Finally......

...... time to catch my breath!

My poor blog - I have neglected you so!  This holiday season was a whirlwind of activity here in the Hollow.  Between parties,dinners,church and lots of family time - I am still tired.  Literally.  I feel like I am still trying to catch up on rest.  Not to mention the craziest month ever at work!  Whew.

I now it is late, but now that I have spent 3 days taking down Christmas decorations  I still wanted to share some with you.

Foyer tree



Christmas Stairs





close up of garland on stairs



family room tree-filled with childhood ornaments



teen daughter's upstairs tree





Some of her upstairs wreaths

wreath I made a few years ago - still one of my favorites!

Looking down to foyer

Now that I have bored you with my after-Christmas Christmas pictures, I need to get back on schedule!

Until next time
Susan

Now How Did Those Christmas Lights Get So Tangled?

Oh well - at least he had fun!!!

An itty bitty tablescape

Have you seen all the beautiful tablescapes around blogland - wowza!!!  How fun it must be to sit at such a festive table!!

Unfortunately I am still too lazy casual to master the tablescape.  But our table does stay set for the Christmas season.  Just not to any major degree

Yep - that's it!!  But there is some sentimentality to my table.  Youngest daughter bought the silver table runner with her babysitting money one year.  She knew I would love it and drug her dad from store to store all over town until she found just the right one.  I love that memory

The salt and pepper shaker are gifts from a very dear friend.  She knows I love Christopher Radko and every year she buys a piece from his collection.  And the girls get one of his ornaments.

So there you have it - our very simple tablescape!

Hmmm... now I am hungry!!


Until next time!
Susan

The Village People

YMCA....  oh wait - I was not actually talking about the band from the 80's - I was talking about my kiddos.  But I had you for a minute didn't I!

When the girls were little we bought them an ornament each year so that their trees would not be bare when they started their own homes.  Then their adopted grandparents, their real grandparents and various friends started buying them ornaments, too.  Soon our tree was overwhelmed and we knew they would be fine their first Christmas away.

What to do, what to do?

I decided that I would start a village for each of them and add pieces to it each year.  Oldest daughter obviously has all of hers at her home - so today I will share youngest daughter's, which currently resides in our dining room (now what will I do when she moves out!!)

Her village in its entirety - rather hard to get a total picture



Each of the girls received a church as their first piece - going forward from that they were specific to each girl.



A reindeer home -




Santa's toy shop




a second church - for Santa land



The first three years youngest daughter was into the whimsical side of Christmas - so we worked on her Santa land.  I think it is still her favorite part of her village with the bright colors and whimsical trees.

A snowball fight from the year we had way too much snow.

A ski lodge from her first winter snowboarding trip.  That was usually a spring break trip.

Pizza by the Slice was her favorite high school lunch spot

The old train station is the heart of our town's downtown area and she loves to spend time there - downtown, not the train station!!

And a night time shot - tee hee!!

So there you have our version of the village people.

I hope you enjoyed it as it is one of our favorite Christmas decorations!!

Until next time

Susan

Wreath-a-pa-looza

I hope that all of you had a truly blessed Thanksgiving.  It was a whirlwind around here as usual.  For a few years oldest daughter and I have gone to the Black Friday craziness.  Not really for the shopping values, but because it is hilarious. 

This year we took youngest daughter.  Now that was entertainment!!!  She was totally shocked!!  We actually only went in one store, but drove around looking at the ridiculous lines at other stores.  Oh and youngest daughter did find lots of things to buy - but none of them were on sale.  Really??!!??  On Black Friday?

I digress - the girls and I traditionally have a craft day the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  This year it was wreaths.  There is LOTS of inspiration in blogland and on Pinterest.

First we made bunches of ornament wreaths as gifts.  I know there are lots of tutorials out there so I do not know where credit actually goes.  I used Thrifty Decor Chick for the first one I made a while back. 

They are actually round - I do not know why they photographed like this.


Oldest daughter really liked this wreath from Kristen's Creations and there is a great tutorial on her blog!!  So oldest daughter set out to make this for her mom-in-law.

One layer of decomesh on

2 layers of decomesh and beginning of ribbon

Some how she took off before I got a competed picture, so you will have to take my word for it.  It turned out just precious!!  Mom-in-law will love it!!

Both girls looove this wreath that is all over Pinterest.  They love the randomness and the "off-sidedness" of this particular wreath.  So we attempted our own.  Uhm... they were much harder than they look

Here is the original

Source: Pinterest



And here are our attempts

oldest daughter - for his sister-in-law



youngest daughter for a friend



mine-just for fun

Ok - so they are nothing like the original, but we had soooo much fun together working on them!!

However - clean up was a little less fun

yep - messy work!!

Until next time

Happy DIY'ing

Susan

31 Days... Day 28



Happy Friday!!  After an incredibly busy work week and even crazier week here in the Hollow - I am thankful it is the week-end.

I finished a little project today that really made me happy!!  I may have mentioned before, but we love Christmas around here. This one really put me in the spirit.  I even popped some Christmas spice into the scentsy pots.  Crazy I know - but after our Christmas in October - or the mammoth birthday week - I always start looking forward to Christmas.

I love all the ornament wreaths that are all over blogland!!  Love them!!!  I do not know where the actual original post is but I book marked this one from Thrifty Decor Chick.  I just love her blog!!  She totally cracks me up!  And her tutorials are always so easy to follow.

I had bought the ornaments a long time ago at the Dollar Tree.  I actually made the form from a cheap hanger a couple of months ago.  When I was cleaning out the craft room it was sort of calling my name.  So tonight I finished it.

I have not unpacked my Christmas ribbon - for obvious reasons - so it had to pose for pictures just propped up on the kitchen counter.  This was a super easy, super fast little project.  I used a mixture of matte, shiny, and glittery ornaments.  I will warn you if you make one of these - when you are first working on it you will probably think "this looks like a hanger with ornaments on it - yuck!!" 

Don't worry, just keep going.  The more you add, the fuller it gets and the better it looks.

All of the tutorials I read said to hot glue the little caps onto the ornaments.  Well I bought these from the Dollar Tree

The little end caps on these are ridiculous!!  I did not end up gluing them because I could not get them off to re-glue them.  So I assumed that if I could not pry them off with needle nose pliers they really did not need to be glued.  None of them popped off during construction.  That probably saved half the time of making this - woo hoo!!!

I was not sure how many ornaments to buy - I could not find that in the tutorials I looked at.  Some said for a small wreath buy 50 to 60.  There were some I read that had used 300.  I was not exactly sure what counted as a small wreath but here is what I ended up with

Mine is about 15 inches across and I used 62 ornaments that are this size

I hope that helps someone else!! 

I did hot glue the last ornament on where the 2 ends of the wreath meet. 

So this cute little wreath cost a whopping $9 - woo hoo!!  And now I cannot wait to see all the Christmas goodies on blogland this year!!

Until tomorrow

Happy DIY'ing

Susan