New Home

My husband and I spent the past few months house hunting and found one we absolutely loved!  After a month of ups and downs trying to finalize the deal, we finally closed and are all moved in!  If you've seen any of my previous posts, you'd know that I LOVE decorating.  Check out a few of my favorite places in our new home!

What better place to start than our front porch?!  Since it's close to Halloween, we are all decorated and ready for trick-or-treaters!  I made the "Happy Fall Y'all" sign from an old board I found in the attic at our old house.  Check back around Christmas to see the other side!

This is our entry way.  I was so excited to finally have a place to hang my windmill I got from the flea market last year!  I absolutely love how it turned out!

Another one of my favorite places is our living room fire place!  To be honest, I was a little sad that the old owners left the TV because I had so many plans for this space and the TV was completely throwing me off.  Eventually, I decided it was pretty nice that they left it and was able to work around it.  We're all ready for fall!

Our dining room table is also right by the front door so people can actually see it now!  We may not eat here very often, but I just love to look at it!  Now, if only I could find a fabric I like enough to recover our chairs!

My great grandmother's china never looked better!

More new things

Continuing my previous post, here are a few other things I've done since I last posted!

I've had an obsession with tassel jewelry this past year so this is one of my creations!

Another one of my creations!

This is a banner I created for an old co-worker's daughter! 

Something very exciting that has happened is that I became an Aunt!  I made this wreath for my sister's shower and my nephew's nursery!

Another banner I made for a retiring co-worker

My co-worker retired after 30 years as a lunch lady and this was her retirement "plaque" I made for her!  We bought the printable sticker paper and woodburned a wooden fork-"stick a fork in her, she's done!"

Last but not least, I made this highchair banner for my friend's daughter's first birthday!  The theme is cookies and  milk.  I think it's just precious!

Long time no post

It has been a VERY long time since I last posted so I've got quite a few things to add to the blog!  Let's start with the holidays and I'll make a smaller post with the other random things I've made.

We'll start with my fall/Halloween decor.

Just some fresh flowers, leaf & "boo" bannger and some light up pumpkins and gourds!

Next, I made two fall wreaths at a wreath making party at work!  The top one is mine and the second I made for my sister.

Now for Christmas!

First, I made this board for my parent's Christmas gift.  I stained it first, then carved out the wise men and phrase and drilled holes to put lights through.  I think it turned out great!

I bought this 19-piece bud vase centerpiece from Kirklands and love it!  I think it looked great with my Christmas picks and ornaments!

I've had these crystal pieces for years and never knew what to do with them.  I finally decided to make it a cute mistletoe hanger!

This is probably my most favorite holiday decor piece yet-and it was so easy!  I've been hoarding ornate frames hoping to someday make a wall display, but this is just too cute!  All I did was tie this seasonal wreath to the frame and hung it on our door!

Ignore the messy table, but this was another super simple revamp of Christmas decor.  I had been searching for a tabletop pencil tree and could never find one.  Finally, I decided I would take a tree I already had and make it one myself!  I had planned to just cut the branches shorter, but then decided to simply fold them in half.  I think it turned out better than expected, more fluffy and full!

Last but not least, I was in charge of decorating our Christmas tree at work!  Being that I work with food as a dietitian, I wanted to have a related theme so I chose silverware!  I bought a bunch of cheap spoons, lace and holiday picks from Walmart and came up with this!

End result!

Country Roads

My parents have some land out in DeLeon, TX and built a "barndominium" to stay at when we all go out there.

We also took our engagement pictures here!

With land, comes animals--turkey, armadillos, jackrabbits, hogs, coyotes and, of course, deer.  We found an old deer skull while riding around on the Polaris and I decided to jazz it up a bit!

The skull had been out in the elements for quite some time so not too much cleaning was necessary--really just to get the dirt and grass out of it; but, just to be safe, I went ahead and bleached it for several hours.  Once it was dry, I could begin!  My mom's friend sold me a ton of beads and I had just enough turquoise to cover the entire skull!  I ended up just hot gluing the beads on since I misplaced my bead glue.  Other than a few stray glue-strings I think it turned out really great!

Dining Room Tablescapes and Banners

When we first moved in to our house, one of the first things I looked forward to doing was decorating our dining room table with cute, seasonal tablescapes.  Here are a few I've had over the past few months! (I do have to ask that you ignore the pea-green chairs...the plan is to reupholster them but we just haven't gotten around to it.)

This has been my staple centerpiece for the past several months.  We registered for the wooden slabs for our wedding and were blessed with extras!  I'm definitely not complaining because I think it worked out perfectly!  I got some of the mason jars from my friend who let me have some for my wedding, and a few were found in my grandparent's garage after we moved in.  I also LOVE these candles.  It's hard to tell, but they look like faux-wood and actually have a remote so I can turn them all on with one click!

Can you guess which season I used this centerpiece for? *DING DING DING*--Fall is the correct answer.  I bought two leafy garlands from Michael's and bought a few decorative pumpkins from the grocery store.  My red vase just helped pull the red into the scene.

I LOVED my Christmas centerpiece!  I bought the old springs from an antique store in Granbury not knowing exactly what i was going to use them for.  Thankfully I was able to find something to do with them or my husband might have killed me for buying rusty springs!  I simply stuck some candles in the middle and helped keep them straight with little winter-y sprigs from Michael's!  The banner hanging up behind it was made from sparkly snowflake ornaments!

First of all, I forgot to take a picture of the tablescape for Easter.  Just imagine my first picture with the mason jars plus different sizes of colorful glass-mirrored eggs. :)  Second, the banner itself came fro m Kirkland's and was like $5.00 after Christmas.  What a deal!  The cute little carrots were found at Target and, with me being a registered dietitian, I couldn't pass them up!

Up-cycled door

Last year I made a decision to trade my little car for my parent's Tahoe.  It wasn't just because the "truck" had less miles or that it didn't have all the little clicks and pops that my car had, but mainly because it had more space for me to crate around large crafting items or antiques.  Specifically old doors that  I was wanting to bring back from my husband's house in college.  

Alex's roommate was planning on throwing the old doors out until I claimed them!  Unfortunately, two of them were too far gone-covered in termites and completely cracked in half and falling apart.  The third was still in tact so I rescued the doorknobs off the others and brought back the last to up-cycle it!

I decided to use it as additional craft storage in my craft room!  I bought a couple baskets from Tuesday Morning and found the shelf brackets that I used for legs on sale at Home Goods (very lucky!).  Hope y'all like it!

Hawaiian Honeymoon

It's been quite some time since I've posted and there are several new crafts to update on the blog!  I'll split them up into different posts, so for now, here are a few crafts I made with the sand from our Hawaiian Honeymoon!  We honeymooned in Kauai and it was amazing! 

Christmas Ornament with sand and seashells off the beach of Kauai!

We took a cruise of the Napali Coast in Kauai and it was beautiful!  I put a postcard into a shadowbox and added some sand and seashells from the beach!  Perfect for my beach themed bathroom!

Wedding DIYs

This is going to be a long one!!  

The wedding is finally over!  It was a stressful, exciting, amazing day, but I'm glad it's over and I can finally call Alex my husband!  We had a wonderful honeymoon and we've finally moved in to our house!  Without further adieu, it's finally time to to share all of my DIY projects for the wedding!

To start--you can't have a wedding if you don't invite people, right?  So, after figuring out what I wanted to do and seeing how much the pre-made, ordered invites actually were, I decided to make my own.  I've seen it a lot on Pinterest and it really wasn't too hard.  So I went to Hobby Lobby and bought some card stock, twine and glue dots, then ordered doilies from Amazon and got to working!  While I found doilies at other stores, they weren't as intricate as I liked.  I made the outline on Microsoft Publisher and used our printer's photo printing option to print them off in the correct size.  The information cards are made from the same cardstock, just cut smaller!

Finished product!  It took quite a long time, but I love them!

One of the next things that had to be done was to pop the question to my bridesmaids!  I knew I wanted to make something that the girls would wear to the wedding.  So, I found these cute little lockets on Etsy (shop: BrassKicker) and bought the pearls, chain and clasps from Hobby Lobby/Michaels and put it all together!  But what to put it in?  I bought these little glass tubes and dresses from Michael's and added a hook onto the cork and put the necklaces in them!

My most favorite project was definitely my bouquet.  I always knew that I wanted something different that involved using antique brooches.  I have been eyeballing the fabric flower and brooch bouquets for years, only to realize that they can cost just as much (if not more) than real flowers.  SO, I decided to make my own.  I used a lot of different types of fabric flowers from almost anywhere you can imagine...Michael's, Hobby Lobby, and even Marshall's and TJ Maxx. 

 I bought way more than I needed because I wasn't sure what all I wanted/needed or what would look best.  The individual flowers were mostly hair clips which made it very easy to attach them to the bouquet.  I used wire to wrap the non-clip flowers and attach them to the base.

I used the flower ball as a base.  The peony bouquets were obviously used as the stem handle. 

I pinned the brooches to my favorite flowers and then just started clipping/wrapping the flowers onto the flower ball!

At the end, I wrapped some twine around the "stems" to complete the handle.

Finished product!!!

I also wanted to add something special...

For the family members that couldn't be there on our big day, I had them with me the whole time!

While we are on the topic of flowers--I made the guys their boutonniere, too!  Since we got married in a barn, we wanted something country-esque.  So, what better than bullets?  I glued the pins to the bullets and wrapped them with a little bit of lace.  I bought the flowers from JoAnn Fabrics and just shoved them into the bullets and there you have it!

The wood tags were bought at a boutique store and I wood burned their names onto them! 

I also made the mom's and grandmother's corsages.  Very easy, just bought the pearl bracelets and glued the flowers (from Michael's) onto ribbon wrapped around them!

We planned to use a wood slab for our cake topper, but didn't end up using it because it had flowers on top!  I used my woodburner to make the B.

Gifts!  Of course I had to include a little DIY into the bridal party's gifts! 

Woodburned the bridesmaid's names into the wood slabs for their hangers (which were purchased from TJ Maxx)

This is what the tags from the previous picture ended up being used for!

A few of my favorite decor pieces were these old windows and shutters that I bought from various antique shops!

Thankfully the panes were about the same size as a piece of printer paper, so I just printed out what I wanted to say and wrote over it with a chalk pen. Made it look very nice since my cursive is not great!

Please ignore the off-center picture...it fell off during the move and was just quickly stuck back on!

This was one of the most time consuming projects I took on...When I originally bought this, it was just the frame.  SO, I added the chicken wire to hang the pictures on.  Since our lovely staple gun was not working (and probably wouldn't have worked well anyway-it would need very small staples), I had to use thumbtacks to attach it.  Also, have you ever worked with chicken wire?  It hurts.  But the end result was work it :)

 For the favors we had wildflower seed bombs!  I bought the seeds off Etsy (shop: FreeMountainDesigns) and used the leftover cardstock from our invitations!  Hot gluing was the easiest way to attach them since they weren't completely flat on the back :)  Apparently they work, too, because Alex's work family had planted theirs while we were on our honeymoon and they already started growing after a week!

Based on the Etsy shop's included instructions!

We decided to do the "cord of 3 strands" ceremony.  We had a spare piece of wood that we stained and I used painter pens to write the verse on.  We bought the rope from Michael's and drilled two little holes in the back to attach it with wire.  It turned out well and can now be a very meaningful piece of decor in our house! 

If you or anyone you know want to do this, THIS is the reading we gave our officiant to use while we braided the cord.

Okay, I think that's actually all!  It was a lot of planning and projects but it was well worth it!!  Hope you enjoyed it all! :)