Memorial Day 2025 + What I Learned About Robert Todd Lincoln
Like some Americans, we have the day off to commemorate Memorial Day. If the weather cooperates, we usually ride our bikes to a nearby town to watch a Memorial Day parade. I kind of miss the days when my kids were little and got so excited to see a firetruck in a parade. Now, it’s just me getting excited. Ha! The other thing I get excited about is history. It’s so much more interesting to me now that I’m older a more seasoned human being. It’s also humbling how much I do not know. For instance, I have not given much thought to Abraham Lincoln’s children until this week. The…
Faux Chocolate Bunny – With Wood Rabbit and Gold Leaf
You can’t eat it, but the Faux Chocolate Bunny I made for Easter decor is pretty cute. Plus, you can decorate with it year after year. That real chocolate bunny you bought won’t even last a day. Let’s hop right to the how-to. Here’s what you need to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny: wood bunny (set of 2 in this pack) dark brown stain or paint gold leaf gilding adhesive or Mod Podge small paintbrush Polyurethane or Mod Podge for sealing How to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny: Step 1: Stain or paint your wood bunny. I used a honey-colored stain, but dark brown paint would work too. Here’s how…
Vintage Floral Easter Eggs Using Temporary Tattoos
Breaking Crafting News! I made vintage-looking floral Easter eggs using temporary tattoos. Yes, temporary tattoos…for that vintage look. HA! Until last week, I had lived my whole life not knowing that temporary tattoos can transfer to items other than skin. I saw a video of someone customizing sneakers using temporary tattoos. Do you know what’s related to sneakers? Not wood Easter eggs! But that’s where my brain went, and I needed to see if that technique would apply to Easter eggs. Spoiler: It works beautifully. This is a game changer for someone who can’t paint to save her life. Fake it till you make it, which is kind of the…
The Prettiest Easter Decor
Do you know what is in stores already? Easter decor. How quickly we move on from holiday to holiday in the U.S. Is it like that everywhere in the world? Weigh in and tell me! The good news is Easter is in late April this year (April 20), so you’ll get a lot of bang for your decorating buck if you sprinkle a little Easter decor around your home this year. Check out the prettiest Easter decor I found: Empty Tomb Scene | Amazon I know we do a lot of woodworking, but this empty tomb scene would be tricky to cut for us, so I’d gladly spend $20 on…
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!…
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…
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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…
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…
