Happy List: #371
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. It is less than a week to Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa! Are you ready? This week on the blog I shared more details about the Christmas ornaments I made this year. What will I do for next year? No idea, but it will be fun to figure out. I also shared how I decorated the fireplaces in our home for Christmas this year. There are three of them and each is a little different. As always, thank you for being here. I enjoy sharing what creatively inspires me and I love connecting with you. Seriously! I love hearing from you. If you want…
Three Christmas Fireplaces
We’ve lived in many homes with zero fireplaces and now live in a home with three. None of them work though, so now that I think about it, it’s like having zero fireplaces. The good news is these beautiful holes in our walls can be decorated for the holidays! Let me show you my three Christmas fireplaces. Similar in the tiniest of ways to the three wise men, these three fireplaces bring different gifts to our family. The first Christmas fireplace is in our dining room and it brings us the gift of winter whimsy with its gingerbread houses. It’s a reminder to have fun and not take ourselves too…
Embroidered Flower Christmas Ornaments
I know it’s not expected to have a Christmas tree decorated with embroidered flower ornaments, especially flowers that aren’t holiday-centric like poinsettias. That’s part of the fun. I’ve seen ornaments for poop emojis, Starbucks cups, pickles, and pretty much any hobby and place that exists, so embroidered flower ornaments shouldn’t be all that controversial in our kitschy world. I started making embroidered flower ornaments almost a year ago in January. I received a flower embroidery kit for Christmas and had so much fun that I ordered more frames and fabric and kept stitching. Was I planning ahead? Am I THAT on top of things? Yes. Let’s go with that. Kidding!…
Happy List: #370
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I am delighted to see you here today, especially on Friday the 13th. I’m not sure December needs the energy from a Friday the 13th, but we’ll roll with it. This week on the blog I shared the way I repurposed antique doorknobs to make Christmas decor. I’m obsessed with those cute little things. I also shared our Christmas tree! It’s in a new corner of the living room room this year. I’m really shaking things up. Haha! As always, thank you for being here. I enjoy sharing what inspired me this week and I love connecting with you. If you want to…
Our 2024 Christmas Tree
Our 2024 Christmas tree is up, decorated, and even sporting new LED Christmas lights this year. Ooh, la, la. Fancy, I know. In a world full of discord, there is one thing we all have in common. Politicians have campaigned on less. This great unifier is the absolute frustration we’ve all felt over burned-out Christmas lights. You know it’s true! It happens to all of us. You carefully pack away in the attic a working strand of lights, or worse, a working pre-lit Christmas tree and when you pull it out the next year, half of the lights are out. What kind of mayhem happens in the attic when no…
Antique Doorknob Christmas Trees
I knew I was saving antique doorknobs for something. I didn’t think it would be to make doorknob Christmas trees. The magic and creativity of Christmas is neverending. There is no need for me to write an elaborate tutorial on how to make antique doorknob Christmas trees because it’s pretty self-explanatory. Borrow a tiny fake tree from your children’s toy stash. Model trees kids use to decorate dioramas for those dreaded class projects are perfect. Stick the tiny fake tree in an antique doorknob. If your tree looks as if it’s blowing in the wind and won’t stand up straight you can wrap some tape or paper around the stem…
Happy List: #369
Hi! Welcome to the first Happy List of December. The year is flying by and I’m happy you’re spending a little bit of time here with me today. It was a big week on the blog. Maybe you should lower your expectations for next week. Ha! I shared our dining room mantel all decked out for Christmas with cardboard gingerbread houses. I also shared the recent makeover I did on the stairs that access our attic. I’m biased, but I love how both turned out. As always, thank you for being here. The Happy List is my way of balancing my media diet and finding the beautiful, interesting, and inspiring…
Wallpapered Stairwell – Before and After
I have the most dramatic makeover to share with you – a wallpapered stairwell with the most disturbing before photos. Disturbing might be the wrong description. Gross? Jarring to the senses? Discordant with the rest of the house? Not a place you want to be? Any way you want to wordsmith it, this stairwell had some negative juju and we lived with it for five and a half years. It’s amazing how long you can live with a space when there’s a door to keep the peeling lime green paint out of sight and mind. Why does a stairwell have a door? Two, actually. We’re overachievers. These stairs lead up…
Cardboard Gingerbread House Christmas Mantel
I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need…to do something with all of our cardboard recycling. So, I hummed myself a little Mariah Carey tune and decked out our dining room fireplace with a cardboard gingerbread house Christmas mantel. My Amazon boxes have never looked better. I’m not joking about those Amazon boxes, I used cardboard boxes and cereal boxes to make the gingerbread houses on my Christmas mantel. I cut out house shapes and then used a white paint pen to decorate the houses. A white colored pencil would have worked too. It was as easy and as tedious as that. It was…
Happy Thanksgiving 2024
My kids spent this year wondering if Thanksgiving week would ever get here. They know Thanksgiving is the kickoff to the Christmas season. That’s when I buy the eggnog and there are multiple days off from school. It might even snow. On the other hand, I can’t believe Thanksgiving is already here. During the pandemic, I let go of the expectations of how I thought a Thanksgiving celebration should look like when it was just our family of four celebrating together. I asked myself what parts of that day do we really enjoy? Pie? Let’s keep the pie then. Multiple flavors. The first puzzle of the holiday season? Clear the…
