Christmas Church Bazaar

Fortuna Methodist Church had their Craft Bazaar a couple weeks ago. I set up my stuff at home....just to make sure it went ok. 

Gift tags and Christmas cards... all piled into an old suitcase and some cheese boxes. 

And I gold leafed some pine ones into a garland. It didn't sell but I'm excited to decorate with it then year. 

I thought I had some pics from the Church but I must have deleted them.... Dang! 

Anyway, what have you made lately?

EDITED to add pictures from the Church...I didn't delete the, after all. :)

You can see the garland at the bottom. 

The little jars, to the right, are from my fav jalapeño peppers. :) I added Epsom salt, tea lights, some twine and jingle bells. They didn't sell either but I have a plan for here! :)

Here's some closer pics of the stuff in the suitcase and boxes:

There you go!

Re-purposing a Christmas Card

I generally keep Christmas cards from special people or if I really like the message or picture or think I can re-purpose it some how. {Don't you know my husband loves that about me!} Actually, I don't think he minds.

Take a look:

Last year, we received this card from our Aunt Willie Sam and Uncle Louis. I loved that it was a shape card and beautiful! I knew my Stickles were going to glam it right up!!! (Apparently I was too excited to get started...I don't have a before picture...image the above without glitter...I know it's hard. Everything is better with glitter.)

Anyone have any tips on fussy cutting chipboard?

I loved Jonathan's Aunt Willie Sam instantly. She reminds me so so much of my Nana. Even her hand writing is similar so I knew I had to save and re-porpose the inside of the card too! Really, it's the way she makes her "L"s.

I cut a piece of patterned paper to fit the chipboard on the back of the card front and mod podge'd the pieces together with the inside of the card in the middle. A little Tim Holtz distress ink around the edges and I thought it turned out great!

I intend to lean it in my kitchen window at Christmas time this year. But it was dark when I finished it all up and got it dry enough to handle so I changed up the photo shoot.

I love that little shelf area in my bathroom...yes, I was taking pictures in the bathroom. :)

It's the bathroom right out side of my craft room. It has a cute pedestal sink and is just quaint. Our guests don't use it because there's a larger one across the hall...but I pretend they do. :)

So, do you save Christmas cards too?

Partying at Jennifer Rizzo's place. Check it out here.

Merry CHRISTmas!

I wanted to take this time to wish my readers (hello, friends) a Very Merry CHRISTmas. May you find Peace this holiday season that can only be found in our Lord.

In wishing you Christmas cheer, I thought the friendly thing to do would be to have you all over for dinner. Now, most of you probably know, that I am a terrible cook. In fact, I really only have a kitchen because it came with the house.

However, since it's here, I thought what the heck, might as well decorate it! Decorating, I can do. Cooking...well I generally require assistance.

Anyway, without further ado, My CHRISTmas table:





A good bit of this stuff, I already had. The table cloth and all but 2 placemats, I've had forever (well, not really but probably 4 or 5 years) and I still love them to pieces!



The white square plates are our everyday plates. I got them YEARS ago from Pampered Chef. We are talking I was still in college and had a PC party to get free stuff and got these plates. And I still love them so I guess I made a good purchase. :)

The red luncheon plates came from Target this year. $7.99 for a set of 4. The holley bowels were from Target too. $9.99 for 2. Thank God for Mommas that work in other towns (with Targets) for saving the day on these new dishes. For my Target was grossly under stocked for my needs. :)



Now this is where the new stuff comes in. The tray I got (and one just a tad smaller) at TJ Maxx, $25 for the pair.



One of the big mercury glass candle holders came from The Maxx this year too; I think $6. The other one I won at Patty K's in California, MO last year at the Christmas Homes Tour.

The little votives on top are nestled into Southern Living at Home cups. I love them because they look like Candlewick crystal...except not as fragile or as expensive. The whole set has a serving tray and 3 votive cups.



The big chunky Christmas tree was from The Maxx this year too. It was under $10.

I also got the mercury glass balls at The Maxx too. I think they were around $4 each. I would have loved to purchase everyone they had! I love them so so much. The down side is they are very heavy so I'm not sure they will be very tree worthy. But beautiful? YES!!!



The taper holders I got for $1.50 at an Estate Tag sale a couple of weeks ago when we were visiting my Parents in Tipton, MO. And! They came with the tapers. Lucky me!!



The pinecones, I got (an entire shopping bag FULL) from a sweet patient of mine.



Chose your seat. And my all means, bust out my pretty cloth napkins. Have I ever mentioned to you that I adore cloth napkins? The really soft kind. Or a vintage flower sack tea towel will do too, in a pinch. But it's CHRISTMAS!!!

Merry CHRISTmas to each and every one of you. I sincerely appreciate you stopping by my corner of the interweb (Jj's word) checking to see what I'm up to. This blog is fun to me and a nice outlet for my schenanigans!

Here's to another blessed, bountiful year. May we have all that we need and be careful not to expect all that we want!

Man Worthy Christmas Tree

In our downstairs, I wanted to have some more Christmas Cheer. Jj vetoed a big Christmas tree. Which I guess was fine considering I didn't have a big Christmas tree anyway...

On Pinterest, my friend Shelly pinned a great little Christmas tree! And it got me to thinking...I bet Jj would go for an unconventional Christmas tree! Because while he likes to pretend he's a Scrooge, I really think he does that just to give me a hard time. :)

Since I've never had much of a vegetable garden, I was fresh out of tomato cages. I put out an APB on facebook and my good friend Margo came through!!!

She brought be 2 tomato cages that were in a perfectly used condition!!!!

Thank you, Margo!!!!!!! (Picture taken at my Mom's house)

I clipped off the tags and bent the tops (actually the real bottoms) together to form the top of my tree. I also had to add some vertical wires to the tree. Otherwise, when I wrapped the lights around, t basically turned into a 3-D triangle rather than cylindrical. (Of course, I didn't take a picture, I was too excited about that I was making.)

I stacked up a couple of wooden soda flats, I had out in the garage, and put the tree on top!



I love it! And Jj doesn't hate it = DOUBLE SUCCESS!!

Since I doctor'ed that photo so much, I took a few more so you could see the actual tree better.





See that blue man on the toilet in the background?



I got it from my Dad for Christmas. If you pick the guy up, his hiney is a magnet and the toilet bowl stores paperclips. Funny!!!

While we are down here, I'll show you around!
We've done quite a bit of decorating down here and making it just so. This is probably one of the areas in our home where we spend the most time.



This is our little bar area. This is our first time having a full-sized extra refrigerator. It has came in handy with our family Thanksgiving and Christmas hosting!

Did you see that "God Bless the USA" sign over the sink? The Girls got me that for my Birthday! It's made from license plates. I love it. It's so so me!!



I love this little setting. Simple, pretty and oh so wintery! (Bonus, I had all that stuff in my stash so free!!!)



This is looking from the bar over toward the TV side. And that's our helper, Janie. She's about 16 months old. She's a boxer we adopted the beginning of November from Columbia Second Chance. We love her bunches!!!



This little area is also on the bar. I'm really liking mini-Christmas trees this year. And, I've committed to trying to have a little piece of the beach in every room of our home. Enter: Brass crab. He's actually an ash tray but...we won't be using that.



Here's standing in front of the TV looking back over the furniture, into the corner...with the bar in the background. I'll have to tell you about my smokin deal on that lamp another day!

Have you had any thrifty finds lately? It's not really the season for such but I'm still stumbling one a few once in awhile.

Oh, And Merry Christmas to you!!!

Cricut Expression = Cricut Cake??

So I was reading through my blog roll a couple of weeks ago and stumbled across a post from Lena @ Scrapbutterfly. Click on her name to read her post.

She said the Cricut Cake is the same as the Expression except with stainless steel moving parts (because the Cake has to be food safe). AND she also said they were on sale on cricut.com for $49.99.


WHAT!?!?

I quickly commented on her blog to double check that I was reading correctly along with, did a quick google search.

HOLY COW, SHE WAS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I emailed the link to Jj, we opened some of our Christmas presents on Saturday morning with my family...and I got a Cricut Cake Expressions!

I'm super stoked!!!! And it was a good deal!!!

Looks like right now, Cricut.com has them for $119.99. Still a good deal. Click here.

Mine looks pretty much just like this...except RED! (My favorite color anyway.)
(from photobucket)

Here's mine exactly:

And it came with a "cake" cartridge that has some really cool borders.

Thank you Monster! I love you.

Christmas Center Piece

Secret: This was actually our center piece last year. I forgot to blog about it so I just saved it... is that legal? I hope so!



The glass tray and trio cups are from Southern Living at Home (now called Willow House). The darling little Christmas balls are from my vintage collections. These particular minis were added during a solo junking trip on a monumental birthday!



Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE vintage Christmas ornaments? Well, I do!! Love them such that I just can't hardly let them lay at the store...must...take...home!



You might remember that I decorated our Christmas tree last year in vintage, mostly Shiny Brite, ornamentsr. I just loved it! Will I do that this year?? Wait and see! (please)

Thank you for stopping by my blog! I'm so glad you are here!

Giveaway

My friend from CardMaker, Teresa, is having a giveaway on her blog. Click here to read all about it!

Anyway, I'm showing you my favorite expansion packet. Of course it's Christmas!!

It is called Christmas Traditions and I love, love it!!

Christmas Clearance DEALS!!!!

So, I went out just today, January 7 and found some great deals... on some things I had been wanting anyway...even better!!!!

First, I recently saw a post from Melissa at 320 Sycamore which reminded me that while it's not exactly right after Christmas, there should still be some clearance, very good clearance might I add, deals to be found! She made a haul from Target with cute ideas for her finds.

Now for my haul!

So first I went to Kohls (to return some shoes but I was there so might as well look around right!?!). I found these three cuties!

I had the perfect idea for this little tree... I looked for one this year but never really found a deal. Snagged this sweet thing for $3.99 (that would be 70% off).

I couldn't resist this jack-o-lantern pail/candle holder/cutie.

At only, $3.99 (Ok, that's pretty sick that Halloween has the same clearance as Christmas) I decided it would look fabulous sitting on my porch steps while cute little trick or treaters head to my door.

(Which may have been a bit premature on my part since hopefully, we will live in our new house by then. But whatever, it will have a porch right!?!)

(Ok, so the bird on a sphere wasn't exactly on clearance but it was on sale...that counts right???)
I have been seeing cute little birds, especially those in white, around blog land and was just pretty smitten. So, when I saw this one, I immediately thought of Rhoda at Southern Hospitality. (Hop on over and visit...she has great style!!)

I am just dying looking at that bird...and the burlap on the tree OH MY!

Anyway, kinda makes me snicker to see my Christmas/Halloween/Spring/Easter vignette. Well, I couldn't resist, I had to show you my finds!

Oh! And, I stopped off a Hobby Lobby too! OH MY GOSH! LET ME JUST SAY 90% OFF!!

I got these two sets of stocking holders.

Now, if you have been around here for long, you know it's just JJ and me. So why, you ask, do I need to be able to hang 8 stockings? Well... I'm not sure. I have visions of a mantle in my new house. I see the PEACEful beauties perched in pretty greenery with red berries and fancy white lights... maybe not even holding stockings at all! {Gasp!} And the Joy, well, I don't know...maybe as actual stocking holders. Eek!
Anyway, I got the Peace for $7 (regular $69.99) Joy for $4.50 (regular $44.99).

Now this Christmas tree/filigree stocking holder had me at hello!

There were two but the other one was pretty beat up... I put it in my cart because I was thinking I could mix up some paint and some Distress ink and try to make do... then I thought...ummm, have to move contents of current house. So, I put the sad looking tree back--I miss her. Ok, just kidding, I am loving this girl!! And, regular price was $24.99, I got it for $2.50... Now I am thinking for $2.50 I could have at least tried my hand at rehabing the broken girl. Dang!

Here's my thought... the hanger part is pretty wimpy looking. I am thinking I am going to take it off...

WaaaLaaahh!

Just kidding I turned it over. But you get the point.

I'm just saying-- I can't wait for Christmas!!!

Another Christmas Wreath

I showed you here the pretty red wreath I made for my good friend, Lora.



I made another in golds for our friends Chris & Charlie. They live down the hill from us and have been our good friends almost the entire time I have lived on this block. Another family from this hood that we will terribly miss when we discover another home.

Anyway, here's the wreath I made for them:

Turns out that it's pretty rough to take a picture of shiny stuff!!

I learned about these great wreaths from Sarah @ Thrifty Decor Chick. Thanks Sarah!

If you made it this far, thank you! I had tons of Christmas projects this year and I didn't want you to miss out!! ;)

Merry CHRISTmas!

I wanted to take a moment out of our busy travels to wish my friends and family a very Merry CHRISTmas. May your heart find gladness this Season! If you need a laugh, check our a version of our Christmas card!

I also wanted to show you our Christmas tree this year. I decorated it all in Shiny Brite ornaments that I collected along the way. It all started with this one:

From Drop Box

(Oops, you see me a bit there...sort of hard to take pictures of shiny stuff!)

It's the Christmas of 1951 Ornament!

For the rest of these, I am not going to say much...enjoy!

From Drop Box

>

I saw some great trees decorated this year with double strands of beads. Simply beautiful!! I purchased some beads this year but I didn't get them up... I still really love this tree, even without shiny beads.

Hello pretty little princess that began my obsession!

Happy Birthday Jesus!