Tuesday, November 1, 2011

It's Raining Acorns!

Tonight, as I was setting the table, I noticed something was missing. Things were looking a little Christmas-y with the red plates and red napkins, so I whipped up a quick, last-minute addition to the table, some fall-inspired napkin rings. I got the idea from the Queen of Crafts herself.


The hardest part was collecting the acorns – not because there is a shortage of trees here in Maryland, but because my silly dog kept finding them first and eating them. She's our little Truffle Pig.



Luckily, I had the acorns that I collected last fall ready and waiting. 


All I had to do was glue the little acorns into their “hats”. They must have all fallen out when they dried out over the summer. Then, I just glued the end of the ribbon to the back of the acorns. Couldn't be easier.



A neat variation would be to paint the nut part of the acorn gold before attaching to the ribbon.


Shiny!  

Friday, July 1, 2011

Happy Fourth of July!!

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

I just wanted to show my festive "wreath" for the holiday. I was bored one day, and I decided to dress up the door. We've had a wreath hook hanging on the door since Christmas without anything hanging from it, so I used what I had on hand to make something fun and festive.



First, I traced and cut out three circles from a cereal box. Then I hot-glued two pieces together to make an extra sturdy base to glue the 'spokes' of the wreath to. I used ordinary wooden skewers to make the starburst - I just eyeballed the placement of the skewers and used a lot of hot glue to keep them in place. Next came the 3rd piece of cardboard to hide my spokes, and then everything (including a good chunk of my lawn) got a coat of white spray paint. Next, I punched out a bunch of red, white, pink and blue circles and arranged them on the spokes to get the positioning right. Then, a dab of hot glue on the back of each circle secured it in place. Lastly, I glued some ribbon on the back. Voila! A super easy and free wreath! I'm tempted to just swap out the paper circles to different colors for other holidays. We'll see.



PS I totally didn't notice Lena's earless bunny, squeaky toy that's been sitting on our front stoop for who knows how long (it's the light blue lump right in front of the bird house). Oops - maybe I should go grab that.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

A Tour!

Hello! I thought I'd start things off with a quick tour of our house.  The first picture shows what our house looks like in mid-April.  The azaleas are beautiful in the spring!  We moved in a month after this picture was taken.  Unfortunately, not too many flowers after April, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix.
 This picture is our kitchen.  All the appliances are white, except the stove is stainless steel.  I'm not sure the reasoning behind that, but it is a nice stove.
 Here you can see our beautiful vaulted ceiling.  I'm standing in the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.  On my immediate right is an eating area by the kitchen and a sliding glass door to the backyard.  On my left is the living room and front door.
 The living room looking to the front of the house. I love those windows!  That's my car, Mordecai.
 Looking to the back of the house from the front door.  You can see a kitchen cabinet peaking out by the sliding door, and the hallway to the bedrooms is on the right.  You can see the door is open to the laundry room in the hallway.
 Hallway guest bath. It's builder-grade 1980's all the way in there, except the yellow linoleum has been covered with peel-and-stick, "slate" tiles.
 We have three bedrooms that all look very similar. This is the master bedroom with an attached bath. It is a little larger than the other two.
Here the master bathroom is the exact same as the guest bathroom. The only differences are: this lovely medicine cabinet and a window behind the door on the right.
 And, last but not least, the backyard.  It's small and covered in woods, but very pretty to look out at from the back windows.  That's Hubby checking the place out. 
And there you have it; this is what we started with, now let's see where we end up!