Traditional Wreaths

When we moved last year, we went REALLY minimal with what we packed, which means my holiday wreaths didn't make the cut. I always struggle with finding wreaths because most of the ones I see premade at Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and JoAnns are either really cheesy and schmoopy, OR I love them and they are REALLY expensive, like $40-$50 dollars. This year I took advantage of a black Friday sale, and some coupons at Michaels that were held over to the Monday after Thanksgiving.

I bought 3 fake wreaths, just plain for $2 for the large one, and $1.50 each for the 2 smaller ones. For our front door wreath I found these floral picks for about $0.88 each. They are actually small apples but I just really like the shiny colors and crystals. I would say the paint is similar in finish to a very pearlized nail polish.

I used all 12 of the picks I bought to make a really full wreath and just hot glued them in place.

So for less than $15 I have a really cute funky wreath on the front door.

I also made 2 smaller wreaths to hang in my den where I felt like it just wasn't as festive as they rest of the house. I started by just weaving ribbon through the wreaths and then glued some ornaments in.

They were feeling pretty sad at this point. The strange thing is I used this ribbon on one of my sparkle wreaths and REALLY love it, but in these wreaths, it just lost something. Fortunately, I had also bought some peppermint garland, thinking i would use it in my peppermint garland on the stairs.

I didn't have quite enough for the stairs, so I cut it apart and made little floral pick bits and stuck them in my otherwise blah wreaths.

Much Better! I would estimate that these cost less than $12 each. And I hung them over my bookshelves in the den.

I still think I could have gone with brighter colors on these guys, but they did help up the Christmas-y factor in here.

Easy Christmas Lamp Shades

I love love love this time of year for so many reasons. One of which happens to be all the Christmas catalogs that come in the mail. Its a little bit ridiculous because I've never actually ordered anything from them (except maybe William Sonoma) and generally consider them over priced, but I just love to flip through all the pretty pages!

This year I happened across something I absolutely LOVED but was not willing to pay the price to have the real deal... so I made my own. These lamps shades were found in the Shades of Light catalog for a mere $27/piece. Our monkey chandelier has 6 shades... it was never gonna happen.

If you look at the pictures close enough its clear that they are hand painted. I have hands, I was sure I could paint my own! Well I ultimately found silk shades in the same shape for $2.99 a piece and tried to spray prime them so I could paint over them, but it didn't really work out. So instead I wrapped them with ribbon to make my own cute Christmas shades.

I did the two red white and green striped shades first with ribbon from the dollar store. Its 2.5 inches wide and each shade took almost 3 yards. Each 3 yard bolt was $1 so all together those shades cost me $3.99.  The dollar store was out of that ribbon so I got 2 other styles at Michaels, I kind of lost track of the price but they were ten yard rolls at 1/2 off. The polka dots and red and white stripes were actually 1.5 inches wide so it took nearly 5 yards of each to cover the shades.

The first one I wrapped I was REALLY careful to make sure the ribbon was super flat and didn't overlap which took some time, but really you can do it pretty loosely and it looks like pleated fabric so after the first one I wasn't nearly as careful and they still turned out super cute. Even if you don't use dollar store ribbon you can definitely do these for less than $5! And of course if your taste or style changes its super easy to switch out the ribbon.

Precious Pepermints

Growing up my mom would make a pepermint cookie that looked like a candy cane. She'd tint half the dough red then make snakes and twist them together and shape them into candy canes. It was really cute. I wanted to do that, but I COULD NOT get the dough to roll into snakes and twist without crumbling. So out of sheer frustration I smashed it together and made red and white swirls that turned into this...

I used my smallest cookie scoop and a double recipe made about 100 tiny cookies (about the size of a standard peppermint).

Because my initial plan was to twist these guys, I did half of the dough red and half stayed plain. When I do them again I will change the ratio some. When swirling the dough the red takes over really quickly so I think I'd do even as much as 1/4 red (but add peppermint extract to all the dough) maybe a little more to make sure the white has a fighting chance.

Peppermint Cookies

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. peppermint extract
Few drops red food coloring
Crushed candy canes, optional – clearly I didn’t do this

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture in three parts, blending after each addition, to make a soft dough. Divide dough into two parts. Into one part add peppermint extract and food coloring and knead through until mixed. Gently smash your colors together until you have a good pattern and then scoop and shape them.

These cookies don’t really spread or puff up so however you shape them raw they will stay pretty close to the same once baked.

Preheat oven to 350F. place on ungreased cookie sheets. Sprinkle with crushed candy canes, if desired. Bake for about 10 minutes or until firm but not brown. Cool on wire rack.

Home made sparkle wreaths

In my search for holiday decorations I found a really cool homemade wreath I wanted to try. I think it was over at the 320 Sycamore blog, but I honestly don't remember and the directions were so easy i never had to go back and look.

Anyway, I got my supplies at the dollar tree so these guys ended up being $3.50 a piece, plus spray paint and hot glue which I already had on had.

Its actually really hard to photograph these guys cause they catch the light from outside, and the flash etc. BUT thats part of why I love them so much particularly hanging in my kitchen windows.

These are great for hanging on mirrors (and windows) because they are pretty all the way around, so there is no ugly back that shows through.

So you take these plain green floral wreaths ($1 each at the dollar tree) and spray paint them whatever color you like. I used that bright red leftover from the hardware and accents on the furniture i showed yesterday.

And hot glue the floral marble thingys right on top. On the top 2 pictures I used clear/iridescent ones cause thats what dollar store had. ($1 for 1lb bag). Each wreath took aprox. 2.5lbs of floral gems. I ran out of clear(and so did dollar tree) so I got bright red gems at Michaels (generally more expensive but I had some coupons) for the wreath in the last 2 pictures. I really like them equally as much.

This is picture is terrible because of the glare, but you can see the process of putting the bead things on. Its toally random, and there are admittedly some blank spots where they didn't fit, but you really can't see them in the final product.

How I decorated my house at the salvation army

A few weeks ago I got really in to reading crafting blogs for Christmas decorating ideas. Almost everything I saw had adorable table decorations purchased at the dollar store or goodwill and then spray painted and refurbed. So the week before thanksgiving i set out to scavenge my local thrift and dollar stores for potential Christmas decor. I didn't actually find any Christmas decorations, but at my trusty downtown salvation army I found a dresser set which had a huge dresser and 2 side tables marked down to $60.99. It caught my eye mainly because it was so cheap, but since I wasn't actually looking for furniture I just left. The more I thought about it though the more I wanted that set, it had a kind of funky retro pattern on it that would never do in brown, but I could picture it looking really cool in teal. So 2 days later I went back and bought it! Our SA is "cash and carry" which means you can't hold it for pickup later which is annoying, but whatever.

It took 2 employees, a very tight front seat and a tie down to get JUST the dresser in the CRaVe. The manager was very nice though and let me take it home and come back for the side tables. On the way home though I realized I was on my own with unloading this massive dresser (70 inches long!). Had I been thinking I would have taken the side tables first and left the dresser in my car until Sean got home... Ohh well I survived and got it out and returned to pick up my side tables. When i got there though there were also 2 large mirrors sitting outside waiting for me... BONUS. That makes a dresser, 2 side tables, AND 2 mirrors for $60.99. But enough of back story, I know you want to see the finished product.

Before: Not sure why its upside down!

I got these guys for 1.99 each the same day. They started out brass, but got the same red spray paint as the mirrors and hardware.

The dresser has 6 "hidden" drawers.

The color is not quite right on here... you'll just have to come visit and see it for yourself!