Count it down!

Our first married Christmas together I decided to make a little Countdown for Chad. Why wait for kids to create an awesome countdown, I'm super stoked for the holiday too! I went all out and made 25 Christmas cards. Some had activities for us to do, and some just had little love notes for days that were going to be too busy.

This year I was not going to make 25 Christmas cards, and I wasn't going to reuse the old ones, partly because I didn't want to look for them and partly because Christmas in the desert is going to be slightly different. We can't make snow angels, go sledding or build a snowman. It's just not happening.

So I made a new countdown this year, kept it nice and simple and I like how it turned out. I got to use my cricut and glitter, is there anything better? I glittered some clothes pins then glued them to some foam board (all from the dollar store!). I filled our countdown with things we would do anyways (decorate the tree, bake cookies), some surprises (shhhhh...) and some things that I want to do and don't want to forget (crockpot hot cocoa, make a wreath for the front door). I'm super excited for something fun everyday of the month, and Chad's excited for another month full of surprises!
 

 

Five {Holiday} Things Friday

It's almost October, which I can officially let out all of my holiday crazy!!! Singing Christmas carols in July all of a sudden makes planning out a Christmas bucket list in (almost) October seem very much acceptable. Clearly I'm overly excited for all of them! Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Talk like a Pirate Day... What? You didn't Talk like a Pirate on September 19th? Ok, so maybe my Dr. was more into that one than me.

I am compiling lists of things to do for each and every holiday so that I can milk each and every one for all of it's goodness and glory! Thanks Pinterest for all of your ridiculously wonderful ideas and feeding my crazy!

Here's some things I'm digging for the upcoming Holiday Season:

1. Scarecrow Treats. There's candy corn, a cake mix and peanut butter involved. Sounds like a good time to me! Now I just need to make friends who also like candy corn so I don't have to eat them all by myself.

2. I think I'm gonna have to set aside some time to decorate sugar cookies. I love decorating cakes and cookies! Ridiculously cute and tasty? It's a win, win.

 3. Face Paint.  F-r-e-a-k-y. Now we just need to find a Halloween party to go to.

4. I made a Countdown to Christmas for Chad the first year we were married and it was a lot of fun. Last year we were in the middle of moving and it was crazy. This year we'll either countdown again or do this: The 12 Dates of Christmas. Or a combination of the two! Either idea is a nice way to sneak in as much celebrating as possible!

5. A Thankful Tree. What a cute way to bring in the spirit of Thankfulness all November long! Plus it's cheap, and when I say cheap, I mean pretty much free. woot.

What are you most excited for this Holiday Season? Crafts? Food? Shopping?

Share any fun ideas you have and let us all in on the action ;)

The Dining Dillema

Our Dinning Room Table has had a number of quite dramatic transformations. We bought it at the Salvation Army right before getting married and knew that it would be our tester table to try out all kinds of finishes and other crafty things on. The poor things been sanded and painted, sanded and painted, sanded and primed and wallpapered and shellacked. Then scraped and sanded and primed again!

 

At one time it was clearly a high gloss black

After a failed attempt with wallpaper and modge podge we haven't mustered up the strength to fix our poor little table. And in all honesty there's not a whole lot of motivation to do so. It's been sitting in our second bedroom as a craft table/desk/catchall for things we don't know what to do with. It's been very handy! Now that we've got the King Size bed though our old bed now resides in the guest room. So our poor little table needed a new home. And since it would be ridiculous to put it in the dining room (lol) we decided to move it out onto the patio and create a little dining area out there.

We couldn't be happier with how cute it looks out there. Now granted the table still needs a face lift and we are using the cheapest WalMart chairs we could find... but you don't notice any of that when it's dusk and the lights are twinkling, the candles are glowing and you're dining on whatever goodness you handsome hubby made you.

A Crafty Weekend

Isn't it the worst when the weekend ends? Luckily for me I get a new holiday in Utah, Pioneer Day. I'm not still quite sure what they do to celebrate, all I'm sure of is that I got today off. I'm also sure that we used it as an excuse to abandon all reason and go on a mild shopping spree. It's Will's fault really though, we needed to get sheets for him to sleep on when he visits. Of course we went to Target to get them, and of course you can't leave Target with only the thing you went in there for. Here is my sad attempt at trying to get into Instagram. It took me way longer than I will admit to figure out how to upload this very important picture.

There were a LOT of craft projects this weekend. Lots of spray painting, painful trips to hardware stores, and one very long trip to Costco. There was not however, a lot of "meatless monday" cooking. The one attempt for Sunday night dinner ended with a pot full of burnt milk. Mmmmm, delish. Since I figured a recipe idea for grilled cheese was a little ridiculous I skipped it yesterday. Although it was fancy grilled cheese with tomatoes and avocados, well... fancy to us anyways.

Our first craft project all started when we found this awesome frame at our favorite (and usually overpriced) consignment store downtown. It was (surprisingly) inexpensive and we love, love, love it. We love it even more now that it's pink :)
 

  Chad spray painted it and then we went and took pictures up at the temple. Chad did his editing magic with it and we headed up to Costco to print it out. After 2 printing attempts, 2 slices of huge cheese pizza and 2 churros we finally had an acceptable picture. Since it was so cheap to print it out at Costco we figure we can switch it out whenever we take a picture we really love. We like how it turned out and finally have a picture of a temple in our home!

Project #2! Right above our stairs we used to have a big frame that held a bunch of pictures. It was a cheapy frame though and after falling multiple times it finally died and had to go. I didn't want to have to buy another one, as much as I like them I think they are overpriced. We started with spray paint of course! Chad painted another big frame that we had picked up at the Salvation Army. We picked up a piece of smooth wainscoting (had them cut it for us) and modge podge and headed home to craft it up.

I laid out the pictures, modge podged them all down, threw it all in the frame and voila! You could paint the background any color your heart desires to get a different look, but we kept ours white. We are really pleased with how well it turned out! We are also really pleased with how easy it was to put together! Love modge podge!

We also made a ridiculously cute jewelry holder but it's not quite done yet. This was far more painful and time consuming to make. The cuteness thankfully makes up for it. More to come :)

Glowing Crafts

I thought I would brag again about my awesome husband. This is one of my favorite projects that he has made so far. It was very easy, cheap, and we plan on making more in the future. He made this in our last apartment, and it now hangs over our bed. It casts a really nice glow and you could use any kind of string to suit your style. He used regular ol' twine which gives a nice eathy and natural feel, but you could use any color of string! I've seen pictures where people have used yarn as well - lots of color possibilities with that route!

So what's the supplies list?

• Big store bought bouncy ball - gives a much better shape than just a balloon.
• Twine, or any other string of your choice
• Glue. Chad used a wood glue. Other places say you need fabric starch or tapioca starch. Nope. Nothing fancy here people.
• Vaseline
• Marker
• Lamp kit
• Container to dump all the glue in

How's it done?

• First mark your opening for the lamp kit on the top of your big ball. Chad also chose to leave an opening on the bottom.
• Rub vaseline all over the ball so that it can be removed easy once dry
• Get to work! Dip your twine/string/yarn/whatever into the glue, making sure to coat it well and then start drapping it all over the ball. Do as much or as little as you want for your desired effect! Make sure all the string has glue on it so that every part of it will harden. Chad went back when he was done and put more glue on certain areas.
• Let it dry for 24 hours. I don't think we waited this long, we are not patient people, especially when it comes to projects! Makes sure it is dry and hard though becore you remove the ball. Now you can either deflate you ball like normal people (then re-inflate if you want) or stab it dramatically like the crazies we are. Peel it away and wa-la!

*Pro Tip: DO NOT dump all the string/twine/whatev into a big container of glue thinking this will speed things up. This will result in a giant messy glob of stinginess that is not going to untangle for you... ever. Luckily we didn't have to learn this lesson the hard way!

Goodnight Bed

Last Friday we said goodbye to our beautiful and wonderful bed. For those of you who don't know Chad made our bed as a wedding present right before we got married. It was an awesome bed. We had gone and looked at furniture stores to see if Chad could replicate one because we knew there was no way we would ever spend that much money on a bed, regardless of being able to afford it or not. We looked at pictures online and measured out beds at furniture stores and he decided that he would *just* make one. No biggie. Love my husband.

So he did. He built our bed in my parents garage while we planned and got ready for our wedding. I helped every now and again, but only if he needed an extra set of hands. It was then that I really learned how handy/crafty/awesome my husband can be/is. Our bed was everything we/I wanted it to be! It was a beast of a bed to move into our apartment (I was soooo glad I was at work that day, thanks boys!), and then back to my parents house and then into a moving truck and then into our new apartment (no boys to help out here). And by the time our wedding bed had made it into our new home we knew that this was the last move for it. And it made me sad to think that I wouldn't have it forever.

Then we went to Hawaii. We slept in a King bed. It was glorious. Again, it could have been the lack of animals or the fact that we went to bed at near exaustion every night, but it was simply glorious and we had never slept better. Fast forward 3 weeks later when I get a text from Cheryl. "we have a King sized mattress and frame you can have for 50 bucks". SOLD!

While I am sad that we aren't sleeping on our wedding bed anymore it's now right across the hall in our guest room. That's right, our guests can now sleep on a bed instead of our garbage couch! Get excited people! That also means that Chad and I can sleep even though our crazy animals sneak into our bed in the dead of night. I can roll over. Yup, I am no longer wedged between cat and dog and Chad. I can MOVE at night without waking up and throwing animals acoss the room.

It also meant that it was project time. That lovely husband of mine decided that he would build yet another bed for us. You all know he loves himself a project. So after we picked up the mattress we headed out to my least favorite place in the world Home Depot to pick up supplies. Two trips later and 10 o'clock at night Chad put the bed together. He is nothing if not efficient. We decided to go simpler this time since the bed takes up more space in our room. We white(gray?)-washed it yesterday and it's done. It was a fast and easy project and we love how it turned out! Thanks for yet another bed love!

Miles of Tiles

Ok, maybe not miles... only four to be exact. But this project was so super easy that I could have done miles! My mom taught how to make these adorable coasters at our Craft Day in the Clarkston Ward last year but I didn't do it. Mostly because we had a piece of trash as our coffee table and it didn't really matter what happened to it. Now we have a pretty and new coffee table that we would like to try to keep that way. Coasters to the rescue!

This is all you need:
Mod Podge
Clear Spray Paint
Paper or Pictures
Foam Brush
Little Felt Pads for the Bottom

I got my tiles from Home Depot and the little felt doo dads from the dollar store! All I did was cut my paper into 4x4 inch squares, put a layer of mod podge down and then center my paper on the tile. After it dried I put one layer of mod podge over top of the paper. After that dried a put a couple coats of the clear spray and voila! Done and done.

It was really fast and easy and they turned out so cute. If you use pictures you don't even have to put the mod podge over top, just skip straight to the clear spray. They look cute on our table and would also make an awesome gift!

Creative Curtains

Chad and I have been wanting to turn these tablecloths from Target into curtains for a long while now. Now that we have a window they will fit on we ran out and bought them!

This was the quickest and easiest project Chad and I have ever done, ever. Of course since it was us though we had a quick setback. We got our tablecloths home and the yellow that we loved was slightly orange in one of them. Boo. Back to Target we went to find a matching tablecloth. After that small setback we were back in business and 5 minutes later, BAM! Curtains done!

Before

After

Best Monday Craft Project ever. Chad and I love to decorate our home. Does anyone else have any fun home decorating projects they've been up to?