little too early to put it out.

I cut up the sweater into big pieces. I cut along the seams and along the neck line. The neck line was thicker material that I wouldn't need.


I took my pieces and started hot gluing them around the wreath. Make sure you leave the plastic on the wreath. Because this material is so forgiving and the seams do not show through I didn't have to worry about everything looking perfect.


This is what the wreath looked like when I was finished gluing everything on. You can't tell where each piece is.


I knew I wanted a pretty bow to go on the wreath but I had no clue how to tie a bow or make them. Thanks to youtube and a video that wasn't in English I made my first bow! Pretty darn good for my first time! I already had the white berries and I added those after I had tied the bow.


This is the finished wreath on our door. We really need to paint our front door and I hate despise the screen door the previous owners installed. But that's a different story. For now I enjoy my pretty wreath. It's perfect for Christmas and to leave hanging during winter too.



My total time spent on the wreath was about 30 minutes plus the youtube watching time. It really is super easy to make. I love the end result!

Linking up to:
Beneath My Heart
Chic on a Shoetring Decorating
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Christinas Adventures
My Repurposed Life
House of Hepworths

Light Keeper Pro

I have to tell you about the best Christmas light saver gadget tool thingy (that's my technical name for it) that I've found.

Last year, the day before Christmas, part of our pre-lit tree lights went out. Of course, there were no replacement lights to be found at that point in any stores. I used the replacement lights that came with the tree but still no luck. So I decided I would just worry about it this year when we put the tree up again.

Between last year and this year we replaced at least 400-500 of the 900 lights on the tree. Stupid I know but I just think it would look ghetto putting a strand of lights on the tree and having some working and the others not.

We got everything working except this one small section and we couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. So Matt went to the store and bought this Light Keeper Pro tool. OMG!! It saved my life and if only we would have bought this last year.

All you do is take out any light on the strand that isn't working and plug in the tool to that light socket. Pull the trigger once or twice and the strand will light up all the WORKING lights. All the burned out lights will stay dark and you know exactly which ones to replace. Our problem was we had about 5 lights we thought were working because they didn't look burned out but really they were. So once we replaced those 5 lights our whole tree was finally lit.

AMAZING!!

This tool does cost $20 but most likely you can find it on an after Christmas clearance. It will save you headaches and strokes, I promise!! You can find out more information and where to buy this miracle tool here.

I am not affiliated with this company and I did not receive any compensation for my opinion. I just wanted to share my thoughts on a great tool!

Updated stocking holder

Thanks to Tanna and her wonderful suggestion I went back and added red ribbon around the frame. Now the stocking holder pops and I'm lovin' it! I used double sided tape to hold the ribbon in place. I didn't make the ribbon big and chunky like the matting from PB b/c I didn't want to squish the picture I put in there. But you could do whatever you like. Now let's compare again:

$29 at Pottery Barn

Or $2 at Dollar Tree:

You can click the picture to see closer.

Pottery Barn Knock-off

I have been looking for stocking holders for years now. Last year I taped our stockings to our counter top. Ghetto!! I just couldn't find any that I liked that were reasonably priced. So this year I was determined to not tape our stockings. So my inspiration...Pottery Barn! Pottery Barn has these stocking holders for $29 each. Pretty but no thank you for that price!

So I went to my favorite store the Dollar Tree with an idea in my head and crossing my fingers that it would work. Dollar Tree has ugly stocking holders that are silver and gold that have a plastic Santa, angel, or snow flakes on top. All I wanted was the base. You can buy 2 stocking holder bases at Target for $8. Still too much for me! Then I found a silver 3 x 5 frame that said "Honeymoon" all over it. I knew at home I already had silver spray paint that would easily cover up the honeymoon on the frame. I only bought 1 frame and 1 stocking holder just in case my idea didn't work.

I rushed home super excited that this was going as planned. I took the ugly plastic Santa off the base and spray paint the frame. There were holes on the base where the Santa was attached so I put clear tape over the holes and then spray painted over the tape. You can't even tell. Sounds ghetto but you really can't tell there is tape there and it covers the holes. I glued the frame to the base and I was finished. Make sure to glue the frame upside down so you can change out the picture. It will cost me a whopping $8 for 4 stocking holders and at Pottery Barn these would cost me $116 for 4. Hmmm....what should I choose??

Now each year I can put updated pictures of us in each holder. I am going to go back and get more this week so I can put the rest of our stockings out. I know my version doesn't have the pretty red matting but that's ok. I'm actually going to go to a different Dollar Tree and see what their selection of frames are. Maybe I can find a frame with matting but if not I'm still happy with what I made. Notice my Dollar Tree hurricane too? Pretty! That cost me a whole $3 to make.

Pay no attention to the burnt out light in the kitchen. I think the wiring has a short in it.

Our Christmas tree

Goodbye fall decorations....HELLO CHRISTMAS!! This weekend we put up the tree and made the house ready for the big day. These horrible cell phone pictures do not do the tree justice. No we do not have an angel on top. I can't find one that I like and Matt hates the one that we have used in the past. The fence is to keep tiny little Jax's fingers away from my breakable decorations. Matt made this when Levi was just a baby and it worked great. Now it's time to use it again. So far so good! Merry Christmas to everyone!

Christmas is over...but it was good!

Our lights and tree are put away (they were put away on December 26th) and Christmas is over for another year! Each year it is so fun to see Levi get more into opening presents and seeing the lights on houses. Matt and I loaded up Levi and Macey and headed to my parents house for a few days. This will probably be our last Christmas at my parents house for a while. I want to finally have a Christmas in our home, which we have yet to do. We want to start our own family traditions and do our own thing this next year.

Levi woke up on Christmas morning in an ok mood. My family likes to wait until everyone is there to open presents. So we had to wait on my brother and his wife to arrive. Meanwhile, Levi's mood was quickly going down hill as it got closer to nap time. Sidenote, my parents house is very loud when we are all together and usually Levi doesn't get very good sleep while there. Levi started to open a few gifts but just got more and more mad. So half way through opening presents we had to put him down for a nap. Two hours later we resumed the opening of his presents.

Levi before the nap: This is his first look at the presents! He was very excited...at first.

Still in a good mood.

Round 1 of opening presents:

You can tell by the face that Levi is done with the whole gift thing!

Round 2:

The whole family except for Thomas. He is serving our country in Iraq.

Back row: Matt, me, Melanie, Mandy, Jessica, Tamara, Brian

Front row: Dad, Mom, Levi, Aubree, Joel

We hope that everyone had a great holiday and a happy new year!

The Holidays Are Over

For Christmas this year we went to my parents house. We weren't sure if we were going to go home or stay here. Levi doesn't travel very well, which is kinda to be expected for a 1 year old. It takes about 2 1/2 - 3 hours to get to my parents house. I ended up holding Levi for the last hour b/c he wanted out of his car seat so bad. Levi wouldn't take any of his toys or food. He just wanted to be out. So I crawled in the back with Levi and Macey and held him. It was good to be home although my parents house is very loud! There is not a quite place at all. We had a good Christmas all around. Levi doesn't get the whole present thing so he would start to open one and then get distracted. We put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We had to figure out a way to keep Levi away from it or the tree would come crashing down. Along with all my pretty glass ornaments! So Matt and I put our heads together and came up with the Christmas tree fence. Our neighbor thought it looked like a Macy's display and told all of our neighbors about it. We hope everyone had a good holiday.