Too early for Christmas...

As you can see at all the craft stores, Christmas has been here since July and it's all on sale.  In preparation for some upcoming silent auctions I started to make some Christmas wreaths.  Here's the first of the wreaths I made for an auction coming up in a few weeks.  I'm auctioning off a 2 hour interior design consult and decided to add a wreath as an eye catcher to get them to stop and bid.  I hope it works!

New Mirror

I've been slowly accessorizing parts of my house.  It takes a while for me to find the right things and then of course there's the expense.  I'm always looking for a good deal.  I hate paying full price for anything.  I've been finding some really great things at Home Goods which is part of Marshall's.  I felt like my bedroom needed something over the bed even though the headboard was tall.  It just didn't look complete to me.  I found this great mirror at Marshall's for $50 and it was exactly what I wanted.  The mirrors I saw elsewhere where 2-3 times what I paid for that mirror.  It's definitely a place to check out if you want some great accessories or accent furniture.

Deco Mesh Wreath

I've been seeing more of the Deco Mesh wreaths and decided to make one for myself.  It's a great material to work with since it provides volume and holds it shape.  I made myself a Texas Tech wreath for the college football season.  What I used for a base of my wreath was a plain wire wreath frame with pipe cleaners and made myself something similar to a "work wreath". Then I used the pipe cleaners to attach the deco mesh to the wreath.  There are already some great tutorials on youtube showing you how to make deco mesh wreaths so, you won't need one from me.

Class Project - Cross

This year the class project is a cross.  I've been racking my brain to come up with something that we could have each child participate in the project, but be able to take it apart and give everyone the piece their child made.  I figured that way we could all pitch in to raise the money instead of one person bidding on the project and having to pay for it.  A suggestion was made to do hand prints on a canvas of a cross.  I thought maybe we could do individual canvases and make a cross.  Now it's going to be a big cross since we have 17 kids, but we are disassembling it later, so I think it will be okay.  I hope the class and school goes for it.  Here's the canvas I did this weekend with my daughter. The hand prints form a heart in the middle and I love the way the rainbow colors turned out.  My daughter couldn't decide on one color and wanted a rainbow.  

The quote I found via the internet.  It says, One hand to guide and hold. One life to shape and mold.  Each child a gift of God above.  A symbol of his strength and love. 

Paper Carnations

My daughter started school last week and we thought it would be fun to make some paper flowers for the teacher. I found this fantastic tutorial from Folding Trees.  It was a great project to do with my daughter.  The paper carnations turned out so realistic and pretty.

Lampshade Revival

I bought these two lamps 10 years ago and the shade is made from paper.  They held up just fine before kids, but the kids haven't been too kind with them over the past few years and they had tears in them.

I like the lamps and the shades are an unusual shape, so there wasn't a way for me to find replacements.  I opted to recover them myself with a cream colored fabric.  You can't tell from the pictures, but it's a diamond design with dots.  I measured the shade and cut the fabric out and hemmed the edges.

Next I hot glued it to the lampshade frame.

Then I trimmed the edges with double fold bias tape in a taupe color to give it a bit of contrast.

Moroccan Wall Stencil

I decided to try out the stencils by Cutting Edge Stencils.  I went with the Rabat Allover stencil and used it as an accent wall in my entry way.  I love the way it turned out!  This project did take some patience since I needed to put three coats of the brown paint on the wall, but otherwise it wasn't difficult.  I like the idea of wallpaper, but not the fact that its such a pain to remove later if you get tired of it.  This is much better, so when I'm tired of this color or pattern I can just paint over it.