Fall Wreath

This is the Breakfast at Tiffany's wreath that my mom made for my bridal shower.

Years ago when Pier One used to have the 90% off sales I picked up a ton of these for $3 each.

They were just sprayed with plastic crystals and glitter which is not really my style but I figured that they were less than a wreath form so I have them for when I need them.

I had some leaves from a few years ago.

I kind of just failed at taking pictures there but I was really into it. All you do is put down hot glue and stick down leaves until you cannot see anything underneath anymore.

Outside my door

Linking to The DIY Showoff

Funky Junk Interiors

After Christmas Loot

I know that I am behind but when I was in my thirteen days of silence I happened to walk through target the day that the Christmas decor hit 90% off. I had read on someone else's blog and that they had gotten a bunch of cookie cutters. I was looking for those but when I got there I found something else. There was an abnormal amount of ornaments. I got a lot. They were all $.60. I bought over 200 of them. Mostly the mixed one on the left ten boxes of those. Four of the plain chrome, four of the clear and the other two shown at the bottom.

I also got snow vase filler for $1.24 each, these accessories kits for $1 each, and all sorts of snowflakes.  

Back to the ornaments at the time I was very afraid that the twilight Christmas tree would not be able to be stored without being broken, however my wonderful fiancée Mike took care of it. My great friend Cindy had sent me this link about the Christmas Tree Ornament Mobile. This is where I will be going next year

It will be great and for less than $20... See a great how to here. 

  

Presents!!!

I love to wrap presents almost as much as I enjoy receiving them:

Everyone loves ribbon, and even if they did not I would use it anyway.

I always try and wrap the boy presents and the girl presents in slightly different wrapping paper. 

If you don't have a box that fits and you are only going to be giving one gift at a time cover a shoe box in wrapping paper and give it open like a basket. 

I don't like to give the exact same thing to multiple people, so with these gift baskets some of the main components are the same but they have personalized items for each person as well. 

I usually don't use bags but this person is going to be flying home and I am not sure if they will be taking a checked bag. When using bags I like to jazz it up a bit, instead of just adding tissue I also used some silk flowers that no longer go with our decor and a pin that came on a sweater that I was not going to wear, it does however make this package look very festive. 

I hope you got just enough of what you wanted this year, have a happy and safe holiday!

Home tour of holiday decorations

Merry Christmas!!!

Being that it is Christmas I thought it would be a fun time to go through all of my holiday decorations:

Of course the paper tree. 

Another way to hang holiday ornaments.

My vintage typewriter ball ornament. 

Ernie's area even got some snow. 

Little area.

My holiday "Mantle" 

Our dinning room, the boys are finishing the leaves as we speak. 

Happy snowman.

Our stockings hung with care.

My life in Christmas Ornaments

The other night my wonderful step-dad was in town. We met up to exchange somethings and visit. One of the things he had brought with were all of my Christmas ornaments (and some candy cane sugar cookies my mom had made!) I was looking through them and found it kind of humorous, so here without further delay my life in Christmas ornaments:

Baby's First Christmas.

Being raised Catholic I have a lot of angels, the sand dollar I do not recall being mine, but I have and extra one from our trip to San Diego that might be getting a similar treatment soon, it is gray and I would use blue or silver glitter.  

I love to shop, write/blog, purses and movies.

These were some of my favorites as a child, every time I look at them I start singing it's a small world in my head. I love to travel. 

Photography, the wagon (my brother and I are in it, says Tiffy on the front from the only person allowed to call me that without getting slugged my Grannie), and love. 

Loot & twilight Christmas ornaments

Yes it is 3:23 am , but I cannot sleep...

I have to admit that I often get jealous while reading other blogs because they seem to have access to much more inexpensive loot at thrift stores than I do, it makes me sad :(

The other day I got all of this for under $7 and that included a $1 donation to kids with learning disabilities.

First it needed a good cleaning.

Which I have done here, then a lot of it went on to be spray painted. Not this object that is in the lower right, I think that is just perfect just how it is. I am not really sure what it was in it's former life but it will now be a vase, as my last large vase became Ernie's home. Remember that post about tissue Christmas trees? Well I wanted them to have some varying height. So I went and got some pedestals for them. Mikey was pretty amazed as I was hot gluing them on to their new bases yesterday. "How did you get those to be the right size?" Well Mikey you should know by now that I am just that good! I did not even bring measurements with me. 

Just look at them now! The white pine-cone pedestal will be getting a tree after the holiday. I will try and figure out how to make this larger as I want the third tree to be the tallest by about three inches. I have to wait until my wonderful friend Leslie:

Comes back from Montana for the holidays because she is brining me pine-cones back so I can make one of these:

I saw this tree in a post from 320 Sycamore the other day and knew I had to have one, I am not so sure about the glitter snow, and I might paint the base with the riser brown. The other day my step-dad came to visit and brought me my Christmas ornaments. When I was young my aunt Janet used to fill clear Christmas ornaments with things, my favorite one had gotten broken in transit. 

It is funny because I usually do not like iridescent rainbow stuff. You can tell from the other ones what it would have looked like previously. 

I could not find any clear ornaments at either thrift store that I went to that day so I picked up these frosted ones. 

I also filled some up with more cut up pages from the twilight book. 

Tissue Christmas Trees

Today has been one of those busy laid back days. I have done a lot but not in a frenzied way. Lots of laundry and playing with my new toy. I made a smoothie, soup, and sorbet in it today. I am completely satisfied with it I think every kitchen appliance should be its on dishwasher that feature alone might be worth the $600.

Anywho, I saw a link to the Creative Mommas blog where they were making tissue Christmas trees.

 They had made their's from scratch from plastic cups. I however had these 3 candles that were kind of beat up that I had in my Christmas decorations box.

I especially liked the rosette one so I decided to start with that. I had gotten some silver tissue paper at Pier one the same day that I had gotten the tree candles every thing Christmas was 90% off that day so these materials were less than $3. 

Following their directions I cut the tissue paper in to 1.5 inch strips. 

Then I twirled them.

Using hot glue I then glued them to the candle. This process took several hours in which I watched Fame and many episodes from Lie To Me Season 2. 

I decided for the second tree to use some cream lace I had in my lace stash. This tree took maybe 15 minutes whereas the other one took like 6 hours, I understand why they got burnt out after 2. I feel the same way. The third on will be for another day. I will also hunt to find some varying height candlesticks to put underneath them to add interest. 

The bling was a wine bottle decoration that I had also gotten that day. So this is what I got accomplished today. 

Silver seems to be the color of the day

Yesterday I had lots of projects that I was working on and although they are not all ready to share here are some of the ones that are. I have been spending a lot of time making, recreating, or transforming things to go with our new color scheme.

These were little mini ornaments that went with the silver mini ornaments that I had used in the 

Christmas Vignette. Because we had purchased them to go in the apartment they were teal. We did not decorate last Christmas as it was a very hectic time, here are some shots from Christmas 2008:

This before the time of the super amazing and awesome custom entertainment center that I designed and Mikey and Leonard made. That little black shelf is going to go though a transformation after the holidays. 

These are the curtains that I had made with blackout material behind them because that apartment was not very energy efficient. The stars from Pottery barn are now here in the condo. The white poinsettias are now here. That rug that you see was one of my AMAZ-ING projects that I had done when Mikey was in Iraq. I could not find a rug that I liked that went with the colors of the decor. I did however find a reversable bath mat that would have been perfect if it was ten times its size. So what I did was over time I bought twelve of them and hand sewed them all together. It was a very cumbersome project but I love the result. 

So it looks like I have made a mistake. In my post about my 

Teal Bamboo Lamp I had said that I had never used it before but I did here, go check out what it is now. 

This was our Christmas tree that year, a rosemary tree that tragically died, maybe it was the lights? This is a vast comparison to our tree this year. The Charlie Brown/West Elm inspired paper Christmas tree. 

The teal ornaments that were in question on this tree are now happily recreated on this tree, all they needed was three coats of OPI Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous nail color number NL Z18. The little disco ball did not survive the coat of paint as it seemed to melt whatever was on the inside. 

Now here they are reunited with their friends in their new home, the three presents that are now chrome have moved in as well (see their before picture below). 

These letters are originally from a shadow box frame that I converted for our San Diego trip where Mary, Leonard and I met Mikey when he returned from Iraq. I had purchased the frame at Goodwill for $3.99 my first thrift purchase in Denver.  

I found a sand dollar on the shore of Coronado beach something that was also on my bucket list. I might have to give this frame another little mini makeover so that I can make it go with our current decor. I have some wonderful green velvet ribbon that I got the other day at the Salvation Army that may one day be replacing the Tiffany blue. 

I added some ribbon, there is a wide lack ribbon on the back I used iron on webbing to connect everything. 

Then I used hot glue to connect the letters, the O I made a little cattywompus to make it more interesting. 

I know that is the third brown Christmas ornament this week but they are really starting to grow on me. 

This is a Random smattering of things that I sprayed with mirror silver spray paint. That gold Christmas tree I got at for $1.20 and the presents for $2.25 (see these items, the green velvet ribbon I was just talking about and what else I got there that day here). The caps are for gift boxes for my girls for Christmas, I still have a lot to do with that so that will be posted later. The gold ornament was from Pottery Barn and I love paisley but the color just was not right.  

It looked pretty good plain silver.

The frame

Now on to another jammed packed day, at least today ends with and ugly sweater party! My love made me banana pancakes to fuel the day.