Saturday, December 28, 2013

Drawer Doll Beds

Christmas came too fast this year!  Four days before Christmas we decided to follow the great example on Young House Love, hoping to build a play kitchen for our daughter. At the local ReStore, we dug among the many cabinets, discovering a pair of bathroom cabinets for $15 that would fit the bill perfectly. Perfect except for the mold underneath the base of the cabinets.

While Joe let out some X-mas frustration dismantling the cabinets for the trash, inspiration struck as I stared at the small drawers that came with the cabinets. Fully constructed out of wood, and in good shape, it seemed a pity to throw them out. What if I made these into sliding doll beds?


Joe gave them a quick sanding, scrubbed them with a dilute bleach spray, then I painted the fronts with some coral paint we had in the shed (leftover from this project.) As always I use two coats of paint and three coats of Minwax Polycrylic in high gloss. We also reused a trio of knobs that were languishing in a box. Finally, I sewed small pillows and sheets with some vintage fabric leftovers from my Grandmother's stash.


Here's our daughter putting her babies to bed on Christmas morning.  :) She's in love! She's able to tuck these beds right under her bed via furniture slides Joe added to the bottom of each drawer.  But so far they've been out in the open. Each night before bedtime she tucks everyone in and says good night.  Makes my heart smile.


Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

xo
Cathleen

Thursday, December 19, 2013

2013 Christmas House Tour

Wow! Christmas Eve is just 5 days away.   I'm finally showing you some of our decorations. This year I decorated in about 1 day (okay 1 day for the inside of the house and 1 day for the outside.)  I don't feel like we've done anything "special" this year, just the same stuff we always put up.  But every year it's always a little different.  So here we go!  Welcome to our 2013 Christmas house tour!

Our front door got a new wreath this year.  You can read all about it in yesterday's post.


Our entry way gets a little Christmasy when I switch our usual prints with these from the Graphic Fairy website.  I also add a few little ornaments.


Our "centerpiece" on our table is just a cute little reindeer candle holder with a gold candle and a few pine cone mini candles around it. I totally get more festive with our table during Christmas dinner but during the month I keep it simple.


Our display cabinet gets filled with vintage ornaments, Christmas crackers waiting to be opened, candy, and presents!  It's a great storage area for mailed gifts and a bonus that the kid's can't open these doors to sneak a peak.



I LOVE these blue, white, and pink vintage ornaments so much! That's why I can't bring myself to hang them on the tree. They were my Grandmother's ornaments so they get tucked away in the china cabinet so we can see them, but nobody can touch them. :)



One of the things we had to do this year was move our record shelf into the dining room so we could put our big tree in the living room in front of our window. So I put these cute little pink and green trees on top and the kids got to decorate them with lights and little glass balls from Urban Outfitters (purchased on clearance last year.)

In the living room I have my little vintage elves on display. They love watching over the kids and happily report back to Santa about whether the kids were naughty or nice. So far it's been a mixture!


This elf is protecting a gift for Daddy.


The glorious tree! This one is special since we got to pick it out as a family at Jordan Lake Christmas Tree Farm. It's also where we shot our family Christmas portraits.  The top of the tree got the more fragile ornaments and the kid's got to decorate the bottom portion using mostly fabric or wood ornaments.  We tried using mostly red and gold ornaments that were vintage or looked vintage and they all have a very special meaning to us. A lot were hand made by my Mom in the 80's. Other woodland creatures were given as gifts and some purchased over the year at various stores. Our tree topper was my Grandmother's.


One of the best things about our Christmas decor is that it's mostly all home made. Our kid's stockings were all hand needle pointed by their great Aunt Sharon. The outer two stockings which belong to me and Joe were needle pointed by his mom.  His is from 1979. Mine was completed in '07. :)


I made this cute feather wreath two years ago and it's stored in a wreath box during the year. It has stayed in pretty good shape! My daughter picked out the glittery pine cone garland across the mantel. She did a good job!


This was a white elephant gift I won about 10 years ago at work.  I can't help smile at these white ice skates.


The best part of Christmas is of course smiling kids.  Here is my middle guy after making his gingerbread house.


Here are my two younger ones painting with acrylic paint some wooden decorations I found for about 70 cents each at Michaels.


I hung them up with my Christmas cards but they have since been moved to the window in our craft room.



Our Advent calendar is hung that my Mom sewed and each day the kid's hang an ornament. As you can see we are getting close!


Our daughter got a cute pink Christmas tree several years ago and each year she adds new ornaments given to her as gifts.


I didn't know where to hang this letter "P" so it's on her birdhouse.


Our boys have my old office tree with changing fiber optic lights and their personal ornaments.


Each of the kid's decorated cut out trees. Can you tell I'm trying to keep them busy while their home?


And this little girl wants a puppy for Christmas. Will Santa give in and get her one? We'll have to see!


Thanks for having a look around to see how we decorate!! Merry early Christmas!

xo
Cathleen

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

2013 Christmas wreath

My poor wreath from Christmas past has finally reached it's lifespan. I made it several years ago using pine cones from my yard and flowers/leaves/berries from Michaels.  Where are the pine cones you ask? Well they've fallen off once, twice, three times over and now it's just a hot glue mess.  I tried peeling the hot glue off but that didn't work without breaking the branches.


So I decided to remove everything and start over. I flipped it over making the back the front.


There were a ton of cute wreaths on Pinterest but I wanted to reuse the same base and when I stumbled upon this one I loved it. I found some cute pre-made bundles of pine, berry, and twigs from Michaels on a recent trip where everything Christmasy was 70% off. Score! I used my hot glue again to tuck the pieces into the wreath and make sure they stayed.


Here's a sweet little close-up with my black and white ribbon bow. I'm thinking I may add a bigger ribbon down the line if I can find something I really like. That big white and gray Chevron ribbon was nowhere to be found.


I can't believe Christmas is less than a week away and I'm still not ready. I did finish all of my wrapping and mailing, but still need to figure out special gifts for my kids and plan our Christmas Eve dinner and all the fun things we'll do over the holiday break.

Have you made any Christmas wreaths? It's so easy! Check out my other home made wreath here.

xo
Cathleen

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Christmas wreath inspiration

Well it's that time of year that I search through Pinterest and the web to find the cutest Christmas wreaths. This year I will be DIY'ing one because sadly the one I normally hang has fallen apart. No matter how many times I glue my pinecones back on they keep managing to fall off and leave dried hot glue in their place. I've posted about wreaths before here and here, but every year there are more cute ones.  So here's my inspiration for this year's door wreath.

Multi-colored felt ball wreath in pretty muted tones.
Wonderful x-mas wreath - free craft tutorial - Pickles

I love the wreath on the right with striped yard and black, gray and gold embellishments.

This ornament wreath is s pretty but I would choose plastic ball ornaments instead.
Krisztina Williams: Easy DIY Christmas Wreaths
via

How cute is this baby blue yarn wreath with red felt poinsettia and little elf??  Such a cute idea.
DIY Christmas Wreaths
via

This burlap wreath seems easy enough to make.
DIY Christmas Burlap Wreath, 2013 Holiday Christmas Wreath, Christmas Door Decoration
via

Hmmm, so many choices! Can't wait to decide on one, make it and show you guys!

xo
Cathleen

Monday, December 2, 2013

New front door again!

Well I think it's finally time we show you our new front door! It's been well over a month since we changed it out.  We will have a warm place in our hearts for our old yeller, I mean old yellow. But it was time to say goodbye. See pics below.



When Joe said we had "rot" I hardly could believe him. I mean we just replaced the door a few years ago. But the way our porch sits and our awnings hang and with the gutters that never seem to work right, the rain water just took over. Here is the bottom corner of the door where most of the rot was occurring. Joe decided that the whole door and frame needed replacing. Again. Le Sigh.


First Joe used his box cutter tool to carefully remove the trim around the door frame so he didn't peel off my cute stripes on the wall.


I'm not to go into a lot of detail here about replacing a door since you can read that on our original door post (see link above.)  But here is the door and interior casing removed.


And here's the old door, about to be put on the curb, ready for a random Craig's List user perusing the "for free" section.


While Joe got everything aligned and properly fitting (his circular saw got a lot of work on the outside door opening), I got to pick a fun new color for our door and I was leaning towards something more subtle and looking for a change.  I decided to go with this fun light blue called "Sea Sparkle" by Valspar in an exterior high gloss.  We also decided to change out the handle/lock with oil rubbed bronze hardware from Lowes. Our old lock and handle was peeling pretty badly and I didn't want to spray paint it again to have the same thing happen. Another lesson learned.


I love the new color against the gray siding with pops of dark black fixtures. Oh and this was taken during October since our black wreath is still on the door.


And I just couldn't get my mind off wanting to change the inside door color. White was just so boring and after looking at so many black interior doors I had to try it on ours. Now was my chance! Here is the BEFORE shot of our door.


And here is the AFTER:


I chose "Dark Kettle Black" also by Valspar in a Semi-gloss finish.  I didn't want to risk all the brush strokes showing up, but I regret not going with a high gloss. I think it could have been more dramatic.   I'm glad that whole door fiasco is over and we can move on.  Oh and we almost bought a storm door to solve the rot problem, but we are going to give it some time and see how it goes.  We're not sure we're "storm door" people yet. :)


And I can't believe it's already December! Where did all the time go?

xo
Cathleen

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving 2013!

It's a nice quiet Thanksgiving this year, just the five of us cherishing our time together as a little family. It's a chilly 40 degrees today. The kids and I snuggled up this morning to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Afterwards they got bundled up and rode their scooters around the neighborhood. It was the perfect Thanksgiving morning.  

This photo was taken yesterday, a little Pre-Thanksgiving Indian fight. I handed out their feather hats and an all-out pretend bow and arrow fight ensued.  My seven year old sure does know how to enact any kind of battle.


I have been thinking all month long to share our Thanksgiving decorations, but I'm finally getting around to it. Better late than never. 


In the center of our mantle is our "Home Sweet Home" embroidered towel made by my Grandmother and our little Pilgrim boy I found at a local Thrift shop.


Our two wrapped cones were purchased from Home Goods last Thanksgiving. I think it gives a nice balance to the mantel. The brown pumpkin is also from Home Goods.


This little pot of purple Mums was purchased from Kohls last year too and the golden leaf garland is from Michaels.



I love this little crow felt and embroidered picture from Home Goods. It reminds me a little of Halloween but was in the Thanksgiving decorations, so I'm sticking with it. :)


Our meal preparation is under way in the kitchen today. I just finished making my Mom's fruit salad.  And I am thankful for Joe, who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty in the kitchen. He's the bird man (oh and the gravy man) in our family.  I will prepare the stuffing, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, cranberry sauce, green beans, rolls, and pies.  But thankfully Joe has already diced up the onions and celery for me. Score.


I went ahead and set the table. Shhhh, don't tell anyone I didn't iron the tablecloth. And please don't mention it to my Southern Mother-in-law who would be appalled. Our kids won't notice and nobody's coming over! hehehe.  

Each child's hat is placed on their plates...and kinda silly that I chose such big plates for them that completely hide their Pottery Barn turkey placemats (that I also didn't bother ironing.) Don't judge me. :-)


Here's hoping you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Are you shopping tonight for Christmas? I still can't believe the stores are opening up tonight.  Who shops on Thanksgiving?  I'm happy to report most of my shopping is done and I'll be enjoying board games with the kids tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll!!

xo
Cathleen & family
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