Christmas!

So if you are friends with my on Facebook you've likely already seen these photos but I had to share :)

This year I finally had the chance to do all handmade ornaments. It was really quite simple in thought but took a lot more work that I was expecting.

We decide to stick with a red, white and silver theme for all of our decorations. I wanted to go with blue, white and silver but Matt loves red :)

I had left over basic ball ornaments from last year and decided I was going to decorate all of them. No ornament is the same on our tree! Well ok that is slightly a lie. I have 3 plastic ornaments with bells in them and then 4 tinsel stars, but other than that all of them are different!

This first one is something I found online. You buy the clear plastic ornaments from a craft store, wash them with alcohol, and then drip paint down the sides. The first time I didn't read the directions correctly and didn't wash them. The paint just globed, not good. But I was able to save it. I washed it out, even with the paint in it and it turned out like this!

This is another ornament that I did. It was really simple. I just used a paint brush, dipped it into some Mod Podge and then poured the glitter over top. I made lots of ones like this, they were definitely the easiest but I actually think the prettiest as well.

The other main type of ornament was again using the blank balls and then I used glitter puff paint to create designs on them. This was the hardest one actually, I don't have quite the steady hand I once did. But they still turned out well.

Here is a pic of the whole tree, sorry my camera just couldn't get a great pic of the tree! With all the lights on it looks much more full as well.

I also did the mantle. I painted the word "Peace" and spray painted some glitter on them. I then hot glued them to stocking holders on the mantle. I used the P, A and E to hold up the garland on the mantle and then left the E and C for our stockings, which I still need to make.

Overall the decorating was a ton of fun! Next year I think I'm going to go with the blue, silver and white tough. Just to try something different. Then I can switch off each year :)

Holidays have arrived!

Holiday season is my favorite time of the year. I've always just loved the season :)

The past 5 years I have spent this time of the year in Arizona. Where it is still in the 70's all winter long. It never felt like Christmas to me there. I feel like people don't get as into it there too; there were never as many houses with Christmas lights. I remember as a kid going to all the different neighborhoods with ALL of the houses on the block decorated. I loved looking at the Christmas lights.

And now back in Seattle, on November 11th I am sitting in my house wrapped in a blanket because I'm freezing. Those years in Arizona really made it harder to deal with this cold! Hopefully I'll adjust soon because it's only getting colder.

So anyways since I love this time of year I really want to do lots of crafty things to get ready for Christmas :) I promised the boyfriend that I would wait until after Thanksgiving to start making Christmas ornaments so I had to come up with something else I could do before.

Last weekend I decided to make Christmas cards. They turned out really well, so cute!

As Promised...

Pictures of the bathroom!

The new wall color

Shower Rings






Toilet Paper Holder

Our AWESOME faucet! I love this thing and it was the inspiration for the bathroom.

We technically aren't done yet. We are going to paint one of the walls with a wall mural of bamboo. It probably won't get done for a while :) It'll take some time so I need to practice on a few smaller canvas first.

Next big project...craft room!

Finally

We finally have the bathroom in a livable state. It took a lot of hard work and trying to fit the time in to finish it with everything else going on was tough. But we have sanded down and painted the walls and we bought all new fixtures. Plus we fixed the fan.

So I would say the scariest part of the whole thing was when we had to cut open the wall and put in some new plumbing. Matt pulled out a piece of wood but when we looked closer it was a dead squirrel. We both freaked out and he dropped it, I totally ran way screaming haha. It was SO gross! But pretty funny after the fact because of how we reacted.

So we painted the walls with a blue gray color. It really makes the white in the bathroom stand out which is great. And the new fixtures are fabulous. We still need to do some final touch ups so I'll wait to show pics but after this weekend I should get some pics up :)

Halloween

So Halloween is just around the corner! I think we have all that we need for our little get together next Friday.

Here is the plan...I'm making some super yummy desserts. Pumpkin Swirl Brownies, Peanut Butter Cups, Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes, Candy Corn Sugar Cookies, 7-layer spider dip, queso dip, stuffed mushrooms and buffalo wings. Most all of these items are courtesy of Martha Stewart :).

This will be the first time I've made dessert in quite a long time. I remember when I was kid we'd go visit grandma and make Chocolate Chip Cookies. I think the last time we did that was when I was like 13. When I was in college we'd make cookies in the sorority sometimes or my best friend would make brownies....mmm SO good. But I never really did any of the actual making of these items. I just hung out while other people did it and ate the goodness. So I am a littler nervous about making these goodies. But I think we'll be able to pull it off and have a great time.

We also got a bunch of decorations. The theme of our party is Zombie so for the wall behind all the food we have a sheet covered in fake blood. Then on the table I just have cute little decorations. Take a look:

Behind the decorations are our two pumpkins too. Mine is the huge one! More details about that in a bit. For the Decorations I have two tombstones, two coffins and then some cute little holders that I'm going to use to label the food on the table. For the the coffin and tombstone that are grey I painted them silver and then used a stiff brush and lightly painted black over the top. Gave it the exact look I was going for! Now I wish I hadn't painted the other ones brown...oh well. The little clip one will hold the name of the desserts I'm making for the party :) And a couple other cute signs I made (I'll take pictures when it is all set up.

During the weekend that I made all this stuff we went to Home Depot to finish getting all of the stuff for the bathroom. While we were there I was looking at the Christmas ornaments and I have decided I definitely want to make my own! I want to get just the plain matte color balls and make my own decorations using craft glue and glitters. Here are some pictures of things I found from Home and Garden online:

So I think that will be my fun crafts coming up :)

Harder than I thought...

So I wanted to start writing in this thing a lot, that just hasn't happened. Life has happened and the world of blogging gets pushed to the back. Where to people find the time to blog daily or even every couple of days? I want to start writing every few days, I think it would be good for me and really I'm sure I have lots to share.


In fact I do have something to write about! Matt and I have started working on our bathroom. Our place is a rental so we didn't want to do too much but we plan on staying here for quite some time so also wanted to make it something we enjoy living in. At first we were just going to paint but when you get Matt into something he really gets into it :)

We've decided on a bamboo theme for the bathroom. We are painting the walls grey and I'm going to paint bamboo stalks on the wall.



This was my inspiration from Etsy. I'm not doing actual wall decals, I have a stencil image I found and am going to project it on the wall, trace it, and then paint it in. I am SO excited to try this.

We also found an awesome bamboo faucet. I'll put up more pictures later once we finally finished. It is going to look AWESOME! I'm very excited for this project.

We are trying to smooth out all the walls before painting so I had my first experience with plaster/mud, whatever you call it. I was nervous but it ended up being a lot of fun. Yesterday I came home to a disaster of a house. Matt had started sanding the walls and the "dust" was everywhere! Going to take a lot to clean this place after all of this, but I think it's well worth it!

I'll keep you updated about our progress! :)

New Beginnings

I've tried to do the blog thing before and I just can't ever seem to stick to it. Either I am too broad in my subject or too narrow and don't have enough to write about. But I've decided to try again.

This time my subject is still pretty broad but I want to write about the ideas I have flowing through me head. Crafty ideas, building projects, where I'm going in life, etc. I think since I'm in that growing up stage after college I've got so many ideas on what I want to make my life and I want to share that.

So I'll start off this new blog with where I am at currently in my life. I graduated from Arizona State University in December 2008 and moved back to Seattle to see where life took me from there. The next year was quite a bumpy ride but I made it out alive and now have finally started to settle down and think about where I'm going from here.

I've got a great job that I love! Great family whom are truly a blessing. An amazing boyfriend who I'm starting to make a home with. Officially I haven't actually moved in with him, my cats have to move over to make that official, but we do live together. We've been making some changes to his house lately which I think has gotten me thinking about crafty projects. We are also both trying to make an effort for a healthier lifestyle so we've been trying lots of new "healthy" recipes. I guess at this point I just feel like my life is finally coming together, I'm living my peaceful life. It is honestly pretty amazing. I feel content and excited for the future.

So I think that is where I will leave this introduction. I'm excited to begin a new blog and get more into blog reading. I've been finding it SO great! I hope you join me on my continued adventure in finding myself and my path for the future.