New Ornaments I Love

I bought these delightful ornaments last year at Wal Mart's after Christmas clearance. They each came in a set of four. I don't remember exactly, but they were probably $2.50 or less per package. I just love silhouettes, monochromatic designs, and glitter so I really couldn't resist these!

Side 1

Side 2

I can't wait to see what deals I get on Holiday decorations after Christmas this year!

Silhouette Halloween Decorations

I'm a big fan of silhouettes, in general, so I thought I'd share some of the silhouette Halloween decorations I've done in the past. Both of these I saw on the Martha Stewart website. You can get the templates for the rats here and bats here. This is a really simple project, but it looks really neat!

Decorating Pumpkins

Here's another easy Halloween craft. I just love the look of black dot designs on pumpkins for Halloween, so I thought I'd try it myself. Here I used fabric puff paint because it's just so easy to use. (We've also used fabric paint on Christmas ornaments, here.)

The other pumpkin was decorated using white fabric paint and black tempera paint. There is also glitter on it as well (but it's hard to see in the photo).

Lack-o-Lantern Bag

I had this nice brown paper bag lying around and wanted to practice my (craft) knife skills. It's simple, but I think the bag makes a nice decoration. If you still wanted to use it as a gift bag just paste colored paper on the inside - black or orange might be nice.

Time to Decorate for Halloween

At the end of the season last year, I bought some super cute Halloween/Fall decorations on clearance! (Nothing like rediscovering things you forgot you bought!) This year, I finally get to enjoy them!

  

This cute Halloween tree was originally $14.99, but I'm pretty sure I paid at most $1 for it. My favorite features of the tree are that it is glittery, but there is a coating over it so the glitter doesn't fall off and get everywhere. I also love that it is two pieces so you can take it apart to store it flat. Although, I do like the paper ornaments that it came with, I'm trying to think up new ornaments that I can make for it. (I bought this at Michael's.)

I fell in love with this delightful pumpkin and couldn't just leave it in the store. It also came in black and white, which I loved too, but I decided to go with the orange one so I could leave it out through Thanksgiving. (I bought this at A.C. Moore.)

Summer Table Center Piece

Remember the eye-shaped glass bowl that we used to make a holiday arrangement? (Check it out here to refresh your memory.) With winter ending, we re-used the bowl to make another dining room table center piece for summer--it has an ocean beach theme! Even though there's still some snow on the ground up here in Maine, it's never too early to start thinking about summer!

Nate Berkus: No Money Makeovers

We rarely ever get to catch The Nate Berkus Show, but today we caught the show over breakfast. In his first segment, Nate, an interior decorator, took some old, unused household objects and items of furniture and transformed them into new, useful, and unique pieces for the home. The best part was that he used hardly any additional money! Nate does a lot of projects like this and this same spirit of ingenuity and resourcefulness is what our blog strives to capture.

You can watch this segment of the show here. The three projects mentioned in it are a little bit bigger than the projects we attempt to tackle here, but I really liked this idea of rope shelving. The only things needed are rope and scrap wood. This is definitely one of those ideas to store away for later!

The Nate Berkus Show

He also mentioned that has used this idea to hang a bed - which we think is really neat. Not sure how comfortable it is, though! We think it would look best in a beach home, vacation cottage, or in a room with rustic-looking design elements.

Coastal Living

But it can also look quite exotic-looking!

freshome

Hawaiian Themed Party!

We've always wanted to do a themed party. And surprisingly, we already had a lot of Hawaiian-themed stuff. I made these simple and beautiful hanging decorations that I adapted from a Martha Stewart Halloween craft.

For dinner, we made coconut shrimp and chicken coated in panko breadcrumbs on skewers. Also, as an afternoon appetizer, we made crab rangoons. Aloha!

Merry Christmas!

A couple years ago, we bought a set of plain silver ornaments at an after-Christmas sale. Last year, we decided to paint these boring ornaments to brighten them up and embellish them a bit. We started each with a base of acrylic paint; then, we decorated them further with some fabric paint. We chose to use fabric paint mainly because we already had a bunch that we've collected over the years, but we also love how easy it is to maneuver. Also, we thought that the "puff" paint look would give the ornaments a nice 3D effect.

This first set fit nicely together. We love the classic colors! The rustic yellow is surprisingly delightful!

[Click to enlarge]



This next set of ornaments is a little more colorful and creative, though less cohesive than the first set. One of them is a glass cube, which reminded us of an ice cube. So, we filled the glass cube with blue and white tempera paint, then shook the cube until the paint was evenly distributed, creating a nice marble effect.   

[Click to enlarge]

Making ornaments has been a holiday tradition in our family since we were really young. It's so great to look at the ornaments that we've made over the years. (If you have kids, we recommend making a few new ornaments every year with them. Remember to write the year they were made on the ornaments, so you can look back!)

Also, ornaments make great hand-made gifts for family and friends!



Letter to Santa!

Just before Christmas, I saw the cutest felt Letter to Santa envelopes at a craft store. I almost bought one, then I thought that it would make a fun project to help get me into the Christmas spirit! I was really pleased with how it came out, so I decided to share it with you!

This project is simple and incredibly versatile! It's a great idea to personalize for children, or just for decoration!

1. Cut out the envelope shape from an 8"x10" piece of felt. Use the shape guideline I drew below, cutting along the solid lines. (You'll end up folding along the dotted lines later.) Make sure that the 2 big rectangles are the exact same size.

2. With the shape cut out, fold the bottom rectangle/flap up (along the dotted line), so that it aligns with the center rectangle. (TIP: Iron along the fold, to secure it.) It'll look like the this:

3. Fold in the side-flaps. (Iron along these folds.) Use fabric glue or a hot-glue gun to glue the flaps to the outside of the flap you folded up in step 2. It'll start looking like an envelope. *Instead of gluing the flaps down, you can pin them down and sew them, like I did. I used a thicker embroidery thread for a bolder look and to introduce a new color.*

(It'll look like this after step 3.)

4. Next, you'll want to cut a small buttonhole in the top, triangular flap. Then, you'll want to fold down this flap, iron it down flat, and sew a button, matching it up with the buttonhole, so that you can close your envelope. *You can also use Velcro to close the envelope.*

(After step 4, your envelope will look like this from the back.)

5. With the triangular flap down, the front of your envelope will look like a plain rectangle. So, all you need now is a few embellishments!

To make the stamp, cut out 2 small pieces of different colored felt. One should be a small rectangle, and the other should be a slightly larger rectangle with zig-zag cut edges.

Glue the small rectangle to the middle of the larger one. (Or you could sew it, like I did.)

(your stamp should look like this.)

Fasten it to the top right-hand corner of the envelope, and you're practically done!

6. All that's left is anymore embellishments! Here's where you can go crazy and get creative! I embroidered "To Santa" on the front of mine and sewed on holly made with more felt and red buttons! To personalize it, you could also add a child's name, if it's a gift or project for a child.

Decorating for the Holidays

Being December, we challenged ourselves to make a festive Holiday arrangement for our kitchen table in this lovely, eye-shaped glass bowl we had sitting around the house.

To add to this, we recently purchased some red and white Christmas ornaments from Michaels. They only cost around $2.00 for 8 cute ornaments, and they came in at least 10 different varieties and color schemes!

We thought the ornaments would look good in the bowl with some green, which we decided to get from cutting some evergreen branches from outside. And living in Maine, we had numerous different types of greens to choose from! We ended up cutting some white pine and blue spruce, but we ultimately chose to use Hemlock branches for the base because they were a little more petite and fit nicely in the bowl around the focal point of our arrangement, an old burgundy-colored candle we had hanging around the house. To add a different, green texture, we added some Myrtle (which grows abundantly by our house and reminds us of mistletoe).

After finishing the arrangement, we had some left-over evergreen clippings. We also had this beautiful square glass jar, which we've been dying to do something with. So we just added some leftover branches, ornaments, and some fake snow. We think looks pretty festive for a living room, kitchen, or entry way!

(We're still looking for more ideas for the jar so let us know if you have any. We'd love to hear your ideas!)