A Fun Surprise

I have had this little clipping of a Rosemary "Tree" pinned to one of my bulletin boards, inspiration board, if you will, for probably 6+ years.  You can see it has a tear and multiple pin holes as I've moved it around. I'd been hoping to grow one.

When my daughter came home from college for Christmas she brought me a surprise!  The most beautiful, simple, Rosemary Christmas Tree!  It smells divine.  

I found a couple of recipes that use rosemary but haven't made them yet.  The trick will be to keep it alive inside now this winter.  She found this at Trader Joe's, a store I have yet to explore.

When I can't smell it, I just run my fingers through the branches and the beautiful scent is released again!

Have a great weekend!

Simple. Red. White. Vintage.

Merry Christmas to you all!!  Yes, I know it's the 27th but we can celebrate until Epiphany and I love this time of the season.  All the preparations are done and now it's just to enjoy the time with the newborn Baby Jesus.

I thought I'd post a few pictures of our simple Christmas Mantel all decked out in white and red. 

My second daughter put it up and I really loved it!

I received this framed snowflake a couple of years ago in an ornament exchange from Janelle at The Farmer's Wife.  She used an upcycled sweater as the background.  This can stay up all winter!

Of course old books are always perfect for decorating!  

These books didn't sell in my booth so home they came and I'm happy to have them here again!! 

We still have two sides of our family to get together with so the festivities continue....

I pray that these days are blessed for you as well.  

Book Page Tree Topper

My 4-H club has made ornaments to decorate a tree for the towns Parade of Trees for a number of years.

Last year we made a "book" themed tree.

It was a tricky place to take pictures so I apologize for the photo quality.

After the kids had made the ornaments at a meeting, I realized we needed a topper so I came up with this.  I took pictures to post about it last year but never got to it.  So it goes.

So thought I'd share the "how to" now.

You should be able to click on the slide show to enlarge it and pause it.

The other ornaments consisted of little banners stamped with words and tied up "scrolls" of book pages.

We had little people reading books.

Also, there were little flowers from book pages.  Then they glittered up some glass balls.  I really didn't get a chance to take too many pictures.

I still love projects made from old books!

 Let me know if you have any questions. 

May your Advent be full of peaceful moments.

Seller's Remorse

Two years ago I bought and sold this set of wooden carolers.

I decided they were too big to store in my already full storage areas and it would be hard to find a place to display them at Christmas.  They would need paint touch ups if I put them outside for the season.

And, now I came across these pictures this morning and remember how neat they were!  And, fun!  This was my then 11 year old posing with them.  The day was in September and mild so she's barefoot.

What great props they would have been for family Christmas pictures!!

Oh, I hope they went to a happy home and are on display somewhere singing Praises!

The Baby Cave

A few weeks ago, I finally got a chance to take time to take pictures of our granddaughter's nursery or "The Baby Cave" as her mother calls it. A lot of the room is DIY so thought you might be interested in seeing the projects. 

Some details:

1. Silhouette prints: downloaded via free downloads on the web, frames from Target

2. The "Crib Halo"

Both blogged about here.

This little dauschund was inspired by this dog from Etsy.  

We also made the big crib bolster in the back.  Since crib bumpers are no longer approved because of safety issues for the baby, my daughter came up with the big bolster idea.  It looks nice and can easily be pulled out of the crib for when the baby is in it.

The fabrics came from Carousel Designs. The fabric is really nice and reasonably priced.

3. We made the bunting to hang on the window.

4.  The crib skirt is three layers of ruffles on three sides of the crib.  Sounded innocent enough.  "Sure, I"ll make the crib skirt for you!  Just help me plan it so it's adjustable as you lower the crib."  said I.

For some reason the plans were difficult...it took months to finish it. It took 24 strips of fabric in varying lengths to make this.  Just because it was confusing and made me think way too hard!  It took both of us to figure it out. However, it is pretty and it is adjustable!!

We used rick rack, black burlap and ribbon to make the bunting.  All glued.  I know, right?  All just glued.

5. Pinwheel made from book pages.

6. Bookshelves made by baby's father.

7. Ruffled lamp shade.  She used ribbon with a long stitch (with machine) down the middle and gathered up and glued on an old shade.

8 Adorable print from Etsy (frame from Target)

9. "A" from Hobby Lobby spray painted with metallic paint.  My daughter said it fell over in the grass after she sprayed it and the grass imprinted a design that made it look like real metal, bonus!!

10. Little elephant blogged about here.

11. Little picture holder that I won from Connie from Miss Maggie's House.

12.Dresser now changing table: I bought it at a garage sale for $20 and my daughter painted it.  It is so nice!

13. Jewelry holder from T.J. Maxx now holds hair accessories.

I love picture books!! And, these shelves!

The print in the frame is actually one of the cards from a baby shower.
(See end of the post for dimensions.)

My dad used to say this to our kids and my daughter found this on Etsy.

Butterflies scattered throughout the room.  See this post for details.

This a really pretty and easy upgrade to a lamp shade.

14. Cards from Rifle Paper Co. Frames from Target.

Mirrored closet doors.

17. The wreath blogged about here.

18. This is a chalkboard decal the sticks great on the mirror.

15. Ball garland we made by wrapping yarn around styrofoam balls.

I hope you enjoyed the tour!  The room is small, but has a lot of personality.  I think my daughter did such a nice job and the room will certainly work for years to come.  

**Edited** There has been a lot of interest in the book shelves in her room.  Here are the dimensions if that will help you make your own:

The big shelf is 37.5" long.

The small shelf is 25.5" long.

The rest of the dimensions are the same for both.

6" deep

9" tall at the back of the shelf

4.25" tall at the front of the shelf

Also, they have since moved....You can view her new "big girl" room here.
Now there is a baby sister!!  You can view the new baby nursery in this post.

Saturday Digest

**Have you ever paged through the room gallery at Restoration Hardware?  This link is to the baby & child site but there is a lot to take away for inspiration for any room!  Click here and then browse by clicking the arrows on either side.

**This almost brought tears to my eyes.  So simple.  So creative. What a Wonderful World with shadow puppets.

**Magic Jelly (who does wonderful vintage illustrations) made a small online flip book to show case her work.  Worthy of a flip through for sure!

**And, last, but certainly not least, Nest of Posies is a new blog to me and is offering five free downloads of chalkboard like Christmas prints.  They are low resolution, but really print out nice at 8"x 10".
Since I was trying to keep my "free download" still cheap,  I mounted mine to mat boards that I had and will set them on easels.  They would be quite grand in frames though. And, of course if you don't need to print out all five like I did!  You could also resize them in your photo editing software so you could buy smaller frames to keep the cost down.

These are so neat!  A big thank you to Nest of Posies!!

Our Granddaughter's First GIF!!

Okay, I know the movement on the blog might be a bit much, but I just learned to make a GIF from Xanthe Berkely here and had to share!

For those of you who are new to GIFs...it stands for Graphics Interchange Format and is pronounce "Jif".  It really is.  I argued with my 21 year old daughter because I was sure the "G" was the "G" in ground.

Overwhelmingly found on the internet---it is indeed pronounce "Jif"  

Just in case you wondered.

Basically, a Gif is a small animation.  It's similar to stop motion video but it continues constantly because the movement is embedded.  You don't play/stop it like you would a video.  Because of that, it is limited in it's colors, so I read somewhere.

Just in case you wondered.

I think I'm going to sign up for her Time Capsules class and I've already joined her 12-12-12 project.  I am in awe with what she does with photos and videos!

Maybe you would like to join too?!

Texture Tuesday

And, it was blueberry. :)

Linking up with Kim Klassen for Texture Tuesday: Free and Easy Edition.

The photo was textured with at least three layers of Kim's textures. I flattened it an ran actions too, so now don't remember which ones....

I also used an argyle brush from Pugly Pixel.

I did a lot of online shopping yesterday so the mailbox will be fun to watch! 

Happy day to all of you!

Mosaic Monday: A Full Few Days

As I'm sure it has been for most of you, this past week has been a time of family, Christmas prep., and counting blessings.

We've been:

Baking.

Decorating.

Working on home repairs.

And, there has a bit too much feasting. :)

But, "tis the season, right?

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving!

Wordless Friday :)

Well This is Newsworthy

 We bring a lot of boxes,

and newspapers,

and other papers including school papers to the recycling center. 

I've been thinking that it would be fun to see if I could make Christmas decorations  from what goes through our kitchen and pantry. I tried to make a big tree out of newspaper today.  Hmmm.  Didn't work.  But, I haven't given up.

But, also today I started Alisa Burke's online class, Create Daily Holiday Edition

and her inspiration led me back to my recyclables.

Now, I have a newspaper wreath!

I used a lid to one of my big bowls to trace a pattern on a piece of paperboard from a pop box and a smaller lid to trace a circle in the center to cut out.

Then with a hot glue gun, I collaged pieces of the classifieds onto the wreath base.  Continuing with strips of newspaper and the glue gun I fashioned the paper flowers.

I folded more pieces of the newspaper to form a bow, again using the hot glue gun.

I've been wanting to make something out of newspapers for so long.  I think it was in a store display that I first saw a newspaper dress and thought it was so cool.  

Yeah, sorry about the corny blog title...I couldn't help myself.