Happy Holidays

Christmas Day is here, and celebrations have been had.  For us it was a very small affair, but that did not stop me from making our house as festive as possible. 

In fact, I was decorating right up to the last moment, hanging the last snowflakes yesterday morning.

Sorry, this is late, but here is the result of all my decorating energy.

The living room.  The room where most everything happens in our house.  The tree is decorated with all the handmade ornaments (part I, II, III, IV) and sporting my star.  The mantle has the snowflake tree and the paper bag snowflakes.

 I finally got around to making new family stockings.  I have been wanting to do this for at least 8 years, but this was the year I actually got it done.  I even got 2 made for out little kitties.

And the cascade of snow flakes above the table was started on Dec 23rd. In the end I think I used about 75 hand cut snowflakes for this.  I think I am a bit snowflake obsessed.   I moved my little cone trees to the table (actually, they kept moving around the house because I love them so much.)


Well, there it is, I am sorry to share this so late, but like I said I was futzing with it until the last possible moment.

I also wanted to share just a couple of books that found there way under the tree.

I am super excited to dig into these.

How about you?  How was your holiday?

-Laurie

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

source

I will be taking a little time to enjoy the holiday's with my family.  Be Back soon.
-Laurie

Tree topper fix-up

Our tree topper has seen better days.  It was a craft I made over 10 years ago, and it is looking a bit shabby.

I am not ready to scrap the topper.   I know it doesn't blink, spin around or play music, but I like the simplicity of it, and I create it.  I am kind of fond of it. 

So I decided the best thing to do is get some glitter and repair it.

Such a simple fix.
-Laurie

Handmade Ornaments- part IV

Day 4 and I will wrap up my handmade ornament series. 

I will start by talking about the big read heart, as I know it is a focal point.  Yes I made it, but not as one of my "yearly" ornaments,  it was just an "I have a need to create" ornament.

But the ornament just to the right of it is this years ornament.

It is a very basic, yet very sentimental ornament.  Earlier this year I used salvaged barn wood from my grandfathers barn in my parents bathroom.  This years ornament is made from the remaining pieces of the barn wood. 

Another favorite ornament was the one I created for 2005.

Sometimes simple is best.  I personalized each ornament with the last letter of the family name.  I have been itching to make more of this type of ornament.  So simple.

My last ornament to share is one that is really hard to photograph.  This one is a Georgia peach tree, for the years we lived in that state (I made it in 2007).

 Here it is off the tree (it just got lost in photos when on the tree).  I personally like this one.  It was a challenge, from figuring out how to make a tree, finding the right peach beads and making a box for the base.  It was just fun.

Well, there you have it.  The start of my personal handmade ornaments. I hope to be able to continue making these types of ornaments for another 10 years.

I hope you all are having a festive holiday season.

-Laurie

Handmade Ornaments-part III

Every year I like to create an ornament for each of my family members to represent our year, last weekend I shared 5 of these ornaments.  This weekend I will wrap it up.

Today years 2008 and 2009.  One I love and one I don't really like.

 

I have mentioned my love affair with paper snowflakes,  2008 was year 2 of this obsession.

I spent a lot of time on this particular ornament.  I started with a hand cut paper snowflake that I painted with glitter paint, from there I layered on liquid glass.  Many layers of liquid glass.  I spent many evenings applying liquid glass and letting it dry.  My biggest frustration with this ornament is it never got rigid.  The liquid glass always remained flexible.   I always have to be extra careful when storing this ornament, but to me it is well worth that little trouble, because it is one of my favorites.

Unfortunately, my ornament for 2009, was a fail for me.  

 

I consider it a fail mainly because it is not as refined as I would like.  But I should just move past that and learn to love its quirkiness.  2009 was the year we purchased our new house, and I really wanted to represent our new home.  I will just leave it at that for now.

I will finish this series tomorrow.

-Laurie

It's a good day

I woke up this morning, took a look around my house and realized what a joy it is to live in a space that feels like home.

It is not perfect house, it is not a show house, it is a house where one family lives and grows.

And it is a house that has been put together out of love and determination, sweat and tears (mainly mine).  I created this house.  I created it for my family.  So they can have a space to feel warm and protected.  A space where they can de-stress and create.  A space where we can love and be ourselves.  It is my love letter to my family.

I feel blessed.

-Laurie

Peppermint Pretzels

I am not a big baker.  I enjoy cooking but I don't enjoy baking.  That may go hand in hand with not being a big sweets eater.

So what does a girl do when she is faced with little time and a cookie exchange on the calendar?  Well, this girl makes Peppermint pretzels. 

They are quick, easy and you can have your little ones help out.

I started with 3 ingredients:

-Bag of pretzels
-1 bag of meltable Vanilla chips
-1 box of small candy canes

Crush the candy canes- I wanted them pretty small so I used my food processor, but you can do it by hand.

Melt the Vanilla chips according to the package.  I did mine in the microwave.  They melted in about a minute.

Dip the pretzels in the melted vanilla and place on a sheet of wax paper.

Sprinkle crushed candy cane bits over pretzel while still wet.


That's about it.  I made about 50 pretzels in the batch.  I had a lot of candy cane pieces left over, but that is OK they go very nicely in my coffee with a bit of hot chocolate mix.

 -Laurie

Snowflake Tree

I am in love with my snowflake tree.

Over the past 4 years, I have slowly been making paper snowflakes and then encasing them in paint, glitter and liquid glass; making them a bit more permanent.

In the past I have hung the snowflakes on our Christmas tree or in the windows, but this year I found the perfect place for them.  I have a vase of bare branches out all year on our mantle.  The branches were a causality of a huge snow storm a few years back.  But it makes a natural display piece.

Taking a closer look at the snowflakes, you can see there are many variations.  I didn't make any last year, but the 3 years before I did, and each year they turned out a little bit different.

Some have aged and yellowed a bit, but I have to say I kind of like that they have done so.

I wish I had a straight out tutorial, but I don't.  Hmm, maybe I need to make a few more this year...Maybe out of paper bag.

I just find them so beautiful.

 

-Laurie

Heartfelt

Do you get crafty at Christmas?  I seem to.

Something about Christmas makes me want to create little things.  Usually they end up as ornaments on the tree, but this year one of the things I made was little felt hearts for wrapping small gifts.

I am going to use them to wrap gifts for my kids teachers.  So I ended up making two of them.

-Laurie

Drop cloth wreath

Are you ready for more drop cloth Christmas decoration?

How about a wreath?

I needed a wreath.  I know, I know, they are the easiest thing to make.  I just had not done one yet.  I don't know why?   I just hadn't done it.  But since I started with the drop cloth stuff, I felt I must do one.

Ok, I will admit, that this is not the most Christmas-y wreath out there.  In fact, if you take off the bells (which are just attached with straight pins) it is a very basic wreath.

But I guess that is what I like about it.

-Laurie

Handmade Ornaments- part II

Yesterday I shared 2 of my handmade ornaments.  Today I wanted to share another 3. 

I have tried really hard to have the yearly ornament have a connection to that year.  That connection may be one only I am aware of, but since I am making them, that is enough.  Seriously, the connection is either a life event, like the birth of our children, a type of craft I am obsessed with or a special location.  And today's sample has an example of each of these.

Ornament number 1, I created to represent our new life in Monterey CA, (2003).

I picked up the shells on Fisherman's Wharf.  I felt the need to work with beads and hand threaded the beaded fringe.

Ornament number 2 (2006), we had another birth year.  This time we welcomed our son, and I incorporated fabric from his nursery in the ornaments.

This was the first and only time I worked with polymer clay.  I wasn't able to get things are refined as I would like and the hook has fallen out of some ornaments. So maybe not my best work.

Ornament 3 was last years ornament.

This is one of those ornaments that has a really loose connection.  It has to do with paint color and a miter box and sanding.  All the things I was working on in 2010.

I love that there is a very random nature to the ornaments and that they are all over the map, kind of like our lives.

-Laurie

Handmade Ornaments-part I

I am working on having a tree with only hand-made ornaments.  I am sure I will have to have a few purchased ornaments, but the goal is to have mostly ones made by myself and our family.

Back in the early days of our marriage, before we had kids, I started creating ornaments for my family, my parents, my siblings and my in-laws.  That was back in 2001.

After keeping this up for a decade I have put together a nice little collection.  I will admit that some are better than others, as all things go.  Today I wanted to share with you 2 of these ornaments.

Ornament number 1. (the top one in this picture) was the first one I created and the one that started the tradition. 

I have a fond spot in my heart for this one, and I am happy to say it has held up.  I was afraid the glue would loose its stick and all the beads would fall off.  Speaking of beads, this ornament is covered in little glass beads that I individually placed with a tweezers (and I made 10 of them).  A labor of love.

Ornament number 2, I created in 2004, the year our daughter was born.

I hope you can tell it is a hot air balloon.  There is a significance to the hot air balloon.  When I decorated her nursery I had created some larger paper mache balloons.  The fabric I used for the basket on the ornaments was the fabric I used in her nursery.

We had our daughter during my husbands first year in the Navy.  We were living in base housing and I was super excited to converted the storage closet into a nursery.  But this project was filed with challenges; a budget challenge (no money), a size challenge (6'x10'), and a paint challenge (lack of paint) . Since I was unable to paint the walls I just covered them in fabric.

Is it the nursery I would design today?  Probably not, but I love it anyways.

That is the story of just 2 of the ornaments.  Stay tuned for part II.
-Laurie

Drop cloth trees

Who knew drop cloths would be my Christmas decor muse?  Certainly not me.  Yesterday, I showed you garland I created out of strips of drop cloth, and today I will be showing you my little drop cloth Christmas trees.  And just a hint, I have more drop cloth crafts I will be sharing over the next week or so.

But today it is the little cone trees.

Aren't they cute?  This is my attempt at cone trees.  I have been seeing them in blog-land and in the stores and I think they are kind of sweet.

I started off with cones similar to these.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.  I had a few ideas tumbling around my head, but no concrete plans.  I just knew I wanted pointed tops versus the stubby ones...

So I created a cone from paper bags and added them to the top, just to make them pointy.

I was a bit anxious to get started, so I just grab the closest thing to me which was the string I had left over from Thanksgiving and started attaching it to the cone.

I soon realized I was not going to be able to cover the whole tree.  Oops.  But I did have some more drop cloths and I noticed the fun fringe that was happening on the edge.  So, on it went.  I love the additional texture it adds.

On the next tree, I wanted to play off the furry texture of tree one by having a tree that felt smoother.

This time I was more careful with my strips, making sure the edges were cleaner, but still had some texture.  This one is the most simple of the trio.

I left the largest tree to the end.  I wanted it to be somewhere between the other two.  It needed texture, but it couldn't be too out there.

I ended up going with a braid, and wrapping it around the tree.  Here is a better shot of the 3 textures.

To add an extra touch I added a pearl garland.  

I am not sure what you call these?

But I found them in the bridal section for $1.99.  I tied them together to make the mini garland.

I am really happy with how they turned out.  I am excited to make more, and see what else I can come up with.  Hmm, I think my daughter's snow-babies may need a tree or two to brighten their holidays.

-Laurie