HAPPY NEW YEAR!

{here's to a pot-banging good time}

HOPE IT WAS MERRY!

CHRISTMAS HOUSE TOUR

In all of the Christmas card craziness, I finally have a moment to show you what I've been working on! In addition to the frenzy of Christmas Card orders that I have been diligently filling, I have also been doing some Christmas decorating! Not at my own house, although I better get busy on that before my family rebels against me, but on a house that was a part of the Christmas House Tour in our town this year. The Christmas House Tour is a fundraiser where a team of volunteers get together to transform five houses in town into a holiday fantasies come true. Tickets are then sold for people to view the beautiful homes.

I was asked to design the room of a little girl who lives in one of the homes on the tour. This family moved into the home recently, so I was really starting with just a bed and a desk and the little girl's desire for pink and green. Here is a little tour of the (nearly) completed room.

The photos were taken at night (very late, just after the room was almost completed. The bed was not yet fluffed, but I was waiting for the next morning for that last minute detail) so the lighting was terrible. But the tour was to start the next day, so I had to snap some shots while I had the chance.

Here is the view as you just walk into the room. What you cannot see is that there is a little entry into the room created with white cotton panels from Ikea that were trimmed and swooped back with yards and yards pink ribbon, framing the room as you enter and mimicking the swoop of the curtains that frame the bed.

The bed was formally a bunk bed that the girl shared with her sister, so I had to hide the pegs on the posts where the top bunk once sat. This was done prettily and easily with ribbon balls and streamers. 

Above the bed, we painted the girl's monogram and created a canopy of sorts with tissue paper flowers courtesy of Martha Stewart crafts and at the end of the bed, figure skates are hung for Santa to fill with gifts and candy.

Next to the bed is a handpainted table and chairs made extra special with a wreath of fresh pine hung from the ceiling and lit with small lights for some extra shimmer and fantasy. When the fresh greens dry out, I have a plan to embellish the wreath with something more permanent.

To fill the wall beside the table, vintage paper dolls and lacing cards downloaded from The Crafty Crow's other blog Belladia , were framed and hung in a grouping. (thank you crafty crow!)

The little girl who lives in this room is both an accomplished figure skater and hockey player, so we set up this desk as a vanity for her to get ready for skating events and display her most treasured medals and awards, complete with inspirational messages tucked into her mirror.

Here is another view of the vanity area. The chair was covered with leftover fabric from curtains and bedskirt.

Finally, the piece de resistance - the tree! Covered in ribbon and tulle and little paper cones embellished with ribbons and fresh greens, it's a little girl's Christmas fantasy!

At the top of the tree sits an outgrown skate monogrammed and embellished for a lovely little skating princess (and rough and tumble hockey player, of course)! Thank you so much K for allowing me to invade your life and your bedroom for the past couple of weeks. It was such a pleasure to create your winter wonderland. Enjoy!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO!

I know I've been MIA for many, many days now but I promise, I have a good excuse. No time for a complete post now, but this picture is a little hint of what I've been up to. More to come in the next day or two!

THANKSGIVING TRADITIONS: PINECONE TURKEYS

Warning: Once you begin making these little pine cone turkeys, you will not want to stop! There's something about the bend of the pipe cleaner and the cock of the feathers that gives each little turkey a personality of it's own. Before you know it, you'll have a whole gaggle of these guys to embellish your table on this Thursday!

We made our pine cone turkeys one year after a special tree in my mother-in-law's yard had to be trimmed back. We frantically gathered all of the pine cones and saved them away for future crafts. Of all the things we have made with those pine cones, this by far is my favorite.

I had planned on writing and photographing a full-fledged tutorial for this one, but let's be real. With Thanksgiving preparations and holiday card season converging upon me like a 1000 lb. weight, a tutorial is not in cards. But I will tell you how it's done. (just pretend it's a beautifully illustrated and written tutorial, OK. pretty please?)

Materials:

A pine cone.

Stiff felt. (we used black because we had it on hand, any autumnal color will do)

Cardstock (we used burnt orange because we had some scraps of it lying around)

Brown Pipe Cleaner 

Hot glue

Tape or stapler

Step One: Cut a heart shape out of the felt. These will be the feet.

Step Two: Cut four or five long ovals out of the cardstock. Stack them on top of each other then fan them out from the top, keeping the bottoms stacked. Tape or staple together.

Step Three: Cut the pipe cleaner in half or in thirds (depending on the size of your pine cone).

Step Four: Position the pine cone onto the felt heart finding a spot where it balances fairly well.

Step Five: Hot glue pine cone to felt.

Step Six: Bend end of one piece of pipe cleaner to form head.

Step Seven: Position end of pipe cleaner into pine cone in a spot that makes sense. Hot glue in place.

Step Eight: Glue cardstock feathers to back of pine cone.

And that's it! This project is super fast and super fun. The spaces in the pine cone can hold place cards to be used as place settings or you can just group a bunch together for a fun little display. The grouping is especially cute if you have pine cones in varied sizes.

We have used these as placecard holders for several years, varying how we use them each time. One year, we cut out cardstock into the same heart shapes as the felt feet and the kids wrote why they were thankful for each person who was joining us for dinner that year and glued the note to the bottom of the turkey. It was a fun little surprise and the kids were bursting with excitement waiting for the first person to discover the hidden message! (you can see our turkeys at each place setting in the photo below, quietly waiting for guests to arrive and discover the hidden messages of thanks).

  

With only a couple of days left, this is the perfect little project to keep your little ones busy while you take care of all the holiday prep. 

THANKSGIVING DOWNLOADS FROM MARTHA

I've been neglecting you all and I'm sorry. But I promise that it's only because I'm diligently working on everyone's Holiday Cards. That gives me a pass, doesn't it?

In the meantime, here are some great Thanksgiving downloads from Martha. In true Martha fashion, these are beautiful ideas to make your holiday table extra special. The best part - they're quick and easy to make!

THANKSGIVING TRADITIONS: TABLESETTINGS

Back with another Thanksgiving tradition and this one is really fun!

I love to set a beautiful table, but it's also really important that the setting be personal and fun. Thanksgiving is all about family and our family is all about the kids. So each year, among the fancy napkins, shimmering candles and beautiful flowers, each person's setting is embellished with something handmade. We have done so many of these, that I will surely dig out at least one or two from past years to show you, but this year it will be this turkey, lovingly designed by Pumpkin and Petunia. Peanut is sure to help with some gluing and decorating as well! The turkey is made from brown paper bags (for the body), scrap pieces of paper (for the beak and legs) and finally, beautiful leaves from the weeping cherry tree in our front garden. He is a masterpiece of recycling and 9 and 7 year old ingenuity.

Each guest at our Thanksgiving table this year will have a turkey placed on his/her plate to admire and add to the decor. At the end of the day, he will serve as a treasured favor to be added to collections of handmade treasures from years past. We have quite a collection gathering in our Thanksgiving box and I love looking through them each year. The best part is that our guests of aunties, uncles, cousins and grandparents look forward to these little creations as much as we do; adding them to their own collections as a fun little reminder of holidays together.