Bucket List

The theme of Christmas this year was "It's a Homemade Christmas." OK, it was more like "DON'T SPEND MONEY," but the other one sounds better. Sadly, I didn't take pictures of a lot of what I made. (Hopefully I'll get some pictures not taken on an iPad from my mom and sister later.) One thing I did get pictures of, however was the gifts I made for some of my favorite girls. 


Meaghan has been talking about this being the year of stepping outside our box. Doing something we don't normally do. something that scares us. Well, what better way of keeping track of these things than a Bucket List?

 I don't have in process pictures, but here's what I did:


Materials
Canvas
Spray Adhesive
Staple Gun and staples
Fabric
Hammer
Cup Hooks
Eye screws
Twine
Card stock
Hole punch
Tiny bucket (can be found in bridal or gift wrap section of craft store)
Mini clothes pins


Directions

1. Cut a piece of fabric to size of your canvas. Leave about 2 inches of extra fabric on each side.
2. Coat your canvas in spray adhesive. Follow directions on the can for drying and adhering directions. Carefully place your fabric onto the coated canvas making sure any lines are straight. Smooth out any bumps. Make hospital corners to keep them looking neat.
3. Staple extra fabric to wood frame on the back of the canvas. Hammer down any nails that don't go all the way in.
4. Cut your card stock into strips about 1"x3" and punch holes in the top.
5. Screw one cup hook into the upper right hand corner and one into the lower left hand corner of the wood frame of your canvas. I drilled a tiny pilot hole, but I don't think it's necessary.
6. Screw eye hooks into the wood frame of your canvas. I made pilot holes for this as well. Attach twine to eye holes to make your "clothes line." Set these up however you want. I did one next to the eye hook on top and the one on the bottom with a few off kilter lines in between, making sure there was room for the strips of paper.
7. Put your paper on the top eye hook and your bucket on the bottom.
8. Write down your bucket list items and attach them to the clothes line with your mini clothes pins. When you've done it, put it into the bucket. It's more satisfying than crossing it off a list!

You could also use this as a to do list, a chore list (I feel like kids may get a sense of satisfaction by putting their completed chores in a bucket. Not that I know much about kids), a menu board. Whatever!

Christmas Decorating - The Rest

So now we've seen the outside of the house and the tree.  Here's the rest!


As I mentioned, the majority of the decorations take place around the fireplace, but let me take a second to show you the cute little feather tree I found.  Next year it will probably get some ornaments.

The penguin to the left was a gift from Mike when I got my first job with IBM that had a small amount to do with Linux.  I made the basket on the left last year.

I saw the basket at Stonewall kitchen and had bought the red thingies and pine cones thinking I could find something to do with them.  I did.

Before I get to the mantle I'll show you the one other thing I did to spread the Christmas spirit around the house.  I put extra wreaths on interior doors.  Just because I made myself a new one doesn't mean the old ones can't be enjoyed!

I got this one at Whole Foods last year.

OK, onto the main event.  The mantle.  As a reminder, here's where the bulk of decorations are.  Here's what the mantle looks like in all it's glory.

Swag?  Garland?  Whatever you call it I love for it to drape the mantle.  I snagged these lovely garlands after Christmas last year at Holly, Woods and Vines.  I layered a garland of sparkly red, green and gold balls with an evergreen one adorned with bells, berries and sticks.

One of my favorite Christmas decorations are these peacock feather trees.  God I love peacock feathers.

I thought the mantle needed some more light.  Eric vetoed putting it in the garland (maybe I'll sneak it in next year), so I put a short strand of lights across the mantle and draped gold tulle ribbon over it.  I set it off with some sparkly poinsettias and birds.

I call this my Scarlett O'Hara bird because it reminds me of the dress Scarlett wore to Mellie's birthday party.

I'm not sure if I mentioned my love of peacock feathers.  I got a wreath of them for Christmas 3 years ago.  I haven't taken it down.  It lives on my wall.  I also keep a vase on the right side of the mantle for most of the year.  I often buy extra sparkle to add to it for Christmas.  Then I leave that in all year round too...

Because I thought the mantle looked just fine as it was, I decided not to hang stockings by it with care.  I hung them in a large picture window in the front of the house. 

Well, there you have it, a wrap up of this year's holiday decorating.   I hope you enjoyed it.  Let me know if you have any tips for next year!

Christmas Decorating - Outside

One redeeming part of winter is that I get to decorate for Christmas.  At the end of the season I like to buy a bunch of closeout Christmas decorations.  Then I get surprised the next year when I'm looking at what I have to work with.  It keeps things from getting stale.

My house is situated a little oddly.  Sure the front faces the road, but it basically sits in a church parking lot and the part that you really see when you're coming to it is the garage and the sides of the front and back yard (both of which have a little bit of fencing).  The garage has a little arbor over it on which I'm trying to train some jasmine to grow.  The front yard has a pretty dogwood tree that overhangs the driveway.  So here's what we did:

The top fence posts got wrapped in Warm Light LED large Crystal lights.  The dogwood has a year round display of lights and we added some ornaments for the holidays.  The garage arbor got lit up with the same LED lights as well as some normal mini lights.  And a bush got a net of lights as well.  Each fence post is adorned in a red bow.

This year I got all crafty and made a wreath for the front door.  I don't know if you know this about me, but apparently I gravitate towards sparkles.  I also have a thing for birds.  I got myself a grape vine wreath and some pretty sparkly things, took my glue gun and wire cutters out and winged it (wung it?  Whatever, I made it happen!).

Since people often go around to the back door rather than coming to the front, I decided the back doors needed some cheer as well.  There is no storm door so whatever I put up had to be able to handle the elements.  When I was doing some last minute shopping the day before Thanksgiving I found these babies at Safeway.

Next time I'll talk about what happened inside.  Mostly I'll just show pictures of some of my favorite ornaments and tricks.

Christmas Decorating - The Tree

So do you like what I did outside?  I know I could do more, but work with me here.  Do you know how expensive some of this stuff is?


So now it's time to move on inside.  I haven't yet gotten the knack of spreading the Christmas cheer around the house.  It's mostly centered around the fireplace.

Evey year I flip flop on whether to get a fake tree and every year I decide to go real.  There's something wonderful about the tradition of going to pick one out (even if it's just to Home Depot), putting it up, arguing about if it's straight, trying to figure out what the best side is, all that.  And the smell, of course, the smell.  One of the problems with real trees though is the gaps.  Sometimes there are gaps where you can't hang ornaments because the branches are too weak or in the wrong configuration.  I solve that problem by sticking a large sparkly flower in the gap.

We usually go just with white lights on the tree.  And if Eric had his way that's what we'd have done this year. Luckily Eric was busy doing something else while I strung the lights and I snuck a strand of colored lights in with the white.  I like how it turned out.

Growing up we always used that silver garland.  I loved it, but I've never put it on a tree of mine since I've been out of the house.  I started with replacing garland with a silver kind of sparkly ribbon.  Last year I tried beads and went with that this year too.  Maybe next year I'll do both!

I know a lot of people like to go with the pretty, color coordinated tree.  I have never been able to do that.  I have too many mismatched ornaments that I love too much.  Here are some of my favorites.

L2R:  A beautiful ornament my sister got me from Harrods, an early predictor of my unicorn love, a reminder of where Eric and I got married

 We moved very close to Mount Vernon (We live on what was good ol' George's property) in 2008, so we have the 2008 commemorative ornament.

I love to get an ornament from just about every place I go.  Here is one from London with San Francisco below.  Sadly a lot of really cool places have really crappy ornaments.

 Just a plain old Hallmark ornament I got from my mom in high school, but I love it.

 I always try to put this one in front of a light so it looks like the fireplace is working.  I got this one in Dublin

 My dad made this one for me when I was a little girl.

I don't ride western and it's not sparkly, but I love this one.

A cherished favorite.  Believe it or not it's hard to find ornaments in Thailand so when I saw this at the Renaissance Festival the year Eric and I went on our honeymoon in Thailand when I hung out with an elephant named Nina on a daily basis, I had to get it as my remembrance for that unforgettable trip.