Crafty Holiday Garland

I am reeeeeeally bad when it comes to Christmas decorations. After college when I lived with my sister, she would always go out and get a Christmas tree and hang all of her ornaments with care. I was just never that into it. It's not that I don't like them... I absolutely love the holiday feel the house takes on immediately upon plugging in the lights on a tree. But after I moved out and into my own place, I never got a tree of my own. I never put out any decorations except a single strand of white lights in my palm tree and a little nativity scene my mom got for me. I just wasn't into it.

But this year will be different.

This year we are going to get a Chritmas Tree. We ordered Stockings from Pottery Barn with our names embroidered on them. I am going to build up my collection of ornaments, tabletop Santa stuff and cinnamon scented pine cones.

Our house will feel like Christmas this year.

The inspiration for this garland came from Pinterest (surprised?) Here is the site where I found the tutorial. She does a really good job of explaining it.

 I got all of the paper in the scrapbooking section at Michael's and used a Fiskars circular punch to get perfectly round discs. You need about 7 circles per piece.

 Fold each circle in half like a taco with the patterned side you want to show on the inside. Start to glue them together, attaching the wrong sides together. I started to use hot glue, but found it to be a little bulky. Keep gluing one half to the next until you have 7 and it looks like a little book. Put a line of glue down the"spine" of your little book and attach it to your twine or ribbon. Glue the last 2 sides together to secure to the twine.

String this baby up wherever you need a little bit of Christmas cheer!



Makeover (x2)

 My amazing husband and I are coming up on our two year wedding anniversary! It's pretty hard to believe... It feels like it has only been a few months since we took our vows and celebrated the night away with our friends and family. A few months after the getting married, we read one of Dave Ramsey's books and decided to make a few changes in the way we were going to approach our finances.... well, at this point it was a matter of deciding how to handle our finances now that we were no longer two people living our separate lives, but one family working toward our future together. One of these changes entailed us moving out of my beloved condo and moving into his.

We weren't sure how long we were going to be living here, so for the first year or so I just left things as they were decor-wise. We did do a few basic upgrades like new carpet and new flooring in the kitchen, but as far as the little things, I just wasn't too concerned with changing them.

We've been here for a year and a half now, and as we plug away on our Total Money Makeover, following the motto "If you will live like no one else, later you get to live like no one else" we're doing our best to stick through these years of living in a condo when we'd rather be in a house. Doing coin-op laundry when we'd rather have a laundry room and planting our garden in a raised bed on the patio when we'd like to have a huge amazing garden in a backyard.

“The cause of most of man's unhappiness is sacrificing what he wants most for what he wants now.”

Gordon B. Hinckley

 

We are sucking it up now, though I like to think of it as being content in all circumstances, so that we can have what we truly want later. It's about not over extending ourselves now, even if we reeeeeeally want something, so we will be able to live comfortably without money worries later in life. It's not really a concept I was taught growing up since I pretty much always had what I wanted, and it is definitely counter to the instant gratification society we live in today. It is not easy. I am constantly battling the feeling that I "deserve" the things I want because I work hard. The mentality of entitlement is everywhere, and it's difficult to loosen it's grip. I highly reccomend the Total Money Makeover to anyone and everyone. Seriously.

All of that to say that after 18 months of looking at the black and white framed print of "guy on motorcycle" that hung on the wall in our little dining nook, I was beginning to not even notice him. He's pretty cool, maybe just not really fitting for that area anymore. We needed some photos of family and friends and a little warmth in the lighting department.

Enter the DIY twine lamp shade. I saw something similar whilst blog-cruising and thought it would be perfect. Off I went to buy supplies and craft away. This is the site I used to get an idea of how to make the twine ball. And then I just had a few photos printed up that I wanted to frame... some from our engagement session with Ashley Maxwell, some from the wedding, and a few of our family and friends. I hunted for cheap frames at thrift stores/Michael's/theDollarTree. I picked varying textures and styles ignoring the color since I was going to spray paint them white anyway.

Above is what it looks like on the dimmer when the rest of the room is dark. And below is what it looked like before. If you can look past my husband and cat (sorry! I didn't take a "before" picture) you can see there was a sort of retro semi-flush mount S shaped track lighting thing going on and then the print I mentioned up before of the motorcycle guy. My sweet awesome husband used to race dirt bikes and has a true love for motorcycles, so this was here when our place used to be just his place.

So with one makeover came another. And I have to say I am very happy with both!