It was a good one

Hey. Remember me? My name is Sarah and I write a blog. You may have heard of it.

I didn’t mean to take so much time away but it was nice! I am now ITCHING to get going on something other than holiday decor, let me tell you. I have a list a mile long (I’ll share soon) that I want to tackle. I’m ready to get my hands dirty again (with something other than Christmas glitter)!

I’m also excited about organizing again. Since I purged most of the house earlier this year I feel more in control of our STUFF than I ever have. Now I just want to keep it going in 2014 by making the most of each space.

But today I’m looking back at 2013 at my biggest projects, according to your responses. I have to start with one I’m most proud of -- mostly because I love it, but also because I’m so dang happy to have it DONE:

The downstairs powder room was a work in progress for about three years. Or more. I lost track a couple years back. I’m SO happy with it now, it was truly worth the wait.

I’m slowly but surely (I’m the tortoise of DIY if you couldn't tell) working on redoing our master bedroom. I sold our old bed and so far haven’t even come close to using the money I made from that to redo the space. There were a few popular posts from that room this year, including the new DIY king-sized headboard for less than $100:

And then the 80’s nightstand redo that didn’t cost me anything:

And finally those brass thrift store lamps that were made over into glossy navy blue goodness:

I have big plans for this room coming soon – I still haven’t even finished painting it yet. :)

After a lot of trial and error over the past (nearly) ten years in this house, I’ve finally figured out what works in our yard. In other words – I’ve stopped killing things. Our backyard is coming together as a beautiful oasis for us, and I gave you a tour here:

I was busy in the kitchen this year – some of it I splurged on, like our new sofa table:

And some I did myself, like this IKEA table turned farmhouse table:

The whole nook got a new look with the table and the new light:

It works SO much better in this space compared to our old round table and we can easily fit six around it to eat (even without pulling it out).

I was craving color earlier this year and tried out one of my very favorite chalk paint colors in our foyer:

I painted one of my favorite Craigslist dressers with it and it’s such a deep, gorgeous color. LOVE it!

Speaking of that beautiful blue -- another bathroom in our house that sat undone forever was completed this year too. I showed you how I installed the floating wood shelves in our basement bathroom:

And then later on in my no-spend August I finished up the room and used that chalk paint color again. You can see the finished space here:

I made a few simple changes in the family room this year that made a BIG difference. The first was to change out the old dark mirror that was over the fireplace:

To this lighter, brighter one:

This mirror is one of the top five things I get asked about – I got it at HomeGoods and still haven’t seen another one like it since! It made a HUGE difference in there. Seriously…big. (You can see more about the fall mantel here.)

I saved up and finally found a rug I loved for this space too. It truly transformed the room:

And finally – if you’re like me the last thing you want to see right now is more Christmas stuff, but my holiday home tour was a big one and I appreciated all your sweet comments there so much:  

As always, the posts that got the most feedback were those that just talk about life, and usually those are my favorites. :) You can read more about our mouse problem and how I dealt with that here (I wish I had read something like this before we had the problem), my new favorite place to visit here, a BIG change in our lives (and the love of my life) here, giving up my soda addiction here and a rousing discussion on the prices at Goodwill here.

It was a very good year. Probably one of the best. I am so, SO grateful to do what I do. I have you to thank for that. Thank you for coming back to see what I’m up to, I truly appreciate you and I value the connections I have with so many of you. I’ll be back next week with some DIY and my plans for the new year! Have a great weekend!

Metal sheeting candleholders

Say that title three times fast.

Did you just say it? Me too.

Oh yeah, it’s about that time! The kiddo will be out of school in a few short hours and after that it’s staying up late, sleeping in, eating cookies, watching movies and all kinds of general holiday debauchery. Cannot WAIT!

This is my last project working with True Value this year and it’s one I’ve been wanting to try for eons. Seriously, I’ve walked by these metal radiator grates for years and years and always wanted to do something with them. They’re just so pretty! There are so many designs to pick from too.

I picked up the cloverleaf design at my True Value for this project:

(For you locals I go to the Pendleton, IN location.)

I had two projects in mind and started with the easiest one. The other one will have to wait but I think it’s going to be awesome. :) This time I made some pretty candleholders with it and I think they turned out pretty cool!

You can see the design on the metal sheet better here:

This one is a pretty brass/gold color but there are other finishes available as well. Isn’t that cool?

I used tin snips to cut through it but scissors work too (it’s very thin):

It’s a good idea to wear some hand protection (even SpongeBob gloves would work) while cutting – the edges aren’t crazy sharp but you need to be careful with it.

By the way, I held my glass holders up to it to see what size to cut it first. Don’t forget that part. :) I used some extra Goodwill cylinders (just like I used for the Christmas mantel) – I told you I had a ton of these! They are ALWAYS at my local GW.

When it was cut out I rolled it up a bit so it would start taking the cylinder shape – you need to kind of help it along:

Then I wrapped it around the glass to see where the back met up. I took it off and then used a simple line of wire to secure the two together:

I wrapped the wire at the bottom and the top of the metal to make sure it was going to stay put, and then just slid the metal “wrap” over the glass. That’s it!

I placed some simple votive holders with candles inside:

So pretty eh? I kept walking by them after I was done and oohing and ahhing to myself. They really are striking! I’m nuts over that metal design and the color. Of course you could spray paint the metal sheet any color you wanted too.

I think these look pretty for Christmas but they would work any time of year really:

Couple of things – if you have little hands around you may want to add some ribbon around the top or bottom if you think kids will try to handle them. Like I said, the edges can be a bit sharp (it really depends on where you cut them).

Also, you really don’t need to have the glass candleholders! You could just as easily just roll them up, secure the back together and then place a votive holder inside – you can’t really tell there’s glass there when all is said and done.

And finally, this metal sheeting isn’t cheap – I think $20-something each? I’m not sure. But I got three good sized holders out of it and had plenty left over to make another, so it goes further than you think it will.

Have you tried any projects with this metal? I’m planning my next one already…I’ll let you know if it works out!

I’ll be taking most of the next week away to be with family – I’m sure I’ll be back before the holiday, but just in case I don’t “talk” to you before then – I hope you have a WONDERFUL holiday season. Stay safe and enjoy your family and friends!

 

I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own I would have done this project anyway and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

Christmas Party, 2013!

Well it’s a week away! And I’ve finally started my shopping. My wallet is begging me to stop already. ;)

As I mentioned yesterday, this is the sixth year I’ve hosted this holiday linky party – I’ve done it since the first Christmas I was blogging. Awww. Pretty cool, I must say.

We have a total of four trees in the house – technically. The fourth is a small one I put in our bedroom, with intentions of decorating with DIY ornaments every year. I always run out of time. So we just use it as a pretty nightlight. :)

The other three are decorated though. The biggie is the 12 footer in our living room. But first things first -- I’ve had quite a few of you ask how week keep our cats out of the trees. Well…

  

We don’t. :) It’s something I’ve long since given up on. They don’t chew on anything, they just like being in there and playing with the ornaments. You may notice that the bottom of each of our trees is sparsely decorated and that’s not because I have a toddler who takes them off, but three cats instead. I gave up on trying to put them all back on about 25 ornaments ago. I’ll be finding them till next summer.

When I took those pics of our kitten in the tree I scooted him out and started taking pictures again…only to see the tree still moving. I then found another cat SLEEPING in the bows of the tree. Seriously. Sleeping.

Anyway, no good advice here. :) (Although a reader mentioned a thing you can get at the pet store that shoots a puff of air out and deters them from going under the tree – may have to try that.)

Let’s talk about the pretty stuff now!

I’ve always used gold and red on this tree but wanted to try something a little different this year. I’ve been thinking of trying a more “natural” look – but with a 12 foot tree there’s no way I’ll be able change it all out all in one year. So I started by adding a new color this year to see if I liked it – brown:

My sis was all, “Ewww. Brown??” And I was all, “Trust.”

Honestly I wasn’t sure how it would look either. I got a container of brown bulbs at Hobby Lobby for 40 percent off and then used a few larger sparkly ones I’ve had for years.

I stood back after we added some and actually quite loved it. It adds a kind of deepness to the tree – it’s hard to explain. It’s actually really pretty:

While at Hob Lob I also picked up a few packages of that tulle stuff – it’s sparkly and it comes in really wide nine foot sections. But I’ve always cut them up so they go further: 

That way I get three nine foot sections out of each one instead of one. They are still really full and fluffy.

OK, funny story about this monster tree. We got it a few years ago at Lowe’s – they still have it, it’s just more expensive now. I really do love the tree, it’s great quality and easy to assemble.

Soooo, we got a 12-footer because my husband wanted to. The man could care less about everything else I do in this house, but he wanted a huge tree. HE LOVES IT. I love it too but I feel like I’m risking my life to decorate the top. So a couple years ago we’re putting it together and accidentally put the second from the bottom section of the tree on the stand first, and it still looked great. It just wasn’t quite as tall and full at the bottom.

And when I say not as tall, I’m talking a foot shorter. But he really wanted the whole thing up so we fixed it, even though you seriously couldn’t even even tell! Fast forward to this year – my sister is helping me put the tree up since he was out of town and we did the same thing again – using the wrong bottom piece (I need to label these things) and I was kind of over it so I said let’s leave it. It’s still beautiful and tall and he won’t even notice.

Husband gets home a couple days later, looks at the tree, goes on with his business, then later we’re heading to dinner and out of nowhere he says, “Why is the tree smaller this year?” HOW? Then my stepdaughter came over a few days later, looks at the tree and asks, “Why does the tree look smaller this year?”

People. It’s still almost 12 feet tall. They both noticed. I just couldn’t believe they both noticed. I can’t tell to save my life. Hilarious! The man and daughter love the tall tree!

You’ll notice my furry friend nemesis in this shot:

Like I said. I do love the tree, really I do. It’s huge, and it’s spectacular:

We always put the “kid” tree upstairs – we have a lot of his/family ornaments on the big one too, but this tree is just dedicated to pure fun. We get a Hallmark ornament every year in July the fall:

     

That last one is my favorite – we found it this year and it’s PERFECT, since we went to Disney this year (the first trip for both my son and I). The castle is my favorite part of the park and it lights up and the fireworks go off on the ornament. It’s wonderful. :)

I’ve had a real tree every year of my life up until we got the beast a few years ago. There’s pros and cons to each one, real and fake, but overall I do like the fake for ease of use. But goodness, I missed the real tree smell. So we decided to do a (small) real one for the kiddo’s tree every year from now on.

We always go with a Frasier Fir, my absolute favorite:

Since it’s smaller I’m hoping the mess won’t be too bad. We’ll see about that. :)

Finally, I purchased a green flocked tree for our newly finished basement last year:

I fill it with white, blue and green ornaments and I LOVE it. I’m super happy with it – the flock doesn’t fall off like crazy and it’s just a beautiful tree overall. I got it from WalMart and I noticed they had them again earlier this year. I say it’s my favorite but they’re all my favorites, depending on my mood. :)

OK, now it’s time to see your homes/trees/decor/whatever! Everything goes this year, not just trees! Have fun and please visit and comment on a few of those linked up if you have the time.

If you are new to linky parties and would like to add a link, you’ll just want to go to the title of your blog post and “copy” it by right clicking on the title – then paste that code into the box that asks for the url. You are welcome to use my button in your post, or a link back is always appreciated.

Have a great one and enjoy!

 

Party time, excellent!

Hey hey! It’s about that time again! Did you think I’d forget? Pushaw. No. way.

This is the 6th year I’ve hosted my Christmas Tree Party here on TDC – pretty cool right? Kind of crazy.

This year I’m changing it up a bit – pretty much anything goes. Well, Christmas-related anyway. It’s still a tree party, but if there’s a picture of a Christmas tree in the post, it’s good. Got a tree in your front yard? You’re golden. Like trees? Well, then join in. All holiday decor is welcome. :)

For those just looking, you can sock away ideas for next year (helloooo Pinterest!) or maybe implement something fun before the holiday.

Here’s the graphic you can use in your post if you’d like: 

I will do my best to have the post up by 11 a.m. EST. If you’d like to reminisce till then, you can see the 2008 party here, 2009 here, 2010, 2011 and then last year’s here.

For those of you new to a blogland “party” – it’s simply a way for bloggers to link up their projects and ideas in one spot. So you’ll have a bunch of beautiful pics to check out. Plan some free time – it sucks you in. If you’re a new blogger I’ll explain a little more on linking up tomorrow.

And I’ve updated all the links to the Christmas Tour of Homes too:

You can see all of those beautiful homes at the end of the post here!

Hope to see you back here tomorrow! :) 

New black (back) door

Welcome to Monday and the WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS!! Ahhh, everybody freak out!! I have purchased maybe three presents. THREE. I’m usually late on that anyway but the arrival of our grandbaby has slowed down my process even more. (Thanks for the love on that by the way.)

So here’s two big confessions about the way I blog/DIY – one, I usually don’t know what I’m going to write each day till usually the day before. I don’t plan it out. If you haven’t noticed I’m a procrastinator (see above) and I do better when I fly by the seat of my pants. As of yesterday I had no idea what I would write about today, this is nothing new.

The other thing is that most of what gets done around here gets finished so I can blog about it. Otherwise we would live in a constant state of undone projects. We do anyway, but it would be way worse. So yesterday I decided to finish up a project that had been kind of started for a couple weeks…so I could blog about it. :)

It started with the back door:

Innocent enough, right? Well if you read this post, you’d know it’s not innocent. Not at all:

It makes for a good story – I can tell it without twitching now.

Well for years now we’ve had issues with water and that back door. I mentioned a while back we had to cut out the floor back there, down to the basement, to try to fix it. It helped for a while but water kept leaking down to the basement behind a wall. It would wick up on the baseboards – that’s the only reason we knew anything was going on.

The handyman told us years ago the whole back door would need to be replaced, so a few weeks ago when we had water leaking again we finally scheduled it. Let me tell you – this is not a cheap job. Yowza. So I finished up a lot of the detail work myself.

But when they installed it they couldn’t find another atrium door with the plastic grids we had before. So we planned on using the old ones on the new door, but when they put it up without I was kind of in love. It was so bright and open, but so different than what we were used to. I went to Instagram to ask opinions:

And I think pretty much every person said no grid and I agreed. I couldn’t believe how much more open it made that kitchen nook feel. It was crazy!

So we left them off and I seriously love it. As I said, I decided I would finish it up to save some money. All I really had to do was paint the door and the new trim – easy right? Painting a door and trim is actually about 15 steps though, so it took a while.

I primed it with gray primer a couple weeks ago:

And it sat like that till yesterday. :)

Then I puttied the holes on the new trim:

Then did one coat of black on the door:

See that new trim? I’m on a mission to change it out in the whole house! You can see how I do it here – it’s way easier than I thought it would be. Buh bye skimpy trim. Don’t let the back door hit you…

Then it was time to caulk every single corner and joint:

I shared the tool I use when I caulk here – it helps a ton!

Then finally, three more coats of paint – one more coat of black on the door, one coat of white primer and one coat white paint on the trim. It still needs one more of the white but for now I’m good:

Love that beefy trim!

I can’t finish up the black on the door till it warms up a bit. I didn’t do the side of the door at all because it. was. freezing:

This shot makes me want to rip out those itty bitty baseboards even more! Have to get the door trim done on each door first. I still have to touch up the hinges too – I spray painted them but didn’t spray them both open and closed so I didn’t get all of it. Duh.

It’s so different (to me) but I love it. Before there were LOTS of grids – on the door, on the windows and on the pantry door. This is much calmer and as I said, it makes the space feel bigger:

Although I still walk in the kitchen and for a millisecond of think the door isn’t there. That door debacle may have scarred me after all. ;)

Another project (mostly) done – and fingers crossed no more leaking! It was just in the nick of time too, we’ve had snow covering the deck since it was installed.

I loathe water issues, have I mentioned this? They seem to love us though. Do you have one of these atrium doors? With or without the grids?

Easy Christmas paper craft

Guess what?! I’m a grandma. :) My stepdaughter had her precious, sweet, beautiful boy yesterday and we are over the moon for them. It was so emotional, more than I even thought it would be, to see him and touch him and know he is finally here. I only have a few pics since it was a crazy day but I want to wait to ask to her before I share any on the blog. (It didn’t seem appropriate to bring up my blog yesterday. Bigger things happening.) I’m sure I will (he’s too precious not to share) but it’s Mama’s decision to make.

I recently put together an ornament craft for my friend Kari’s blog but wanted to share it here too in case you didn’t see it. There seems to be a Christmas theme on the blog this week so I figured I’d just go with it. If you read this over at Kari’s you can just fast forward to see what I did with them all at the bottom. :)

This one is easy folks. There’s very little talent involved here, just good old gluing skills. The only part that takes time is the cutting, but I have a solution for that too.

So here’s the thing – I love using paper for holiday crafts. I do it at Halloween quite a bit (bats!) and I’m always thinking of ways to do more with it at Christmas. I love paper crafts for two reasons – you can get really creative with all the fun papers out there and they are SO easy to store since they barely take up any space. (You just want to be a little gentle with them.)

For these DIY ornaments I gathered some festive paper:

The red and cream are the textured cardstock – my favorite! Love that little extra detail.

To do this you’ll need “petals,” so I just free-handed one and then traced it to make a bunch more:

These do not have to be perfect! Is a flower petal ever perfect? Do they all match exactly? No. That’s why we love them. :) Once you get one petal you like you can just trace it over and over.

The trick to cutting out a bunch at a time is to layer your sheets of paper. So I would cut two or three strips out of one piece of paper and then lay the outlined part on top, then cut them out. Does that make sense? So instead of cutting out one each time I was cutting two or three. It helped a ton!:

Then you’ll want to do the same thing again, this time with slightly smaller petals. You won’t need nearly as many of these, probably half.

To start building your flower you’ll want to have something as a base you can glue on to. I just cut circles out of a paper plate, but anything will do:

Just make sure it’s not too big so that it shows behind the petals.

Then start making your flower! I used hot glue but regular glue would work fine. You just need a little dab on the back to make it work. I actually looked at photos of poinsettias to see how many “petals” I should use:

I put six larger ones on the bottom and then three on top. The middle is where I got creative:

I ended up using three jewels on them instead of one, to look more like a real poinsettia bloom.

I only used one piece of each color paper and got eight large flowers:

You can see here how I used a paper punch and scrapbook paper for the centers on some of them:

I kind of pulled the petals up on each one as well to give them some dimension – not a fold really, just a slight bend. I’ve folded the petals down the middle before to make them before and that makes them look even more authentic. But with this many it was going to take forever, so I went easy.

I added some little glittery jewels I found in the scrapbook area to the others:

Those are my favorites. I always say – I’m a non-scrapbooker who LOVES the scrapbook section. ;)

The best part? All of these were just a few bucks. The paper was less than a dollar (half off) for three sheets and the sparkly jewels were a few dollars with coupons.

OK, so my favorite thing about these is you can do whatever you want with them – to use them as ornaments just tuck them into the tree, no string needed! You could hot glue twine or ribbon to the back and turn them into a garland. Stick tape to the back and put them on windows, mirrors, whatever. Or make a bunch and create a paper wreath with them – the possibilities are really endless!

I ended up sticking them inside the Goodwill shadow box I first showed you here. I turned it on it’s side and it’s instant holiday art. :)

I love these things – they are so versatile and they take up next to zero storage space! Major score.

I’m off to squeeze the baby some more right now and then I’m hosting our annual ornament exchange tonight with my girlfriends. This girlfriend needs to clean her house. :)

Hope you have a wonderful weekend, stay warm!